In the Before Times: The New Struggle to Acquire Hardware

Looking back to December of 2019, everything seemed perfect!

I was recently engaged, work was excellent, and our clients were pleased. Altogether, it seemed we were on track to have a remarkable 2020.

However, we would soon find out that the universe was going to throw a wrench into any plans for the upcoming year in the form of COVID-19.

Our client had decided to partner with us to find the best new mobile business laptop to be the standard for their company. This news excited me. I love researching hardware and challenged myself to find the best deal possible (plus, finding something other than the current bug-ridden hardware was enticing). And soon I had unearthed a couple of promising options.

After determining which devices would fit their needs, I reached out to our hardware vendor to get a quote and passed that along to our client for review. Due to scheduling and time constraints with the upcoming holidays, we all decided it would be best to wait until sometime after the New Year.

Fast forward a few months, and life as we knew it changed for nearly everyone in the country due to COVID-19.

For our client, this meant that the staff would now be working from home. But, most of the users had no experience working from home; almost all were still using the bug-ridden devices; and with this new reality, the issues  only multiplied. While we made sure everyone could connect and work from home without issue, these devices started failing (Why now?! Ugh!). Now the race was on to find, test, and purchase the best mobile business laptop for real!

I urgently called our hardware vendors to act on my previous quote. All 3 options were sold out!  Our regular suppliers inventories had all been depleted due to countless companies now requiring their employees to work remotely and shipments for replacement stock had been delayed due to the issues in China. I’d have to start over from scratch and locate something new that would fit the needs of the client. Leaving no stone unturned, I completed my research, verified the stock with the supplier, got a quote, and sent it off for approval all by the end of the day. The order for the new test devices were placed and on the way.

Success! The new devices were a match for our client and arrived not a moment too soon. The last of our spare devices were just deployed and I was left with a shelf full of dead ones. The test machines quickly turned into active machines as we provisioned them for the users that were most in need, and a second order was placed for more.

All is well now; each user in need has now been taken care of and we’re waiting to see what other challenges this new reality it is going throw our way!

To request more information or to speak with a partner, email contact@msp-partner.com or phone +1 (404) 996-0370 (US) or +44 (0) 161 706 0559 (UK)