The Gartner Outsourcing Summit 2013 came up with some interesting data on the effect of digitisation on IT sourcing.

Surprisingly, 90% of IT budgets could soon be sent outside of the IT department by 2020, to be controlled by business executives. Trends in digitisation and consumerisation are responsible for the shift in control.

Cloud, mobile, social and analytics are all examples of technology that will be moving out of the remit of IT and into the wider business. Gartner analyst Frank Ridder predicted that in 2014, executives from non-IT backgrounds will begin taking on tech procurement abilities. This will lead to changes in the traditional procurement structure, in order to avoid the risk of improper sourcing.

“The ‘no clue’ buyer has arrived. They buy what they want, but do not know how to buy it,” said Ridder, referencing the fact that potentially uninformed business departments will not initially have the knowledge of sourcing best practice. Combine this with the data that says most business executives want to mirror personal technology usage in the workplace and the chance for inefficient purchasing is steep.

CIOs polled by Gartner said that currently 25% of the IT budget is controlled outside of the IT department. By 2015 it is believed that 40% will pass over, before finally arriving at the figure of 90% being out of IT’s control. It is described as an inevitable rather than a possibility that digitising customer services will lead to a reduction in reducing back-off IT costs. The subsequent service industrialisation will free up funding, which will go onto improving digital offerings through investment.

“The money has to be found because CIOs are already planning to increase spending on IT to change the business. The focus for European CIOs for the next few years will be profitability and growth” said Gartner analyst, Claudio Da Rold. 47% of CEOs have a digital strategy at the moment, with that number rising to 80% by 2015. Once again, the drivers behind this will be cloud, social, mobile and analytics.

To make the largest changes and show the best use of innovation, the current allocation of budget will need to be rebalanced. Currently 70% of the budget is spent on running the business, while 30% goes on changes and improvements. A recommended ratio of 50:50 would better serve CEOs to get the balance between functionality and future proofing.

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Getting your customers to sign up to a service that requires them to relinquish control of 70% of their code requires a lot of trust and confidence. While the latest research suggests that businesses across the UK are interested in PaaS, your selling technique will need to be just right to get them to invest at this stage.

Industry experts suggest that around 70% of software adds no differential business advantage at all. It’s simply software that is required to get the job done. PaaS allows businesses to focus on the 30% of software that does add competitive advantage, making them much more efficient.

The answer to selling PaaS with ease isn’t about understanding the coding more. It’s about using data to sell the benefits, and reassuring the customer that this is the perfect solution for them. Just keeping data in a cloud isn’t typically enough to encourage a customer to buy.

The key benefits that you should be using to sell include:

· Analytics. Businesses like analytics, and the ability to report on what works and what doesn’t. Express how easy it is to find and monitor data, and create excellent reports.

· Integration. No software is an island, and everything needs to integrate with something. Using PaaS makes this integration simple. Have a good knowledge of the key systems your customer is likely to use, and mention whether your PaaS system is integrated with them, or can be. Allowing your customer to use their favourite systems in exchange for keeping their data in your cloud is a very successful selling technique.

· Data Aggregation. Benchmarks are vital to businesses, and they get these through looking at the same data across many customers. Refining this process and making it as efficient as possible is a big business ambition. If your PaaS service can offer this, you’ll be cutting costs as well as delivering valuable data. SalesForce, for example, integrates with Jigsaw. This shows information about any contact that you add to the database, including contact details and job information.

· Other vital applications. These aren’t the only ways PaaS can be used. It could also be used for Disaster Recovery – not only backing up immediate data, but also cloud-based data. Archiving systems are always in demand, and a reduced-functionality front end for use during maintenance is always a popular option. Find ways to meet the business’s needs, and your customer won’t hesitate to buy.

What benefits are you finding the most effective in PaaS sales at the moment?

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