Controlling Your IT Expenses: How to Better Manage IT Costs While Maintaining Quality Service
Welcome to this webinar: “How to Better Manage Your IT Costs While Maintaining Quality Service.” My name is Marie-Elisabeth VILMEN from PI Services. I’m a Marketing and Sales Assistant at the company, and I’ll let my colleague introduce himself.
Hello everyone, I’m Jérôme BEAUNE, Director of Operations and Head of the Technical Teams at PI Services.
Thank you, Jérôme. So first, we’ll briefly introduce who we are, and then my colleague will take over to present and address the main topic of today’s webinar.
So, who are we? We are an IT services company (ESN) created 25 years ago. We’re infrastructure architects and managers, mainly specialised in Microsoft technologies, and we’ve been Microsoft partners for over 20 years. We operate in five key areas of expertise: security (for instance, implementing Tiering models for our clients), identity management, end-user workstations (including device and app supervision), collaborative tools, and IT infrastructure design and deployment.
We offer three distinct service areas to support your IT systems and digital transformation:
Audit & Infrastructure Consulting – evaluating your existing infrastructure and carrying out audits or project scoping studies.
Deployment & Integration – where we implement and manage infrastructure projects from start to finish.
Managed Services – maintaining the operational condition of your systems and providing support. I’ll now let my colleague Jérôme dive deeper into this and answer the main question of today’s webinar.
Thank you. Regarding Managed Services, which I’ll be discussing today, it’s a well-known concept—nothing new there. But what we want to focus on are the budgetary and economic aspects of Managed Services, particularly how a well-designed service can help optimise IT budgets.
To recap briefly, our Managed Services include:
Operational Maintenance (MCO): ongoing infrastructure management.
Support: end-user support, infrastructure, networks, etc.
Microsoft Premier Support (we’re a Gold Partner).
Request Management: across various domains like servers, networks, workstations, user support, security, and software (application hosting, not application development).
For software, we manage application hosting environments—supervised, backed up, and secured according to best practices. We also design tailored architectures with all necessary services for ensuring availability and continuity.
Let me illustrate with a few client examples: some work with us solely for operational maintenance, others for request handling only, while others delegate their entire IT stack. We adapt to each client’s needs with tailor-made services—whether on a specific technology or across the board.
Now let’s dive into the core focus of this presentation: budget optimisation.
Four Key Areas We’ll Cover:
Precise Billing Based on Actual Usage: We track real-time actions. If we spend 12 minutes, we charge for 12 minutes. Nothing more.
Transparent Actions and Results: Everything we do is traceable and reportable, with commitments clearly outlined and tracked.
Budget Mapping and Analysis: We provide budget reporting from multiple perspectives—technical, organisational, geographic, temporal.
Project Profitability: By understanding and controlling your IT costs, you can accurately assess and justify the ROI of your projects.
Let’s go through each one.
1. Precise, Real-Time Billing
We work with real-time tracking—our hallmark. Whether it’s 5 minutes or 2 hours, we log and charge accordingly. For example, if you need an expert in hybrid messaging environments, we allocate a consultant for a 2-hour meeting and charge exactly that.
This model also applies to operational maintenance and support: no fixed day-rates if the issue only took 3 hours to solve. Our consultants—admins, engineers, consultants, architects—are experienced, work across clients, and draw from a wide base of expertise to respond faster and more effectively.
We built a system that allows this level of granularity in real-time billing—using consolidated tools and processes.
2. Transparent Reporting
Here’s an overview of some real client dashboards (anonymised, of course). We define an annual workload based on a preliminary study and track consumption in real-time.
Example: a client with a 263-day contract has used 43 days when they were expected to have consumed 34 at that point in the year. That’s tracked and explained via dashboards. If a client under-consumes, they can reallocate remaining time to other projects. Our goal is to ensure they fully use what they’ve paid for—nothing more, nothing less.
The same applies to support requests. We have clients with small yearly budgets (€7K, for example), which are consumed across various actions (e.g. fixes, consulting). Each task is logged down to the minute—e.g. 2.75h, 0.08h, 1.83h—along with the technician, date, and ticket ID.
We can work either by hours or tickets, depending on client preference, always keeping track of exact usage and providing detailed justifications.
3. Budget Mapping
This approach allows detailed budget analysis by:
Technical domain: infrastructure, workstations, software, networks.
Business unit: e.g., marketing team, subsidiaries, geographic regions.
Time: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly views for year-on-year comparisons.
Clients can see consumption by user, by department, or even by application. For example, one client wanted to know how much their Sage application costs in terms of admin and support. The breakdown showed exactly 6.71 days spent, with further drill-downs by subsidiary.
We also use historical data to detect seasonal trends. One client with data since 2019 noticed a spike in January this year—27 days of consumption vs. 16 last year. Upon analysis, the spike was due to issues with ageing Hyper-V servers and backups. These insights helped justify an infrastructure refresh already in planning.
4. Project ROI & Business Case Support
With all this data, it’s easier to justify investments. You can:
Compare the cost of recurring issues with the cost of new solutions.
Measure ROI and amortisation periods for projects like backup systems, automated onboarding, or SaaS migration.
Prioritise automation where manual tasks are too costly.
Having detailed, fact-based data allows clients to make informed decisions and build strong business cases for future projects.
Let’s quickly address a few audience questions:
Q1: What tools do you use for Managed Services?
We primarily use GLPI (open-source ticketing system), enrich its data via ETL processes, and feed it into BI dashboards for analysis. This system has evolved since 2019 and follows a DevOps model with continuous improvement—especially around security and ISO 27001.
Q2: How do you start working with new clients?
We begin with a detailed audit to define the perimeter (systems, health status, documentation, etc.). Based on this, we co-build the operating model, including tools like remote access and monitoring. Everything is tailored to the client’s needs.
Q3: Do you work onsite or remotely?
Both. We support clients remotely or on-site depending on the need. Regardless of the method, all data is centralised to maintain full transparency and traceability.
Q4: How do you ensure security during interventions?
Security is critical. We follow minimum standards—network filtering, firewalls, antivirus, disconnected backups—and align with advanced practices like account isolation (Tiering Model). Security is a vast topic—we could do a full webinar on that alone.
Q5: Can clients access the dashboards you showed?
Absolutely. Clients have full access to real-time dashboards, tickets, and reports. This transparency helps build long-term trust and a collaborative relationship.
Thank you, Jérôme, for the insights.
Thank you all for attending, and we wish you a great day!
Interested in our offers? Contact us at +33 1 55 85 08 92 or contact@piservices.fr
Welcome to this webinar: “How to Better Manage Your IT Costs While Maintaining Quality Service.” My name is Marie-Elisabeth VILMEN from PI Services. I’m a Marketing and Sales Assistant at the company, and I’ll let my colleague introduce himself.
Hello everyone, I’m Jérôme BEAUNE, Director of Operations and Head of the Technical Teams at PI Services.
Thank you, Jérôme. So first, we’ll briefly introduce who we are, and then my colleague will take over to present and address the main topic of today’s webinar.
So, who are we? We are an IT services company (ESN) created 25 years ago. We’re infrastructure architects and managers, mainly specialised in Microsoft technologies, and we’ve been Microsoft partners for over 20 years. We operate in five key areas of expertise: security (for instance, implementing Tiering models for our clients), identity management, end-user workstations (including device and app supervision), collaborative tools, and IT infrastructure design and deployment.
We offer three distinct service areas to support your IT systems and digital transformation:
Audit & Infrastructure Consulting – evaluating your existing infrastructure and carrying out audits or project scoping studies.
Deployment & Integration – where we implement and manage infrastructure projects from start to finish.
Managed Services – maintaining the operational condition of your systems and providing support. I’ll now let my colleague Jérôme dive deeper into this and answer the main question of today’s webinar.
Thank you. Regarding Managed Services, which I’ll be discussing today, it’s a well-known concept—nothing new there. But what we want to focus on are the budgetary and economic aspects of Managed Services, particularly how a well-designed service can help optimise IT budgets.
To recap briefly, our Managed Services include:
Operational Maintenance (MCO): ongoing infrastructure management.
Support: end-user support, infrastructure, networks, etc.
Microsoft Premier Support (we’re a Gold Partner).
Request Management: across various domains like servers, networks, workstations, user support, security, and software (application hosting, not application development).
For software, we manage application hosting environments—supervised, backed up, and secured according to best practices. We also design tailored architectures with all necessary services for ensuring availability and continuity.
Let me illustrate with a few client examples: some work with us solely for operational maintenance, others for request handling only, while others delegate their entire IT stack. We adapt to each client’s needs with tailor-made services—whether on a specific technology or across the board.
Now let’s dive into the core focus of this presentation: budget optimisation.
Four Key Areas We’ll Cover:
Precise Billing Based on Actual Usage: We track real-time actions. If we spend 12 minutes, we charge for 12 minutes. Nothing more.
Transparent Actions and Results: Everything we do is traceable and reportable, with commitments clearly outlined and tracked.
Budget Mapping and Analysis: We provide budget reporting from multiple perspectives—technical, organisational, geographic, temporal.
Project Profitability: By understanding and controlling your IT costs, you can accurately assess and justify the ROI of your projects.
Let’s go through each one.
1. Precise, Real-Time Billing
We work with real-time tracking—our hallmark. Whether it’s 5 minutes or 2 hours, we log and charge accordingly. For example, if you need an expert in hybrid messaging environments, we allocate a consultant for a 2-hour meeting and charge exactly that.
This model also applies to operational maintenance and support: no fixed day-rates if the issue only took 3 hours to solve. Our consultants—admins, engineers, consultants, architects—are experienced, work across clients, and draw from a wide base of expertise to respond faster and more effectively.
We built a system that allows this level of granularity in real-time billing—using consolidated tools and processes.
2. Transparent Reporting
Here’s an overview of some real client dashboards (anonymised, of course). We define an annual workload based on a preliminary study and track consumption in real-time.
Example: a client with a 263-day contract has used 43 days when they were expected to have consumed 34 at that point in the year. That’s tracked and explained via dashboards. If a client under-consumes, they can reallocate remaining time to other projects. Our goal is to ensure they fully use what they’ve paid for—nothing more, nothing less.
The same applies to support requests. We have clients with small yearly budgets (€7K, for example), which are consumed across various actions (e.g. fixes, consulting). Each task is logged down to the minute—e.g. 2.75h, 0.08h, 1.83h—along with the technician, date, and ticket ID.
We can work either by hours or tickets, depending on client preference, always keeping track of exact usage and providing detailed justifications.
3. Budget Mapping
This approach allows detailed budget analysis by:
Technical domain: infrastructure, workstations, software, networks.
Business unit: e.g., marketing team, subsidiaries, geographic regions.
Time: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly views for year-on-year comparisons.
Clients can see consumption by user, by department, or even by application. For example, one client wanted to know how much their Sage application costs in terms of admin and support. The breakdown showed exactly 6.71 days spent, with further drill-downs by subsidiary.
We also use historical data to detect seasonal trends. One client with data since 2019 noticed a spike in January this year—27 days of consumption vs. 16 last year. Upon analysis, the spike was due to issues with ageing Hyper-V servers and backups. These insights helped justify an infrastructure refresh already in planning.
4. Project ROI & Business Case Support
With all this data, it’s easier to justify investments. You can:
Compare the cost of recurring issues with the cost of new solutions.
Measure ROI and amortisation periods for projects like backup systems, automated onboarding, or SaaS migration.
Prioritise automation where manual tasks are too costly.
Having detailed, fact-based data allows clients to make informed decisions and build strong business cases for future projects.
Let’s quickly address a few audience questions:
Q1: What tools do you use for Managed Services?
We primarily use GLPI (open-source ticketing system), enrich its data via ETL processes, and feed it into BI dashboards for analysis. This system has evolved since 2019 and follows a DevOps model with continuous improvement—especially around security and ISO 27001.
Q2: How do you start working with new clients?
We begin with a detailed audit to define the perimeter (systems, health status, documentation, etc.). Based on this, we co-build the operating model, including tools like remote access and monitoring. Everything is tailored to the client’s needs.
Q3: Do you work onsite or remotely?
Both. We support clients remotely or on-site depending on the need. Regardless of the method, all data is centralised to maintain full transparency and traceability.
Q4: How do you ensure security during interventions?
Security is critical. We follow minimum standards—network filtering, firewalls, antivirus, disconnected backups—and align with advanced practices like account isolation (Tiering Model). Security is a vast topic—we could do a full webinar on that alone.
Q5: Can clients access the dashboards you showed?
Absolutely. Clients have full access to real-time dashboards, tickets, and reports. This transparency helps build long-term trust and a collaborative relationship.
Thank you, Jérôme, for the insights.
Thank you all for attending, and we wish you a great day!
Interested in our offers? Contact us at +33 1 55 85 08 92 or contact@piservices.fr