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Where's the business case?

By OGCbuying.solutions

I thought I would offer some advice on buying personal systems hardware – laptops and desktops.  I might be controversial here but many customers do not appear to have been grasping the savings opportunities easily available for desktop and laptop equipment.

Photograph showing the rear view of a router

When was the last time you actually competed your desktop/laptop requirement truly determined to seek the best value for money option (and not just beat down the price of your current supplier who you intend to award to anyhow)?  Are you one of those departments that have 'standardised' on a particular manufacturer and just keep going back again and again without testing the market? The evidence is compelling - those who use a true competitive process get a better deal, full stop.

I have seen a number of instance where customers just wish to tick along with the same old supplier and equipment although the business case for this approach is maybe several years old! Ask yourself, when did I last do that business case and is really still valid? If the business case is a few years old, then things have moved on quite a bit and its time to do it again.

IT hardware is incredibly reliable and build standards are extremely high amongst the manufacturers. IT kit fails much less that you might think and when it comes down to it, there is very little inside the boxes that is truly unique to a supplier so where is the business case for standardizing on a particular supplier or manufacturer and paying a premium for doing so? I hear arguments that "support costs (internal and/or external) would increase if we swapped to another supplier". Well they might but the actual increase might be easily off-set by the reduction in the purchase price. If you include your external support costs (extended warranty for example) you may actually see costs reduced. There are good examples of successful networks that have more than one suppliers kit on it as well, and in the current market it may well be wise to keep suppliers keen.

Let me give you an example using the first Catalist Great Deal promotion for IT. If all customers bought the best value offering available here instead of going back to their current supplier, I estimate that customers would have saved £15m in just 90 days! That's 750 more teachers in the classroom or 750 extra Nurses. If this is repeated throughout the year that's a possible saving equivalent to 3000 staff on desktops and laptops alone! Delight in finding genuine savings for the public purse is what I came in to procurement to do. My wife is a teacher, and a good one too, if we could afford to have more of her number in the class, the world would be a better place.

Another plug for Great Deals then. Please look earnestly at what we have done, it is done with genuine concern to save money for you. If you have any concerns, don't dismiss what we have done – give us a call to discuss. We can help with business case advice and we can help you address any concerns you may have about swapping current suppliers, manufacturer, levels of service etc. We have a team of skilled professionals here to help. The deals we have put together are, I believe, the best in the public sector. The deals offered are quality goods from quality suppliers, not some piece of tin from my potting shed.

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