IT purchasing

							                         IT Computer Purchasing:
                         Why centralized purchasing
                            Steps in the process.


We purchase machines that we know we can support, i.e. machines with: warranties,
specifications that can have a useful life for four years, and brands that we have hardware
repair certification for and can get parts overnight.

We utilize Cornell Purchasing vendor agreements, which leverages purchasing volume.
Machines purchased through Best Buy or similar places do not come loaded with the
correct software to connect to our network, so the machines would need to be wiped and
software loaded to make them work. And the machine may or may not be a brand/model
that we can optimally support or have appropriate specifications.

Machines that we order are shipped to our office for many reasons: we deliver the
paperwork to ASC, add the hardware to our inventory records for replacement cycle and
software licensing tracking, and create a ticket in our tracking system for the machine
deployment.

The IT support provider un-boxes the machine and sets it up: configures the machine,
load software, updates the machine with the latest security patches, transfer data from
existing machines as needed, maps any network drives, adds any printer configurations,
etc.., and then schedules the machine deployment in coordination with the customer's
schedule.

Given the workload of IT support providers, a week from when the machine comes in to
actual deployment is realistically what we can deliver, unless we need to do an
emergency deploy.