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Seize the coming growth opportunities with IBM Global Financing

Brighter skies ahead

The pandemic has left the world a very different place, but economic recovery is on the horizon. To seize the coming opportunities for growth, all organisations need greater flexibility and agility. Finance professionals can take the lead by investing in many ways including hybrid cloud and AI capabilities that deliver data to the point of need, while allowing capacity and costs to be flexed up or down as requirements change. By enabling rapid, flexible access to the full range of IBM solutions and services, including Red Hat^® technology, IBM Global Financing can help you accelerate this digital transformation, boost ROI, and increase agility.

Invest to win

Cutting costs and preserving cash are always critical in times of crisis.[i] But finance leaders also need the flexibility to make strategic investments in digital transformation, especially given that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital disruption by anywhere between five and ten years.

An IBM Institute for Business Value study found that technology adoption has become an important performance differentiator during the COVID-19 disruption, with tech-savvy organisations outperforming their peers by 6 percentage points in revenue growth on average across 12 out of the 18 industries analysed.[ii]

Ingredients for future success

Even before the pandemic, organisations were under pressure from disruptive market entrants and evolving customer expectations. Today, there is an even greater need for real-time understanding and response to external changes, and the ability to transform data into insight will be key.

Flexibility in acquiring new digital capabilities such as process automation and AI, as well as their underlying infrastructure, will be vital for future growth, and of course new investments must be protected with robust security.

For example, a large consumer products company recently benefited from IBM Global Financing’s flexible payment plans when they invested in a hybrid cloud solution from IBM, enabling them to meet their working capital objectives and optimise their cash flow.

Get in the driving seat

The good news for finance and technology leaders is that the coming growth will depend heavily on transforming data into insight, giving you a great opportunity to drive change. You certainly won’t be alone in investing in new capabilities. By 2022, 65% of CIOs will digitally empower and enable front-line workers with data, AI, and security to extend their productivity, adaptability, and decision-making in the face of rapid changes.[iii]

Flavio Sciutti, IBM UKI CFO, says: “Finance professionals should think about how to contribute more business value. New technology, data analytics and AI help provide new insights into cost- and value-drivers, helping to drive strategic transformation within a more flexible commercial framework.”

During the pandemic, a major telecommunications company accelerated their adoption of cloud by using IBM Global Financing to finance their complete IBM solution, including Red Hat technology, facilitating faster administration, procurement and time to market.

Planting the seeds of growth

Of course, digital transformation and the data-driven business naturally depend on fast, easy access to trustworthy data. Among the CFOs working for the top-performing companies:

• nearly 60% already draw on data to create new business models.
• more than 50% use data to support product innovation or enter new markets.
• 30% have already invested in AI.[iv]

IDC predicts that by 2023, digital transformation spending will grow from 36% to over 50% of all IT investments, with the largest growth coming in data intelligence and analytics.[v]

And in the UK, the shift to digital is set to continue well beyond the pandemic, with 61% of UK CFOs expecting business investment in new technology to increase in the longer term.[vi]

Why IBM Global Financing?

For digital transformation, rapid access to financing is vital, especially during the initial investment phase. Flavio Sciutti says: “As CFOs, the economic conditions put us under pressure to deliver accelerated ROI particularly within ever tighter budget constraints. With flexible financing, a digital transformation project can produce financial benefits even before you start repayments.”

A leading retailer used IBM Global Financing’s cost effective and affordable payment solutions to gain funding flexibility for their Cloud Pak investment, reducing budget obstacles and improving the alignment of cost and benefit by spreading payments over the product lifecycle.

IBM Global Financing can help empower you to afford more, and pivot harder and faster to digital.

With a 40-year track record, we offer flexible payment solutions, helping to accelerate digital transformation, reduce total cost of ownership leveraging residual values and technology refresh, improve ROI, and align infrastructure investments with business needs. We support not only direct clients but also a thriving ecosystem of channel partners to spread the benefits of technology investments.

As you move to hybrid cloud, you need to get full value from your existing technology before retiring it. IBM Global Financing offers a long-term engagement throughout the IT asset lifecycle—buying back your old equipment to reduce your financial risk, helping you plan your cloud migration and overcome legacy IT constraints to enable you to move to new technologies , and ensuring that as little as possible goes to waste.[vii] Of all IT equipment returned to IBM in 2019, 99% was recycled for material or resale.[viii]

As well as delivering 2.5 times the value of a traditional cloud approach[ix], hybrid cloud brings the agility you need to succeed in the new economy, and protecting your digital assets becomes even more important. Using IBM Global Financing can help with the internal business case and funding for IT security projects, enabling IBM to deliver world-class IT security. IBM has been named as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Security Analytics Platforms, Q4 2020. Customer references appreciate IBM’s global reach, technical support, and innovation.

Uniquely positioned

Unlike other captive finance providers, IBM Global Financing is uniquely able to finance both tangible and intangible assets. Technology infrastructure is one piece of the overall picture –  spreading project payments over time can be an attractive way to pay for your IBM Services digital transformation and cloud services and AI projects.

IBM Global Financing makes it affordable to invest in the complete range of IBM solutions, including ready-built industry-specific cloud platforms, enabling you to benefit from IBM’s more than 100 years of leadership and expertise in R&D, technology and data.[x] And we continue to push the boundaries in emerging technologies such as quantum computing. IBM maintains its dominant position in quantum computing while working on broadening skills development integral to commercialization – TBR Research June 2020.

Speak to a finance professional at IBM Global Financing today. Explore what investments you want to make, what’s holding you back, and how we can help you build the business case to invest now and accelerate ROI, to take full advantage of the new opportunities out there.

[i] Source: https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/finance/articles/deloitte-cfo-survey.html

[ii] Source: https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/report/digital-acceleration

[iii] Source: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide CIO Agenda 2021 Predictions, (IDC #US46010920), Oct 2020

[iv] Source: https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/c-suite-study/cfo

[v] Source: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/YNOQ3R9P

[vi] Source: https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/finance/articles/deloitte-cfo-survey.html

[vii]Source: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/environment/annual/IBMEnvReport_2019.pdf

[viii] Source: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/R5GN6GZK

[ix] Source: https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/report/hybrid-cloud-platform

[x] Source: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/uk-en/ibm-cloud-for-financial-services/