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Technology & the Community College
The Right Spend
2/1/2008
3) Standardize
Another good way to get the most out of every dollar is to standardize on one technology across the school. This approach enables schools to buy hardware (and certain software licenses) in bulk, which usually creates an economy of scale and lowers per-unit pricing across the board. It also cuts down on administrative expenditures, since buying one type of equipment simplifies every step of the purchase from product research to data entry, implementation, and maintenance.
Such is the strategy at Cape Cod Community College (MA). There, technology officials refresh one-fifth of their 1,000 computers once every five years (each year, a five-year refresh comes up for one-fifth of the machines), and they purchase all of their computers from Dell to receive a discount. According to Dan Gallagher, executive director of IT, this discount is fairly significant: Normally, the price per desktop would be upwards of $1,300 apiece, but by buying in bulk, the school pays $1,000 per machine-numbers that really add up as the 200 computers refreshed at each go-round generate a $60,000 savings. Over time, the savings on the machines can ring in at over a quarter of a million dollars.
Gallagher says the standardization effort has impacted the school's bottom line in other areas, too. For starters, because the school has so many of the same machines and a strong relationship with Dell, it has created enhanced bargaining power with other vendors-an advantage that is hard to quantify. Cape Cod also has saved big bucks on support and training: Because Gallagher and other IT directors haven't had to train staff on multiple systems, support costs have dropped exponentially.
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