About a month ago, the State formalized a series of contracts for purchasing computer accessories and peripherals. These contracts effectively state that such purchases must be made through one of four approved vendors. Amusingly I didn't hear about this through official channels, but instead heard of it as it was complained about on a technical mailing list.
A call to the purchasing department of the university clarified a few things for me. As far as the university is concerned, there are many exceptions to the contract (Yes, I have this in writing. My reading of the contracts says there are no exceptions.). If I get price quotes from the four vendors and am able to find what I am purchasing cheaper at another store, I can put those quotes into my purchasing records and buy from the cheaper source. If I need an item now I can go ahead and purchase from any vendor that can meet my immediate need. If none of the vendors could provide the items I wanted, I could order from elsewhere (assuming of course I documented all this in case the department is audited).
So with an immediate need for a replacement battery for a UPS I head to the uber-secret-special webstores for the vendors. The first joy is getting an account on the vendors normal stores and than getting the account marked so that I see I could see the special state pricing. That process was in theory simple (more on that later). Create an account and send them an email to get special pricing applied to the account. With my accounts supposedly setup, I go perusing the stores for prices.
Looking for both the battery I need now and my planned purchases for the next few months , I find that all in the all the prices are bad. Actually what I find first is that the webstores all suck. When logged with my special account most of what I am looking for isn't available. Logging out and using the public versions of the webstores is what reveals almost all of the products I seek and the bad prices mentioned earlier. Perhaps bad is a little harsh. The prices are quite similar to CDW, who never has the best prices, but rarely has the worst (and as a result I almost never order from them).
Amusing Tangent: Finished with being frustrated with a god awful webstore while attempting to make a purchase, I call up the salesrep for assistance. After a couple of rings the other end is answered by a plesant sounding gentleman on what is unquestionably a cellphone. Asking me how he can help me, I explain what I am looking to purchase. He apologies and says it is going to take a moment for him to find a spot to pull over and look up the prices I am after. While finding that place he is chatting about where I work and such. When he hears where I work, he explains he is in town at the moment. He goes on to say that he is currently driving down State Street -- pointing out that he likely shouldn't be driving there as it is a restricted access street gets a pause and then "Oh, I was wondering why there were no cars on the street."
Calling the salesmen from each of the vendors I am able to reasonably promptly get quotes for the various things I am looking for prices for (apparently setting up my accounts to view the State's pricing is much more difficult than it should be as many others at the university are having the same problem). In nearly every case the various vendors do indeed have the best price (often the price is the same as what I can get elsewhere, but the free shipping gives the contract vendors the win). I guess I will end up doing what I do for Dell and after figuring out what I want, I will call the sales rep for the actual price.
The State made up these contracts in an effort to save money. The general belief being if the State promises to give a select group of vendors all of their business, the vendors will provide better discounts. This appears to be true. While there are cheaper places online for nearly everything that I priced, for various reasons I would be unwilling to purchase from those places.
So all in all these new requirements aren't overly onerous, but they are a bit of a pain. The obvious is that they can create more paperwork for some orders. A much greater concern for many is that we will have to forge new relationships and trust with salespeople and that we will be doing our productresearch and pricing elsewhere since the webstores for the four vendors suck in ways that haven't been common on webstores since the turn of the century.
I like the concept of self updating programs. In practice however
they are usually implemented poorly (ala Acrobat Reader) and/or co-opted
by marketing for nefarious purposes.
While checking for updates for our installation of Corel WordPerfect
Office Suite 12 I found that some manager in the marketing division of
WordPerfect thought they were being clever when they decided to use the
update system to send out what amounts to an advertisement.
For an update system to be effective and trusted by users it can not be
co-opted by marketing in an attempt to make money. Whatever manager that
approved this "update" message should be fired.
