IT service contracts might bet worth around $900 billion according to Gartner, but contracts behind them are tricky to get right-- and McKinsey & Company shows what goes wrong, and what can one do to win from such relationships.

The analyst examined around 200 live contracts from over 50 companies over the past 3 years. The research shows 60% of contracts lacked well-defined, shared business objectives, leading to an unclear definition of quality of service to both purchasers and providers, as well as limited tracking and control on business and financial targets.

In addition, 90% of contracts had commercial terms and conditions with a "heavy" focus on short-term benefits, with few incentives for joint innovation and limited evidence of such initiatives.

by Braham Shnider

We as individuals are increasingly using B2C digital sales channels over traditional consumer channels. Through advanced analytics, B2C digital sales channels know what and who we like and don’t, who we are influenced by, what we want to buy, how price sensitive we are etc.

As B2B customers, many of us also want this hyper-personalized customer experience in the B2B buying process. According to Forrester, "73% of B2B buyers prefer buying from the web, or self-service functionality from the vendor." As a consequence…

According to a document uploaded on the website of French competition regulator Autorité de la concurrence, Belgian VAR Econocom plans to acquire French infrastructure specialist Aciernet.

"In accordance with Article L 430-3 of the French Commercial Code, Econocom SE proposes to acquire sole control of Aciernet SAS in the services sector," the document reads.

Founded in 2001, Aciernet is an infrastructure specialist in networking and datacentre integration and services. It is based in the suburbs of Paris and counts the likes of Cisco, EMC, Arista, Arbor Networks, Palo Alto and Fortinet as partners.

Computacenter reports the final results for the 6-month period ending 30 June 2017-- revenues are up by 15% Y-o-Y to £1.7 billion, while pre-tax profit totals £41.9 million, a 65.6% Y-o-Y increase.

Such results reflect the impact of currency movements, as 60% of Computacenter turnover comes from Germany, France and Belgium, with 45% coming from Germany alone. On the other hand, UK supply chain and professional and managed services revenue is up by 5% Y-o-Y to £428m and $249m respectively, boosted by public sector activity and two significant 5-year contract renewals with large industrial and retail customers.