Birmingham firm in school savings challenge
Mar 17 2009 by Jon Griffin, Birmingham Post
A Birmingham firm has thrown out a challenge to schools to save on their budgets by innovative new approaches to IT spending.
The plea comes as IT expenditure in schools is forecast to hit £1.05 billion in 2009 as the Government’s £45 billion Building Schools for the Future is rolled out.
But, according to technology services provider Probrand, more efficient IT buying methods by schools and local authorities can stretch the reach of their budgets by at least 15 per cent to get more ICT for the same money.
Innovative IT has been acknowledged by Partnerships for Schools (PfS), the body responsible for BSF, as playing a key role in transforming schools, prompting the education sector to spend more on IT.
Probrand is already seeing the response from the sector, said sales manager Richard Hunter-Rice.
“In the last six months we have seen over 3,000 schools using our online IT procurement portal www.theITindex.co.uk/gov to buy better IT cheaper and faster,” he said.
“These schools have also increased the amount of purchases they have been processing. On average schools are saving 15 per cent of their IT budgets and a working week in time every month usually spent calling suppliers to barter on price.”
Government approved, www.theITindex.co.uk/gov daily updates over 125,000 products by best price and availability from over 1,200 suppliers and offers SIMS integration capability specifically developed for education back office environments.
Price and availability comparisons are fully automated, so that buyers simply search for the product they want to buy before purchasing directly through the website.
Unlike consumer comparison sites, buyers are not bounced out to individual suppliers at point of purchase.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants, seen as Europe’s largest and most efficient IT marketplace, has accredited it as offering Best Practice, Best Value piece of mind.
Probrand believes that public sector efficiency pressures and the BSF’s drive to put IT top of the agenda once again have prompted bursars to look for more efficient ways of getting the very best IT into the classroom.
Mr Hunter-Rice added: “Budgets are finite and schools are agile entities that are responding quickly to the demands placed upon them.
“Stretching budgets with best practice approaches to buying best value IT is undoubtedly helping schools buy adaptive and enabling technologies that can support all learners and teachers.
“Local authorities have quite unique requirements when it comes to ICT in the classroom but there is one common influencer and that is a demand for best price and instant availability.”
