Bechtle’s Solution

To enable us to get the best possible solution for Gateshead college, we utilised our relationships with some of the major vendors such as HP, Toshiba, Samsung and Lenovo to establish the best possible options, with price obviously being a major factor. After discussions with the college around what was on offer, we arranged for Toshiba to pay an on site visit, bringing with them a range of available laptops to help narrow the options down and to give the customer an idea of the look and feel of the products he was looking to buy. As this was such a large investment, any decision made had to be the right one. A couple were of interest so we arranged for evaluation units to be available to the customer for testing to aid the decision making process further. After this evaluation period, we were able to concentrate on the price. By having a special bid in place it enabled us to get to an extremely low price point. One which aligned with the budget available.

 

Due to the limited resources available, Gateshead College were happy to let Bechtle image all of the laptops before shipping them. Space constraints meant that the college were unable to accept a full delivery of 2000 laptops therefore we planned to roll out delivery of the notebooks in batches of 200 as and when they were ready for them. Bechtle was very flexible from this point of view and was able to hold stock over the period of 3 months while the project was rolled out to suit the customer’s requirements.

 

Again, the importance of Bechtle’s relationship with Toshiba was vital to ensure that we were able to get this amount of stock available in the UK within such a short time frame. Not only for the 2000 but also enough to make provisions for possible DOA’s.

 

 

The Benefits

Bechtle made what could have been a complicated project very simple and made sure that it was delivered very efficiently. This was a direct result of forward planning, experience and knowledge of the IT channel which Bechtle account managers pride themselves on. Also the strong relationships Bechtle has with key vendors enabled us to make sure we could do everything for the client within their budget.

 

The imaging we provided was free of charge to ensure that the budget was not exceeded and carry cases were also provided free of charge to save the students or the college facing the cost themselves.

 

The flexibility offered to Gateshead by Bechtle meant that the day to day functions of Gateshead College were not disrupted by a sudden influx of 2000 notebooks.

Robert Cooper, IT Services Manager at Gateshead College
Gateshead College.
“This was a fairly daunting project to take on and I had to be confident that whichever supplier we chose was capable of a complete solution. From the very start, Bechtle showed that their approach to the project had real depth and quality. We were given a good range of manufacturers and models to choose from and were able to test many of these ourselves. After the initial purchase, the after sales support we received was really exceptional with our account manager ready and able to deal with any issues that cropped up. The staged delivery and imaging of the laptops went smoothly and contributed to what was a successful project for us.”