mrbios Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 I'm curious how you all manage your purchase locations.. Do you have a preferred supplier or do you always look around for the best deal everytime you're spending a large (more than £1k say) amount of money? Also do we actually have an edugeek recommended supplier list? a list made by the members with positive and negative responses? or is that not possible because of the various board sponsors?
chris_uk Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 We have to supply three quotes for anything over £2500 so we always get three quotes. I always feel bad going to different suppliers saying, "Please can you quote for this" But we always go with the best deal possible. Joe @ CP gets Business and RM get it. Other suppliers have gotten business but it's always a fight between these two!
featured_spectre Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 depends on what i am after switches and ruckus stuff i use either Net Ctrl or CPltd PCs (used for our SEN dept) I use john at ict direct anything else, i ring around and get best price
bladedanny Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 We have to supply three quotes for anyting over £1000. I also always feel bad asking suppliers for quote and they never end up getting them. Again it usually ends up been CP that get the business.
localzuk Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 I have to provide 3 quotes for every purchase, regardless of order size, so every order is looked at individually. My list of preferred suppliers is Insight UK, CSE Ltd, Kas, and IDNS. Obviously, specialised stuff ends up being farmed out to other companies, but the above 4 manage 90% of my orders pretty well. It does amaze me how much prices fluctuate though.
laserblazer Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 I tend to use Dan at WStore. We gat a good price and delivery is free.
36Degrees Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 Any major purchases (i.e. over £1000) I have to get three formal quotes, for really major purchases (10s of thousands) then they have to be by sealed quote opened by myself and the bursar at the same time. Day to day I look on the websites of BT Business Direct, Insight & Probrand. 99 times out of 100 Probrand are cheapest at the moment and therefore get my business. When I need toners I send out formal quote requests to IDNS, Insight & Probrand. They seem to take in turns to be cheapest on those items.
Soulfish Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 Insight and WStore and our two regular suppliers, and between them to probably supply 60% of the equipment we purchase. Other main supplier is Dell direct through their education premier team. Yet to have their prices beaten by a Dell reseller or by HP/IBM/Lenovo. For most things we get quotes from at least 3 suppliers, and normally go to a few more adding in new suppliers to see how price competitive they are.
Jamman960 Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 I tend to use CPLtd for most stuff and occasionally get quotes from elsewhere to make sure we're still getting a good deal, Theres no requirement for me to get more than 1 quote but I'm still expected to get good value for money at all times.
pete Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 Officially it's 3 quotes on anything over £5k. Realistically it's 3 quotes over £500. Who I ask depends on what it is - some of our suppliers have pricing for certain kit that makes other suppliers cry, in other areas it's more closely matched. And it's best value, not cheapest. Price is important, but competent informed sales staff, reliable honest courier, good stock availability, and a willingness to go the extra mile to help us out will get you a lot of return business.
bossman Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 (edited) We have used the same supplier of our workstations for the past 7 years as they cannot be beaten on price especially as they also offer a 5 year onsite warranty within this price. (excellent aftersales service) Promethean installed 95% of our IWBs of which 50% are 6 years old (They are just so reliable). Printers and toners supplied by XMA as we have all HP and they have been superb, oldest printer 8 years old (HP4600n 250,000 prints only changed 1 transfer and fuser kit). Projectors we have used various suppliers latest being CPLTD (Cracking job by them). All latest Servers have been supplied by our workstation supplier (Millenium Business Systems) Excellent price too. San1 Supplied by our server software supplier (RM) excellent price for 6Tb user storage + D2D2T solution with DiskBox storage. San2 Sun 7110 supplied by the cutter project (Another excellent job by them just wished I could have afforded 2). All other peripherals sought not always at cheapest price but reliabilty and after sales service. As Pete above stated: good after sales service and going that extra mile means we will stay loyal to that company. Sorry if I missed anything out Edited January 12, 2011 by bossman 1
bladedanny Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 ...And it's best value, not cheapest. Price is important, but competent informed sales staff, reliable honest courier, good stock availability, and a willingness to go the extra mile to help us out will get you a lot of return business. I agree with this. If somethings slightly more but comes with good support/delivery then that's the one we go for.
mrbios Posted January 12, 2011 Author Posted January 12, 2011 I've just done a comparison of 6 of the same products from 8 different computer component suppliers, exact same motherboard, processor, hard drive from each and adding each ones value psu around 500w, value 22" monitor and the cheapest supplied single 2GB stick from each suppliers stock. Between: novatech, overclockers uk, scan.co.uk, ebuyer, misco, insight, ash distribution, ccl computrs and ariapc I found that: overclockers were able to provide the best price of motherboard, processor and hard disk Ebuyer were able to provide the best price of monitor scan were able to provide the best price of power supply ariapc were able to provide the best price of memory Our preffered (certainly NOT my preffered, but the schools preffered) supplier isn't any of the above, if we were to do a replacement of 100 motherboards + processors, 31 hard disks and 31 monitors we would save £2500 by using the above cheapest suppliers to do our purchases Sadly for some BIZZARE reason i have to persuade people to do this due to loyalties. To all of you wouldn't a saving of £2.5k be a no brainer?
Soulfish Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 I've just done a comparison of 6 of the same products from 8 different computer component suppliers, exact same motherboard, processor, hard drive from each and adding each ones value psu around 500w, value 22" monitor and the cheapest supplied single 2GB stick from each suppliers stock. Between: novatech, overclockers uk, scan.co.uk, ebuyer, misco, insight, ash distribution, ccl computrs and ariapc I found that: overclockers were able to provide the best price of motherboard, processor and hard disk Ebuyer were able to provide the best price of monitor scan were able to provide the best price of power supply ariapc were able to provide the best price of memory Our preffered (certainly NOT my preffered, but the schools preffered) supplier isn't any of the above, if we were to do a replacement of 100 motherboards + processors, 31 hard disks and 31 monitors we would save £2500 by using the above cheapest suppliers to do our purchases Sadly for some BIZZARE reason i have to persuade people to do this due to loyalties. To all of you wouldn't a saving of £2.5k be a no brainer? One thing I've found is that unless you have an account manager at many of the business suppliers (Insight, Misco etc) the prices you see on the website are pretty bad. For instance I know that insight have almost always been cheaper than ebuyer/overclockers for us, and if their not they'll almost certainly price match.
localzuk Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 One thing I've found is that unless you have an account manager at many of the business suppliers (Insight, Misco etc) the prices you see on the website are pretty bad. For instance I know that insight have almost always been cheaper than ebuyer/overclockers for us, and if their not they'll almost certainly price match. Indeed, that's my experience too. Insight have an 'education' set of prices, so you need an account manager who will set you up with an account on their site, which shows the education price instead of the usual list price.
mrbios Posted January 12, 2011 Author Posted January 12, 2011 One thing I've found is that unless you have an account manager at many of the business suppliers (Insight, Misco etc) the prices you see on the website are pretty bad. For instance I know that insight have almost always been cheaper than ebuyer/overclockers for us, and if their not they'll almost certainly price match. We have accounts with both insight and misco, the prices i got from overclockers were for the best cost they would do them rather than website costs, i'm getting a quote from novatech for their best prices and i'll do the same for misco and insight. At the moment though they are all website prices. Eventually i want to see if all 8 companies will do their best prices for us and i'll give you an update on what works out cheapest then.
Cache Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 The odd computer we stick to the same company, monitors I'll shop arround 2/3 usual suppliers and pick the best one. Toners I had a big push back in April and got a supplier to commit to atlest a year of supplying toners at the price we agreed or better if I could find them cheaper elsewhere which has worked out very well so far (still go arround two other companies occaisionally just to make sure the prices are still competitive). All other items depending on what it is I tend to go for the best price out of two other usual suppliers (which I feel bad about, but has saved me a hell of a lot of money this year!)
elsiegee40 Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 I shop around, but if it's a close tie then I have one or two favourites that will win
oxide54 Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 large orders I shop around, little items by default tend to go to insight or another supplier we use. even large orders tend to go to insight as they do generally come up with the best price. insight are really good to us, really easy to order, click order on the website and its done. free next day delivery on everything. they are also really helpfull if you are buying something like a HP server or something, and will find out the correct memory/ extra cpu / nics/etc to buy to spec it how you want, its not like we're not capable of doing that ourselves but it does save you some time, they actually did this for us and then someone else actually came through with a better price on that particular order, they couldn't beat it but where quite happy to spec it and then someone else supply us, probably based on the amount of business we generally put through them, and the eductional pricing on the website is quite good and useful you can see it with out having to actually ring them, but they still will come down further a bit if you are buying weight,
featured_spectre Posted January 12, 2011 Posted January 12, 2011 As I missed this off my original statement, large orders I will shop around, and usually look at after care and delivery as key points. I will ask for references from some companies, and I am happy to be a reference for some companies. I want to know about who I am dealing with rather than just getting a good price. I have on a few occassions gone with companies I have never heard from before because the references were fantastic and the price was very competitive. Though they cant always get the best price for everything, good to use them.
maniac Posted January 13, 2011 Posted January 13, 2011 Depends what it is I'm shopping for. Getting cabling installed, we have a local company as an appointed contractor who gives us a fair rate. PC's I generally buy from Stone, but have varied a couple of times when there's been particularly good deals from other suppliers. Toners we use our local branch of cartridge world, they drop them off the next day in their van. Other items, I usually send out a request to 2 or 3 different companies and see what they come back with as the prices of different items can vary a lot, I will then pick one and negotiate on that. Sometimes if we need something quickly thou, we'll just nip out and buy it with petty cash Mike.
mrbios Posted January 13, 2011 Author Posted January 13, 2011 Purely out of curiousity... If you lot were asked to create a spec, price the main concern, what spec would you make them? (think of it as if you were building the PCs yourself, not prebuilt) what processor, motherboard, ram and hdds would you go for? I've pretty much decided what we're going to spec ours to but i'm very curious as to what others would choose?
featured_spectre Posted January 13, 2011 Posted January 13, 2011 That depends entirely on the budget that I was given...
cpjitservices Posted January 13, 2011 Posted January 13, 2011 HP - Servers Nortel - Switches Stone - PC's - Just got a load of USFF PC's with I3's I think - Imaging as we speak to XP. Samsung - Laptops Cisco - Routers\Switches
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