Hardware Benchmarking Report
The benchmarking figures below provide savings statistics relating to Catalist framework sales for the first half of the current financial year – between April and September 2006.
Client Devices – such as PCs and Laptops
A 7.5% or £1.6 million saving has been made on the Catalist Client Devices category in comparison with the market. A great deal of customer spend is going through this contract.
Note: It is not necessary to purchase equipment of the same brand (whether purchased direct or via a reseller), unless it is financially beneficial to do so. This is a highly competitive marketplace and in many cases a better deal can be achieved by purchasing something different.
While it could be argued that this may mean having support contracts with different suppliers, ultimately, IT equipment rarely goes wrong and also gets replaced regularly. As long as the operating system being used is the same on all computers, the brand of the equipment itself is not as important. Is it a certainty that the supplier your organisation has used for the last three years is still offering the best overall value for money? Why not test the market?
Printers
An impressive 15.6% or £2.3 million saving has been made on Catalist printer sales via the Peripherals category in comparison with the market. Customers are purchasing a large number of printers through the framework and are buying them wisely, often competing the requirement. Perhaps this approach can be applied to purchasing PCs and laptops?
Note: Consider having fewer, larger printers around the office rather than several smaller ones. This will generally save on maintenance, as well as energy costs.
Consumables
A 12% or £174,000 deficit is the result on Catalist consumables sales in comparison with the market. We recognised some time ago that this was a problem area. To rectify this we now have a specialist 'consumables and accessories' category.
Note: Over 90% of consumable sales have traditionally gone through reseller suppliers (i.e., those on the old GCat VAR contract). Now that the IT Consumables and Accessories category is in place under Catalist, why not check out the prices offered by the specialist contractors in this category? Substantial savings can be made here.
Servers
A 13% or £500,000 saving has been made on Catalist server sales via the Reseller/Network Infrastructures categories, in comparison with the market.
Note: Once more, customers are spending wisely. Don't forget to check out the products being offered by the manufacturers as well as the resellers to ensure that the best possible deal is secured. Again, competition and focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the key to obtaining the best deal here. Don't forget to include power consumption/cost of cooling in the TCO assessment.
Please email us at itfwezine@ogcbs.gsi.gov.uk if you have any feedback regarding this article.
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