The Sourcing Specialist 2 – IT Hardware
It time for the second of our Sourcing Specialist guest blog posts. Alun Morris, Sourcing Consultant at Wax Digital, outlines the nuances of sourcing common but non-core spend categories, that often get overlooked in the mêlée of driving best value from core business spend. This week: IT hardware.
The spectre of Moore’s Law, coupled with greater IT purchasing choices and the impact of trends like BYOD has revolutionised IT hardware sourcing.
What brand of system is going to deliver the right performance and the right price has little individual bearing on the sourcing team’s success. From building data centres, to co-location, to cloud, understanding the respective merits of different approaches and balancing interrelated factors such as real estate, support, maintenance and obsolescence is now critical.
Of course there are many (and growing) choices of IT supplier that can provide the full solution. Even if this approach is your final choice, being able to deconstruct the category and look at its component parts when sourcing is good practice for achieving best value.
Assessment of market forces, such as steel price changes, shortening product lifecycles and the total cost of owning IT versus virtualisation or rental are also vital. It goes without saying that sourcing must work in partnership with IT so that best value decisions are based around strategy and objectives. Consideration must be made for issues like information security, business process efficiency and staff productivity too.
Due to IT becoming an increasingly service orientated market it’s important to know exactly what you are paying for and if its matches your needs. Best value may well be achieved from a single IT solution provider providing products, installation, training and maintenance. But there can be many variants in service levels and these must be clearly identified to properly evaluate and compare options during the tender process.
Of course many organisations’ IT departments already have relationships with an array of IT resellers and vendors; these should be respected if they are strong and successful. However existing suppliers should also be invited to compete for business. eAuctions are effective here as they allow hardware requirements to be split into lots in order to source critical inventory at best price.
As we saw with IT Consumables there are many deciding factors and total cost considerations that impact what really drives best value in IT hardware. Casting a wide net initially helps you to evaluate different approaches. Then once your preferred model is chosen applying tactical sourcing skills will ensure the right balance of business value and performance.
Next time: Professional Services.
In the meantime you can find out more about sourcing IT hardware and other non-core categories in this ebook dedicated to the subject.
