How IT buying can drive mid-market business growth
A smart hardware purchasing strategy can turn procurement from a backend process to a frontend revenue driver.
By WP BrandStudio
There’s a vast variety of devices used in the modern workplace. For the IT leaders overseeing such ecosystems, deciding what forms of software and hardware—and software-defined hardware—to invest in next can get complicated fast.
A successful procurement process focuses on longevity, compatibility and ease of updating and expansion. But it can be challenging to address those factors while keeping costs low and delivering value for the business.
So what strategies should be employed to get it right? And, given the central role IT plays in any enterprise today, what other impacts will smart—or poor—decisions have on a business’s opportunities for growth?
Eyes on the horizon
When buying enterprise hardware, it’s vital to think in the long-term and adopt technology that aligns with future business goals, rather than only looking at what suits business operations today. That’s especially true with mobile technology used by dispersed business teams.
Shopping with flexibility in mind is essential to future-proofing IT, according to Andrew Hewitt, a Forrester analyst serving infrastructure and operations professionals.
“Making a strong decision to lean toward one device, operating system, or form factor can have lots of ramifications down the road when you want to embrace new opportunities,” he says.
Hewitt says this happens quite frequently with mobile technology as companies invest heavily in a solution that actually limits their ability to adopt new types of apps or services down the road. He has also seen this with certain types of form factors, such as using a very specific purpose-built tablet that eventually becomes incompatible with its charge mechanism or isn’t able to leverage newer technologies like sensors, scanners or facial ID.
“Evaluating the flexibility of a particular technology is important if you want to continue driving business results,” he says.
The direct correlation between IT procurement and its impact on business performance is something that Brian Linden, IT director at Melanson Heath, a mid-size accounting and tax firm with around 125 employees, has experienced directly over the past six years. Linden says insights at the IT infrastructure level are used to inform the strategic possibilities available to the overall business.
“In the public accounting arena, mergers and acquisitions are a big part of our lives,” he says. “In any given year, my firm will acquire other, smaller firms. It’s a big unknown, not a predictable number. I could be told tomorrow that we’re acquiring a firm that’s 25 percent our size, so I need to know that I’ve got the flexibility to quickly turn around an acquisition and absorb that data.”
Better support, faster growth
Support and deployment is a critical but often overlooked aspect of hardware purchasing. As part of the procurement process, businesses should consider the time and cost implications of self-management versus IT partner support services. Getting hardware quickly into the hands of the people who need it most, while ensuring they have the resources and knowledge to feel empowered by their new devices, can give a medium-sized business a major advantage—even over larger firms.
Specialized services, like Dell’s ProDeploy Plus, can lead the deployment process from planning to hardware installation to configuration and complex onsite integrations. This can help save time and cut down on costs while letting medium-sized companies benefit from fast, flexible capabilities.
When employees and devices are on the move, it can be challenging to provide critical maintenance and support. Dedicated care programs, like Dell’s ProSupport Plus, deliver automated, proactive and predictive troubleshooting measures to stay ahead of problems in any environment. This allows medium-sized companies to adopt new technology with confidence.
IT steers the C-Suite
Beyond cutting costs and coping with growing business demands, Linden’s approach to IT purchasing continually informs planning at the executive level at Melanson Heath. This paves the way for what’s possible, both practically and strategically.
“Everything that our professional staff does is computer-based,” Linden explains. “IT is the core of our business, the foundation. The partners look to me to provide them with the tools and the future vision when they’re making their decisions on what areas to go in, how to staff and what clients to take on based on geographic location. What the technology allows them to do drives their future decisions.”
Hewitt agrees that smart IT procurement needs to extend beyond the back office of business operations to be seen as a formative driver of new growth opportunities. Some intelligent IT decisions can even enhance workplace culture.
“Smart purchasing is improving employee experience overall,” Hewitt says. “We’re seeing, for instance, IT using more automation when setting up PC deployments. These are billed as an IT purchasing arena, but they actually improve the employee experience, too, by simplifying their onboarding and getting them up and running faster.”
A smart procurement strategy can also improve the overall customer experience, especially as IT departments transition from being cost-control centers to fundamental pillars of their organizations.
“Devices and apps, for example, aren’t just to improve employee productivity,” Hewitt adds. “We’re also seeing some devices, like tablets, deployed in kiosk scenarios to drive a better CX, enabling things like ordering and checking in of bags.”
All too often, IT procurement is seen as merely a back-office function, when it should be viewed as a source of innovation that’s able to lead the corporate agenda and inspire business growth.
In 2019, a well-designed procurement function needs to be future-focused, drive more efficient ways of working in the present and deliver long-term commercial benefits that go far beyond the typical day-to-day concerns of IT. Does your hardware buying plan fit the bill?
Dell EMC is ready to help empower your mid-market business with a smarter, more effective hardware procurement plan.