Consulting and sourcing services for technology equipment

Why go through an independent intermediary

In several of the families we cover, manufacturers do not sell direct. Access runs through a distribution network, and the terms obtained depend on how the request is framed, on aggregated volume and on the relationship with the distributor. A buyer who consults once a year does not obtain the same terms as an intermediary who consults every week.

The other half of the work is technical rather than commercial. Catalogues compare datasheets; they do not compare operating costs. The price of a printer says nothing about the cost of its printheads over three years, the price of a firewall says nothing about subscription renewal, and the price of an access point says nothing about its annual licence. That gap is what we cost.

Finally, independence has a concrete consequence: when the right answer is the cheapest one, or when it is to buy nothing and reconfigure what is already there, we are free to say so.

Our four services

IT and logistics purchasing advice

Analysis of the real requirement, translation into specifications a supplier can act on, new versus refurbished arbitration, and budget optimisation across the intended service life.

Product sourcing

Supplier search and selection, parallel consultation of several channels, verification of genuine availability and negotiation of terms. Printers, scanners, POS, mobile computers, network, RFID and IT hardware.

Procurement and delivery

Coordination of orders with distributors, tracking of lead times and shipments, and checking equipment conformity with the applicable European standards.

Estate support

Batch standardisation, renewal planning, anticipation of end-of-support and compatibility breaks, and building spare part stock for wear items.

Our method, in five steps

The first step is framing, not quoting. We look for the real constraints: physical environment, volumes, systems in place, current maintenance contracts, renewal horizon. This is the step catalogues skip, and it determines everything that follows.

The second is translation into specifications. A requirement expressed in operational language becomes a document a distributor can price without interpretation: standards required, threshold values, compatibilities to respect, what is negotiable and what is not.

The third is consultation. We question several channels in parallel, in French, Spanish and English, putting the same questions to each, including the awkward ones: written commitment to the stated figures, spare part availability at three years, licence and consumable costs.

The fourth is comparison. We hand back two or three costed configurations with what separates them, including what argues against our own recommendation. The three-year cost sits next to the purchase price.

The fifth is supply follow-up through to delivery, with the necessary documentation and immediate notification of any change in lead time.

Three typical situations

These three situations describe the requests we receive most often and the method we apply to them. They are illustrative scenarios showing how we work — they are not client references.

Situation 1 — A Windows CE handheld fleet that has to keep running

An operation still runs on Casio handhelds under Windows CE. The operating system has been unsupported for a decade, the models are no longer manufactured, and the line-of-business application running on them has no budgeted modern equivalent. The question is not what to buy, but how to hold on for another three years. We look for identical hardware on the professional second-hand and surplus market, build a stock of spares and batteries while any still exist, and cost a migration in parallel so the decision is taken with both figures in view. See RFID, barcode and mobility.

Situation 2 — A printer range discontinued by the manufacturer

A site prints several thousand labels a day on a range that is no longer produced. The announced compatible successor in fact needs a far harder driver to configure, and existing templates break. Here the subject is not the price of the machine: it is template rework, print language coexistence in a mixed fleet, and printhead availability. We favour models able to auto-detect the incoming language, and we cost the rework time before purchase. See printing, scanning and POS.

Situation 3 — A tight budget, refurbished hardware, but without taking a risk

A fleet renewal has to happen on a constrained budget. Refurbished halves the invoice, but the objection is always the same: what happens when it fails? We frame the batch on homogeneous hardware, with the guarantees set out in our terms and conditions of sale for business purchases and, where available, the manufacturer's commercial warranty, and place refurbished where it belongs — secondary workstations, development, test, disaster recovery — keeping new hardware on the critical core. The saving observed on this kind of trade-off is in the order of 50% on the item concerned. See refurbished IT equipment.

What we do not do

We do not carry out physical installation or day-to-day operation of your infrastructure. We do not develop software and we do not integrate WMS or ERP systems.

We do not recommend refurbished hardware for critical environments under strict manufacturer SLAs, and we never advise buying a second-hand UPS. Both positions are explained on the relevant pages.

Frequently asked questions