NPI
Optimized IT Sourcing through Deep Analytics and Negotiation Intel

On a mission to help companies stop overspending on IT and telecom purchases, and maximize the effectiveness of IT Sourcing as a strategic discipline, NPI provides transaction-specific pricing analysis and negotiation intel for driving best-in-class purchases.

At the helm of this powerhouse is Jon Winsett, an expert in leading IT companies in the US and abroad with over 22 years of rich experience. As the CEO, Winsett fosters a success-oriented and accountable team environment based on trust, respect, commitment, and comradery—all of which are instrumental to NPI’s, and its clients’ success.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Winsett shares his insights on the unique value proposition, and the leading edge procurement services NPI brings to the table.

What are the market pain-points that NPI addresses?

NPI’s mission is to help companies find and eliminate transactional overspending for IT and telecom purchases and renewals. We do this through deep vendor and transaction-specific pricing, licensing/ subscription, and negotiation intel.

Today, IT buyers are at a great disadvantage; there is no Kelley Blue Book, Expedia, or Amazon to guide them in ensuring a good deal. Pricing and terms can vary wildly between customers. To make matters worse, usage rights are complex and risk-laden, and it is nearly impossible for customers to understand and keep track of changes to vendors’ licensing and subscription programs. As a result of all of these obstacles, IT buyers spend more than they need to on purchases and renewals more than 75 percent of the time.

NPI addresses three primary pain points to help our clients minimize their investment on purchases, renewals, and audits. First off, we analyze and identify the pricing disparity or inconsistency that may arise in IT or telecom purchases and renewals. Secondly, we address the complex licensing or subscription models inherent in today’s IT and telecom purchases as well as contractual terms. This issue often makes companies buy more than what they require and makes it difficult to negotiate appropriate “future-proofing” business terms and flexibility. Another challenge that we mitigate is software license audit risk, a serious (and potentially costly) compliance issue that many organizations face—especially as legacy enterprise IT vendors are increasingly relying on software license audits to increase revenues and drive clients to newer, cloud-based offerings.

Elaborate on some of the key products, solutions, and services that you offer.

NPI has six core service areas. Our SmartSpend™ subscription service that provides fair market value analysis for our clients’ day-to-day IT purchases.

We also offer project services for optimizing complex enterprise agreements with vendors like Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Oracle, SAP, and IBM. Another core service is telecom carrier contract optimization—we help clients get the best pricing, terms, usage, and programs for their mobile, network, cloud, or web conferencing purchases and renewals. Our license audit services help clients to proactively identify and remediate non-compliance of their software estates with vendors, and we also offer audit defense management when clients find themselves subject to a vendor license audit. One specific challenge that many large enterprises face is restructuring their software estates in divestiture or merger situations— NPI is an expert in this area.

The final core area is NPI’s IT sourcing transformation consulting service that helps companies identify gaps in their current IT sourcing practices, create future-state IT sourcing functional design, establish a phased implementation roadmap, build the processes to support the design, and execute the roadmap.

What are some of the chief differentiators that set apart your company from your competitors?

What differentiates NPI in the market is our unmatched vendor-specific subject matter expertise. With more than 300 vendor and category specialists, NPI can optimize, benchmark, and develop unique purchase optimization strategies for every major IT vendor in the market. Our wide breadth of coverage—over 1600 IT and telecom vendors— help clients achieve a fair deal even from a vendor they have never done business with before.

Another point that sets us apart is our partnership approach; our role is complementary to our clients’ in-house sourcing teams and to the applications and tools that comprise their sourcing technology infrastructure. Unlike other service providers, NPI combines deep analytics with benchmark data, insight into supplier motivations, and peer buyer activities to deliver intel that can drive material savings and IT sourcing effectiveness for clients. The quality of our deliverables always sets us apart.

Where do you see customer traction and why?

We primarily work with industries that have large IT spend like financial services, insurance, retail, energy, manufacturing, media, and hospital systems.

Can you point out a case study to highlight the benefits brought to one of your clients?

One of the country’s top pediatric hospitals wanted to improve the way it sourced IT and needed to streamline its IT sourcing process. They wanted to implement best practices for validating fair market value pricing. NPI’s price benchmark analysis, licensing expertise, and negotiation intel enabled the organization to buy with confidence, standardize its IT sourcing process, and save more than $6M in just one year alone.

Where do you envision NPI in the future?

In 2018, we had hockey-stick growth in our software license audit services, and anticipate the same pattern in the IT portfolio rationalization arena for divestitures over the next two years.

In 2019, we will continue our strategic focus on providing the best cost optimization services in the market for the five “pillars” of enterprise software spend; namely Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce.com.

Client retention is the true north for NPI, and our renewal rate is currently at 88 percent. We hold ourselves accountable to this number. We listen to client needs to drive our strategy—audit and divestiture services, for example, are a direct reflection of listening.