IBM's Software Accelerated Value Program: Maximize Your Software's ROI

How does 400% ROI sound to you?

Service Management in Action Getting the best possible business value from leading enterprise-class software may sometimes require a little more expertise than you have in-house.

Consider some of the challenges involved:

New solutions may be available, yet organizations may not be aware of them, their features, or their potential
Updates to current solutions may involve a lengthy and complex planning, deployment, and troubleshooting process before they can go live
Business strategies may require integrating software management solutions in unprecedented ways
Organizations may merge, or one may acquire another, requiring their infrastructures and processes to be blended
Technical issues may come up that fall outside the scope of the in-house IT team

"Maximo solutions continually monitor asset health and status levels, aggregating performance and configuration information into a centralized repository, where it can be analyzed and leveraged in as many ways as the organization needs. This makes it easy to create cross-domain value." Toward addressing these and many other complexities, many organizations find extended support options from software vendors particularly compelling. Through extended support, they can create a short path from their current goals to their future success—accelerated value, in short, for all the software solutions for which support is purchased.

That's why IBM's Software Accelerated Value Program is so aptly named. The idea of it is basically twofold: to help organizations get more value from IBM software, and to get that value faster.

How much more value? Via the Software Accelerated Value Program, IBM estimates that the average return on investment is over five times the annual cost of the program contract. And in a problematic economy, when every dollar counts, that's got to be an appealing number.

How many other investments does your organization make that are expected to deliver more than 400% annual ROI on average?

A triple value proposition: Tailored support packages, technological insight, and human collaboration

Let's walk through some of the program specifics so you can get a clearer look at what the program involves.

To begin with, the Software Accelerated Value Program is available for all the software IBM offers—an incredibly deep and broad portfolio spanning collaboration tools, IT service management solutions, Web applications, software development, and many other areas.

This range gives organizations remarkably granular control over advanced support—extra help where they need it, and not where they don't. They can invest in the Software Accelerated Value Program in the areas they deem most critical, and handle more routine areas themselves, thus creating a tailored support package that closely reflects their specific needs and overall context.

Second, the Software Accelerated Value Program addresses the complete lifecycle of software in every case. That means organizations get far more than just advanced technical expertise when problems come up. They get assistance at every logical point in time—even before they've bought the software, if they choose.

Specifically, they can get help with prepurchase planning, assessment, and roadmap creation; deployment and integration with the current infrastructure; upgrades, which in some cases are so complex they can take more than a year to properly implement; and even advanced, cross-solution integration in areas like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). And, of course, program clients certainly do receive expert troubleshooting guidance at any of those stages, should it be needed.

Third, the Software Accelerated Value Program delivers not just technological value, but also human value. All Software Accelerated Value Program clients are assigned a dedicated Accelerated Value Leader who serves as the central liaison between the client and the full scope of IBM's resources. That means there's never any doubt about where to turn for information, guidance, or help in time of need.

Furthermore, the Accelerated Value Leader also works proactively to make those times of need as rare as possible. This individual collaborates extensively with the client's own IT team to avoid needless risks, costs, and delays, essentially leveraging the wisdom gleaned from IBM's long history of successful customer engagements to anticipate and avoid such pitfalls.

For clients who'd like an even deeper level of technical support, that's also available in the form of an optional Accelerated Value Specialist. These specialists handle tasks like deep performance analysis, complex problem resolution, diagnostic coaching, and others, providing them on demand to any set of named callers pre-designated by the client. They can also play a role in project planning and best practice education/implementation, thus giving clients the insight they need to prevent many technical issues from coming up in the first place.

On-site assistance is also available. For instance, given a business-critical (severity 1) issue, IBM will typically be able to dispatch an engineer to the site inside one business day if that option has been purchased. Additional on-site possibilities include application analysis; help implementing best practices; and guidance on deployment, migration, and updates of all kinds.

Added up, the Software Accelerated Value Program offers exceptional return on the investment made in IBM software—in all the ways, and covering all the topics, that IBM clients themselves decide matter the most.

IBM Maximo in the energy sector: Illustrating the power of the Software Accelerated Value Program

Interested in a specific example of how the program might apply to a particular solution and industry?

Consider the case of IBM Maximo—IBM's flagship asset management solution family—as it's used in the energy field.

IBM Maximo has emerged as a leading solution to one of the most pressing challenges organizations face today: getting the highest business value from all of their assets, both fixed and mobile, and both on and off the IP infrastructure. As organizational assets have become increasingly complex, diverse, and distributed, the challenge of tracking, maintaining, and managing them all has scaled up in proportion.

And while traditionally siloed management has tackled that issue on a domain-by-domain basis, a more holistic approach is required today—one that spans both the total asset portfolio and the total lifecycle of all those assets.

That's exactly what IBM Maximo delivers. Maximo solutions continually monitor asset health and status levels, aggregating performance and configuration information into a centralized repository, where it can be analyzed and leveraged in as many ways as the organization needs. This makes it easy to create cross-domain value. For instance, if a particular asset turns out to have a shorter-than-expected lifecycle, that information will prove very useful indeed to forecasting, budgeting, and procurement teams chartered with planning future purchases.

In the energy space, of course, all of these complexities are compounded by others associated with that field. For instance, company acquisitions might imply billions of dollars of new assets to manage for best value, and many of those assets (example: oil pumps) won't be digital—not all asset management solutions will handle them. Certain energy maintenance schedules also require exceptionally carefully handling, such as those in nuclear power plants, to anticipate and minimize extraordinary risks.

Energy as a field also implies an unusually broad variety of asset classes, because there are many forms of energy production, ranging from gas to coal to nuclear to electrical. Consolidating management of all such assets, via a single, centralized asset management platform, is the goal. But that goal is not easy to achieve.

A wealth of compelling business benefits

Fortunately, the IBM Tivoli Maximo family is ideally suited to help organizations achieve it.

And, toward maximizing the ROI delivered by Maximo itself, the Accelerated Value Program provides an excellent additional layer of support.

Consider the following benefits:

Initial deployment of the solution, as applied to the full range of assets across all their classes, will naturally be fairly complex. Through the Accelerated Value Program, IBM can collaborate with the client to make deployment as fast, comprehensive, and straightforward as possible. A careful roadmap can be created to ensure rollout takes place in a governed, effective manner. And prioritized deployment can help address the most business-critical areas first, thus creating new value more rapidly than the organization could achieve on its own.
Should any unexpected issues emerge in the ongoing use of Maximo solutions, Software Accelerated Value Program clients will get exceptionally quick assistance from IBM in resolving them—up to and including on-site assistance if necessary. That means Maximo capabilities will be more continually available, and more continually driving business strategies and operations of all kinds.
Maximo upgrades typically provide a very broad range of new features and enhancements, but also typically involve a lengthy process of planning and deployment as a result. With help provided by the Software Accelerated Value Program, that process can be made significantly shorter. Integration of the new technology can be accomplished more easily and with lower costs and risks.
The Software Accelerated Value Program also gives participating organizations inside knowledge of forthcoming Maximo releases and new features and functionality—very useful for determining whether a new release would be an appropriate choice for their context.
IBM can assist energy providers in performing tricky maintenance in critical areas such as nuclear power, ensuring that Maximo solutions continually provide necessary insight into asset status and health levels.
Software Accelerated Value Program clients have the option of purchasing on-site time from IBM specialists who can then assist in any manner the client requires. That means both routine tasks, such as technical consultation and system health-check and best practices dissemination, as well as emergency tasks needed to resolve any unforeseen critical issue.
Finally, participating in the Software Accelerated Value Program also gives IBM Maximo clients instant participation in the Maximo Advisory Council. This group, sponsored by IBM, helps IBM refine and improve solutions based on direct customer feedback given to IBM executives, Maximo product managers, and development and software architecture leaders. Whatever new capabilities or integration organizations turn out to need most, IBM will then work to create—directly benefiting clients when the next version is released.

Add up those benefits and you can see at a glance why the Software Accelerated Value Program delivers better than 400% ROI, on average, for every year it applies. It's simply the best available way to ensure IBM software creates as much value, as quickly, over its full lifecycle.

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