How a global technology company identified $40M in savings through IT sourcing optimization

The challenge

Managing a fragmented support-provider ecosystem

The client had ambitious customer experience objectives, but its outsourced services ecosystem had not been designed around those outcomes.

Pricing models, contractual commitments, performance measures, governance routines, and supplier incentives varied across services and providers, making it difficult to consistently align partner behavior with evolving customer expectations.

The client needed a support ecosystem that could:

• Translate customer experience ambition into provider behaviors and measurable outcomes
• Align service provider incentives with resolution quality, customer satisfaction, and experience consistency
• Modernize commercial constructs, service levels, and performance management
• Improve consistency and accountability across providers, contracts, and customer segments
• Preserve operational efficiency while creating commercial room for future innovation
• Build a scalable foundation for ongoing CX transformation.

The solution

Assessing IT service provider performance and commercial effectiveness

Wavestone combined customer experience, sourcing strategy, commercial optimization, supplier management, and services governance expertise to assess the outsourced support ecosystem and identify the levers most likely to improve both customer outcomes and economic performance.

Step 1: Benchmarking the commercial and operating environment

We conducted a comprehensive assessment of the client’s outsourced support portfolio, including pricing structures, commercial arrangements, contractual frameworks, service-level methodologies, governance models, and delivery-partner operating practices.

The analysis incorporated market benchmarking and leading-practice research across customer support and business services environments, allowing the client to compare its current model against both peer practices and emerging market standards.

Step 2: Aligning provider incentives to customer outcomes

A central focus of the engagement was determining which commercial and contractual mechanisms most directly influenced supplier behavior – and where those mechanisms were reinforcing efficiency at the expense of broader customer experience outcomes.

For example, Wavestone assessed how service levels and incentives could move beyond traditional contact center measures such as volume, capacity, and speed, toward metrics more closely tied to customer outcomes – including resolution quality, escalation effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and accountability for experience consistency across segments.

Step 3: Redesigning pricing, service levels, and supplier incentives

The team developed practical recommendations for modern pricing approaches, service-level frameworks, and performance incentives designed to better connect provider economics with the customer outcomes the client wanted to achieve.

Rather than treating cost optimization and customer experience as competing priorities, the work focused on balancing customer outcomes, operational effectiveness, supplier accountability, and commercial sustainability.

Step 4: Building a long-term IT sourcing and vendor management strategy

Wavestone helped define a future-state delivery partner strategy, including provider roles, engagement models, governance requirements, commercial improvement opportunities, and customer experience expectations across the ecosystem.

The resulting roadmap gave the client a decision-ready path to modernize its global support provider network while pursuing near-term value and longer-term CX transformation.

The results

Transforming the support-provider ecosystem through commercial and operational alignment

The engagement enabled the client to identify more than $40M in first-year savings opportunities while strengthening the foundation for long-term customer experience transformation.

Key outcomes included:

• More than $40M in first-year savings opportunities through prioritized contractual and commercial improvements across 22 major service providers
• A future-state support partner strategy aligned to customer experience objectives with the opportunity to magnify savings versus a status quo approach
• Modernized pricing, service-level, and performance-management frameworks to better connect supplier economics with customer outcomes
• Enhanced governance and accountability mechanisms across providers and support motions
• Improved resolution quality, escalation effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and experience consistency.