ABOUT US
Smart Cost Consulting offers the comprehensive capabilities and deep industry knowledge necessary to help you solve the most complex issues of your organization.
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OUR LEADERSHIP
LUBOMIR BUBEN
Lubomir Buben is Director of ITAM services at Smart Cost Consulting and has 9 years of experience designing and implementing effective IT Asset Management (ITAM) and Software Asset Management (SAM), while working in IT industry for more than 15 years. Lubomir offers extensive experience and knowledge of establishing and growing IT asset management in a global environment as well as helping companies to reduce IT costs by implementing SAM best practices.
Prior to founding Smart Cost Consulting, Lubomir worked as a Group IT Asset Manager in Home Credit Group (finance) and established ITAM department to maintain over 1 million of IT assets and optimize software costs across 12 countries for more than 170.000 employees. Later, for Telenor CEE (telecommunications), he designed SAM policy and processes to centralize license management and striving for license compliance across 5 markets. Lubomir led a project to evaluate, select and implement SAM tool. His latest engagement for Curium Pharma (pharmaceutical company) was to develop a Global ITAM Program – governance, roles, responsibilities and tools – to consolidate control around software and hardware assets across 30 legal entities in US and EU and to optimize software costs.
Lubomir has Master’s degree in Czech Technical University in Prague and studied Communication and Management for Engineers in Karel de Grote-Hogeschool in Antwerp, Belgium for one year.
JIRI KOSTELECKY
Jiri Kostelecky is a founder and the executive partner in Smart Cost Consulting leading legal advisory services. Jiri has over 10 years of experience in leading law firms and in a financial institution and provides legal advisory based on a profound experience with contract negotiations and deal structuring lead by goals of cost, compliance and administration effectiveness.
Jiri has a vast experience in ICT legal advisory built during his career in leading law firms Linklaters and Glatzova & Co. in Prague and eight years as a senior lawyer of Home Credit Group, where he is in charge of software licensing and IT services provisioning negotiations with external vendors. Jiri has lead a negotiations with global ICT providers and industry leaders such as Oracle, SAP, IBM, VMware and many others and has had a leading part in setting of a contractual network within the Home Credit Group enabling distribution of the software licenses and reallocation of costs.
Jiri has studied at Department of Law at Aarhus University in Denmark, graduated at a Faculty of Law of Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic and achieved his second master degree in law at University of Bristol, UK.
OUR TEAM
ZUZANA SOUKUPOVA
Zuzana Soukupova is a Software Asset Management (SAM) Specialist at Smart Cost Consulting with 12 years experience on a field of IT property management. Her career started in DAQUAS company, gold partner of Microsoft in Licensing and SAM, focused on small and medium business. With 7 years of experience in license management and license architecture, she joined Global IT Asset Management (ITAM) team in Home Credit International and extended the portfolio to all major software vendors and significantly bigger company environment. In the following 5 years, Zuzana gained unique experience in undestanding internal IT processes, management of IT possession and also facing external SW audits.
Zuzana is an active user of Power BI tool and by cooperation with IT training centers she helps companies to manage their data efficiently with instant and understandable outcomes. She uses this knowledge also on SAM field to optimize and automize the workload around IT property management.
Zuzana has Master's degree of Physics at Komensky University in Bratislava, what enhanced her with great analytic mind and ability to look for optimal solutions quickly and effectively. She is also certified with ITIL v4, Microsoft license management certifications and SAM ceritfications.
RADEK URBAN
Radek spent the first 10 years of his career in commercial law, out of which 2 years worked as a corporate lawyer for ANECT, focused on copyright and licensing law. Subsequently, he decided to switch sides of the negotiating table and try a career in procurement instead of a supply chain position.
At Home Credit International, where he worked for almost 10 years, he had opportunity to participate in negotiating both local and global software contracts (Oracle, VMware, Microsoft and many others). As Global Category Manager, Radek was responsible for tendering and negotiating terms of supply and support of HW, public cloud infrastructure, application software, visualization and risk tools and other related areas.
In 2022, Radek decided to change its location and help another local company in its global expansion and optimization of resources and costs, and after intensive negotiations joined forces with Czech e-shop Alza.CZ. At Alza, he is part of a small indirect procurement team, responsible for purchasing for the needs of the Alza group (CEE region) where he focuses primarily on IT purchasing.
Since life in e-commerce is not only about IT, during his time Radek has been negotiating the terms of Unified Support and SCE with Microsoft, selecting a supplier of video conferencing and many other IT projects, in addition to selecting suppliers of Workwear and protective equipment, Handling equipment, Diesel generators or Attendance system.