I've been responsible for IT equipment purchases for the two universitities in our town for 25 years now, both Dell sites. At the first, we purchased exclusively Dell before Premier was even born, so I've been thru alot with Dell and Premier. Here are my current concerns:
1 - Placing orders online from equotes - right now, I have to purchase each equote individually and follow the entire checkout process for each - even if they are all on the same Purchase Order. I'd like to be able to purchase several equotes on one order and enter the quantity for each equote, then check out ONE TIME. I generally create new equotes (qty=1) each month for my standard desktop, std laptop, power user desktop & power user laptop - then, as need arrises I use those equotes until they expire. Imagine I need machines from each category (equote) and then I need to add printers or other perpherials. . . begin to get the idea about how many times I have to use the REALLY SLOW SYSTEM & CHECKOUT process? Come on Dell, help us out here.
2 - Placing orders online from quotes (not equotes) - on large quantity or specialty items, my rep creates quotes for me. I'd like these to also show up in my equote bin - after all, he's creating them under my customer number, right? I want to place my own orders (did I really say that after complaining about the painful process?) because I want to code the descriptions and PO numbers to my specifications.
3 - Content - Tech specs - In years past, when configuring machines from Premier, I could always click on the picture of the item and it would take me to a full tech specs page which I used often to educate myself about the difference in machine lines. That no longer seems to be the norm and dang if I can find full tech specs anywhere. My sales rep response time has been inadequate in the past - about 50% of the time it takes 12+ hours and once he failed to respond at all on a $50k server project until I emailed his boss. Response issues seem to be improving, but even when I get him on the phone/email, he doesn't always know the answers to tech specific questions and has to investigate before responding. Tech specs on the site would resolve much of this.
4 - Surprise line changes w/o notice - At my previous university, I had a different sales team. Part of the NORMAL way of doing business with that sales team was they kept me informed in advance about expected changes in machine lines (systems that were scheduled to be discontinued, new product lines, etc.). This information was then factored into our tech refresh plans. For instance, in January 2009 Dell phased out the Latitude D series and replaced it with the E series. The D series had great tech reviews, the E series reviews are dismal for a Dell (barely 3.25 stars out of 5 on Dell's own website, and if you read the reviews they are skewed upwards by non-techies who only made one purchase when the techies who make multiple purchases for their organization give it closer to 2 stars). Had I known the D series was going to be phased out in October, I would have purchased D830s for future use to give Dell time to work out the bugs on the E series but didn't have the chance. Also I had a stock pile of D-docks awaiting new D series machines to be ordered as needed but then I couldn't get the d series notebooks. Surprises like this are not condusive to good partnership relationships. I'd like advance notices from this university's sales team as well.
reginaknight30.0
|