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Letter to The Optician from Rob Hirons, Marketing Director of See20/20.
7 July 2006

I read with interest your recent article (Optician 26 May) debating where and how practices should source their PCs. My background relates to IT sales more than the optical sector and I was surprised by both the basic premise of the article and some of the views expressed. In fact I thought I had taken step back in time with such outmoded views and, in my opinion, the content at best did not represent good advice to your readers and at worst perpetuated the fear of IT that so many people unnecessarily have.

The article focuses on the PC and its initial purchase cost. This is the wrong area to debate for two reasons. Firstly, the PC is merely an access device to the wider IT infrastructure. It is one of the less critical and cheaper parts and is, in reality, a commodity item. What about the server, the network or software and their associated running costs?

Secondly, the real cost of IT hardware lies in areas beyond the purchase price. These include data storage, backup, virus and security protection, maintenance, support and, finally, disposal. This is the total cost of ownership (TCO) and the only meaningful metric to measure. It is a proven fact that the initial purchase price represents only 20% of the TCO over a typical three year ownership period. This research can be readily found in papers produced by IT analysts such as Gartner & IDC.

The article also debated branded PCs versus those made by local suppliers. Branded PCs such as Dell & HP address the TCO costs more effectively which is why they are the market leaders. Despite their purchase price being higher, the TCO is lower. Few people reading this would need an explanation of the differences in quality, ease of use and reliability between a prestige car marque and a budget brand. It is no different when buying IT equipment - you get what you pay for.

Then there was the suggestion of only buying a PC from a software provider. This is also an outmoded selling technique; the PC today runs many different applications simultaneously including:

Email
Internet and Internet applications
Back up
Virus protection
General Office programs
Line of business applications

So exactly which software supplier is the author suggesting we should buy the PCs from? The one whose software is more prone to incompatibility issues perhaps? The debate, in my opinion, should have centred on a more holistic view of the entire IT infrastructure and procurement process. IT buyers should be seeking equipment and methods of ownership that reduce the TCO cost the most. Examples include:

Outsourcing the ownership and support of complex IT systems and just paying for the service (as we all happily do with phone systems).
Renting software instead of owning it, leaving the support to the software vendors.
Using web-based applications and thereby avoiding the need to procure, own and manage powerful equipment at all.

All these are common practices within the largest UK corporations for a good reason. They reduce costs, free up cash and allow them to concentrate on their core business, in this case patient care.

Rob Hirons,
Director, See20/20

Published in Optician, July 7th 2006 on page 11 & 12.

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