Research group, IDC Australia, has launched a new service offering focused on market price benchmarking of managed services and solutions.

"With more than $2 billion of outsourcing contracts up for renewal in 2006, benchmarking is going to be a key tool in assessing approaches, prioritisation and the pricing of multiple offerings and responses,"  said Jens Butler, IDC Associate Director, Outsourcing and Benchmarking.

Through this new programme, IDC now offers the capability to measure market pricing related to the services and support side of an outsourcing contract and across the overall outsourcing contract lifecycle, from inception (RFI/Tendering) through to renegotiation and market price trending.

"In the past, a lot of client concerns with benchmarking revolved around the lack of clarity and transparency of the process. Through the unique IDC ITIL-based approach, greater understanding of how an offer is derived and the key components (internal and external) that drive the pricing are considered and how they align with client business requirements," said Mr Butler.

"Having talked to IT&T vendors and also IT Executives, it became apparent an approach that enables client-specific and customisable representation of each client's unique and specific needs, was required."