You’ve Done It Again!

An email arrives in your inbox from a local retailer. It’s nearing the end of the financial year and you’ve been waiting for offers like this:

SALE! NOW ON! 15% OFF ALL LAPTOPS!

“This is great!”, you think to yourself. “Now we can get those new laptops we’ve been promising the finance department for months.”

So, you race off down to the local “Black & Yellow Electrical” store with the boss’ credit card and grab three new bargain-priced laptops. Sound familiar?

Feeling like Santa Claus, you hand out the new devices to the Finance team and bask in the glow of their appreciation in having a generous and considerate purchasing officer such as yourself.

Later that afternoon, the Finance Manager calls you:

“Um, we don’t want to sound ungrateful, but we don’t seem to be able to access the network with these laptops. Can you call our IT people?”

Later…

“Hello, Integer IT? Yes, we bought some laptops and we can’t get them onto our network, and also, they seem a bit sluggish for new computers. Can you help?”

So, we take a look at the devices you bought and discover quickly that they are consumer-grade devices that are a bit underpowered for business use. They also don’t have the greatest build quality, so they’re probably not going to handle being moved around a lot. Plus, they’re running Windows 10 Home, so aren’t able to be joined to your business network to access business resources. The model is a few generations of Intel processor behind the newest available, and only comes with 12 months of warranty.

We then help you out to upgrade the laptops to Windows 10 Pro ($169 per laptop – good thing you still have the boss’ credit card), install your applications and endpoint security software, update drivers, blow away all the bloatware that hinders performance and complete all of the other required setup tasks that you wouldn’t normally even have to think about.

Then we send you an invoice for our time in getting them upgraded and prepped for use.

Out of curiosity, you dig out the quote we sent you months ago for business-grade laptops, and as you do the maths in your head, you see the savings you thought you’d made fade away.

When you purchase business-grade laptops from us, you get:

• Our years of expertise in selecting only the most suitable devices for use in YOUR organisation
• A device that has a fully customised setup of the operating system, endpoint security and applications based on our knowledge of your IT environment
• A device that is fully configured for each user, installed on the desk and ready to work
• Ongoing support – we handle any warranty claims over the warranty period (usually 12 or 36 months).

Yes, on paper, business-grade laptops purchased from us will probably “cost more”, but in the long run, you need to look at the bigger picture in terms of suitability, durability and supportability.

Believe it or not, this is a frequent occurrence for us, often even after we’ve provided explicit advice about suitable laptop specifications to be sourced in the retail space.

Don’t be enticed by the headline price, look at the overall business value.

If you’re interested in purchasing, upgrading or replacing business-grade laptops or desktops, please talk to us first!