If your business is like many others, you might recognise this scenario. The operations manager shoots the financial manager a message. “We need to talk. Meet me in the meeting room in 5min?” The financial manager mentally rolls her eyes and gets ready to say no to whatever request this might be again.
Behind closed doors, the ops manager makes his case.
“Jane came to me again today about her laptop. We got her a laptop because she must often work late into the night at certain times of the month, remember. But the thing is abysmally slow. She says she needs to run three different programmes at a time to be able to do her job, but when she opens the second one the problems already start. She sometimes waits up to 20 minutes for it to respond. She has even recorded a video as proof! Today the thing stopped working completely. We sent it to the IT guy to work some magic with it, but he said it will take him a day. A day! And we have deadlines looming. Jane is sitting doing nothing now, and she is not a cheap resource, you know. Her wasted time is costing us money. We simply must get her an upgrade for that laptop.”
The financial manager sighs. This is not the first time they are having this conversation.
“What about some more RAM?” she asks.
“We’ve done that already, remember. This piece of hardware is just not good enough for what the software requires. And it is affecting the service that we are giving our clients.”
“I know, and I understand,” the financial manager says in an attempt to sound sympathetic. “But you sit in the same management meetings I do. It is that time of the year. There are no extra funds. And you know Jane isn’t the only one. It was already a thing when she got that laptop. We have staff using desktops that are way older and as slow. So if we buy her a new piece of hardware, I can think of 5 to 10 others that have as strong a case. And we are not talking about cheap machines here. We are talking R100k and up for 5 devices, are we not.” The financial manager has clearly done her research here.
“Yeah, I was getting to the price of the machine she needs still,” the ops manager mumbles. “R20k minimum.”
“And then I haven’t gotten to the monthly costs – insurance for these machines are a must, especially laptops. I am sorry, but it is simply impossible,” the financial manager says with finality. “We all knew we would have to bite the bullet on spending for a few years when we decided to expand into another country. We know it will pay for itself in the end, but for the next three years, we have to carry that cost.”
“So what do I tell Jane?” the ops manager asks dejectedly. “I can’t tell her that we don’t have money for it. The next thing we know people will think we are going under and start looking for other jobs. You know how stories grow tails and then spread.” The ops manager knows his case is a lost one, but he isn’t quite ready to leave it there yet.
“Tell her what you want to. You can always put the blame on my tight-fistedness. I guess I can handle it by now,” the financial manager says with a shrug. Does it sound familiar? Too familiar?
I know, because I have heard these stories. The thing is, your business and your people do not have to pay the price for the fact that you are putting your money towards growing your business.
This is a classic example of a business for whom renting their ICT hardware, or HaaS (hardware as a service) will be an excellent choice.
Furthermore, both the ops manager and his team will benefit from not having to worry about downtime. A proper ICT hardware rental contract includes warranty and support management with standby units in place so that Jane does not have to sit around and twiddle her fingers with deadlines looming.
Every three years, or however long the contract duration is, Jane and her colleagues who use rental devices will get an upgrade – or they can choose to keep on using the same machine if it still works for them, but then at a reduced rate.
The financial manager and her team are also spared the cost and hassle of keeping track of insurance for all these devices. For the right business, HaaS is the right choice on many levels.
Feel free to contact me if you want to find out whether HaaS is the right choice for you.
