September 8, 2009 IBS DataFort, the provider of IT outsourcing services in the Russian market, commenced hardware maintenance and help desk/ service desk services for the Russian branch of Wrigley, the global confectionery market leader. Wrigley's regional network in Russia currently comprises offices in 7 cities and a plant in St. Petersburg that produces chewing gum, candies and other confectionery products.
In 2005 Wrigley decided to outsource support of regional offices. Accordingly, from 2006 the support services were outsourced but had been subscription-based before IBS DataFort came in. Subscription-based arrangements, although commonly used in the market, have one major disadvantage: they provide for a specific number of IT issues to be resolved and a fixed set of services to be provided, all to be paid for whether or not actually performed.
IBS DataFort offered incident-based arrangements, with payment only for services that were actually provided. Wrigley accepted the offer and switched to the new service provider. According to Ilya Tovbin, IT Manager, EMEAI-East, Wrigley, amidst cost-cutting and optimisation of IT budgets all round, with the new outsourcing arrangements the company will no longer have to pay for services it does not actually use. "We have a reliable partner in every region where we are present and now we are confident that any incident can be resolved either remotely by using our internal resources or on the premises with the outsourcer's assistance," added Ilya Tovbin.
Under the annual contract, IBS DataFort provides operational management and maintenance of software, workstations and peripheral equipment and support services for some 500 Wrigley Russia users from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. The basic services package includes Service Desk, workstation administration, incident resolution, computer maintenance and management services. A uniform level of service is maintained in all regions.
According to Denis Kalinin, General Director of IBS DataFort, the value of outsourcing essentially consists in service flexibility. "Now every sensible company seeks to save costs, and service flexibility is what cost saving is all about," said he, "Downturn is invariably followed by upturn and a good IT outsourcer would be able to shrink or expand the scope of services at any time as required by the customer."
About IBS DataFort
IBS DataFort is a provider of IT outsourcing services in the Russian market. For more information, please visit www.datafort.ru.
For further information please contact Lada Scherbakova, PR Director at 007 (495) 967-80-80, or by e-mail at lada@IBS.ru.
| 
