Midland Heart has streamlined its IT procurement processes using the Probrand Marketplace buying platform.
Rob Cross, technical service team leader, Midland Heart, said, “Procuring IT products and services can eat up a lot of time; without preferred suppliers, we would have to go out to three different suppliers. And we needed a more efficient solution than that.”
Midland Heart looked at Probrand Marketplace which helps users save time and money by offering price comparisons on more than 300,000 products from over 2,500 brands and suppliers. All prices and stock levels are updated by-the-minute in a ‘live’ transparent environment which the Midland Heart team can access online at any time.
Probrand Marketplace gives Midland Heart access to sector and technical consultants when needed, helping Midland Heart to source items and then employing Probrand’s technical engineers to deploy them when required.
Probrand’s consultants also alert the team when market prices are at their lowest and when sector-specific discounts become available to housing providers. If Midland Heart chooses to buy at an opportune moment, it can then take advantage of Probrand’s bonded stock service which lets them put items in storage until required.
Midland Heart said that access to Probrand’s IT procurement consultants and technical expertise has been a great help, especially when it has needed to source obscure items or more complex solutions. This level of knowledge proved highly useful when Midland Heart wanted to deploy a HP Synergy infrastructure platform and modular storage array.
Cross said: “Having Probrand on hand to talk to, and being able to engage their technical team alongside that of a vendor’s engineers to ensure the specification is correct and installed properly is a significant advantage. On a day-to-day basis too, it’s great to be able to have conversations with them and trust the advice given is right.
“When it comes to researching prices and stock availability, my team now check the Probrand Marketplace daily. We regularly benchmark to ensure we’re getting the best prices and about 85 per cent of the time Probrand has the lowest.
“Probrand’s bonded stock service has been essential. This was especially helpful when we bought 85 machines and monitors for a project which was delayed; we would have had nowhere to store them if it wasn’t for Probrand. This can also be very handy if you buy ahead of time. Probrand know our buying patterns, so they will let us know when prices hit a low point. With the bonded stock arrangement, we can buy now and deploy later.”
