Transparent procurement approach key to
Integral Axon win at Southland District Council

The contract has begun with a major technology refresh including 165 desktops, laptops and thin client devices. The refresh also included a new blade server environment and a move to the latest version of VMware (vSphere).

The decision to go out to tender was driven by the impending expiry of existing lease contracts. Southland District Council's CIO Damon Campbell says the Council wanted to bring all lease contracts into line by undertaking a 'one big hit' infrastructure upgrade, lowering future administration costs and delivering some lease consolidation savings.

“At the same time we wanted to go through a formal tender process to select a partner who we could be assured would give us the best deal in terms of service, price and buying power,” Campbell says.

“We're a public organisation – procurement is strategic for us. We cannot risk any waste of rate payers' money.”

Campbell says Integral Axon won the procurement contract on its ability to add value, as well as on actual pricing. 

“Some companies just 'sell tin'. We wanted a single lease and procurement partner who could give us the lowest possible total cost of ownership – consistent with delivering the system performance and productivity we require. Integral Axon fitted the bill.”

He says Integral Axon was unusual in offering complete transparency of procurement, including declaring its margin.

“That's uncommon in the market, but we like it a lot.”

Other factors in Integral Axon's favour included a precise and focused RFP response, Campbell says. This showed that Integral Axon had carefully considered the RFP and delivered a response which showed how the Council's requirements could best be delivered.

“That was certainly not the case with some responses we received,” he says.

Integral Axon's experience with virtualisation, Windows 7 and Office 2007 was also very attractive to Southland District Council, contributing to the quality of advice on how to strike the optimum balance between system cost, performance, reliability and longevity.

“Integral Axon was among the first, if not the first, national IT organisations to successfully complete a major rollout of Windows 7 and Office 2007,” Campbell says.

“This was much more compelling than the tender responses that simply talked a good game but hadn't proved themselves.

“My experience of Integral Axon so far is that they're a switched on company, strong on value and service.”

Integral Axon's Southland District Council senior account manager Rob Naeyaert says the technology refresh now underway is a showcase for Integral Axon's holistic approach to managing the procurement supply chain and its related costs. This includes not only the dollar cost of hardware, but logistics, shipping and software imaging.

“The processing of orders for the initial capital purchase is only a very small part of the supply process,” Naeyaert says.

“Integral Axon looks at the entire end-to-end supply chain from point of purchase through to end user fulfilment, and looks for ways to reduce cost or increase service.  In the example of a PC order, normally a PC would require asset tagging, software imaging and shipping to the end user. Lastly it undergoes configuration on the customer's corporate network for use.  Integral Axon's processes take into account the entire supply chain, and ensure we remove cost wherever possible for the customer.”

Headquartered in Invercargill, Southland District Council has 147 staff and is the largest territorial authority in New Zealand by land mass, with nine branch offices throughout Southland.