Business thinking - PC replacements
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All accounting issues aside, in the end I think the mass upgrade is more disruptive to business on all sides than the trickle replacement.
For those of you that have done mass upgrades, consider the process.
You select a particular model and config based on that days standards.
You have them all shipped and have a pile of PCs sitting somewhere.
They have to all be unboxed. How many fit on your bench.
You spend time (weeks?) working up your image.
You start to push your image as quick as your hardware will allow.
You start swapping out user machines as quickly as you can.
User questions start rolling in - you're still trying to move computers off your bench.
You realize you have to tweak your image.
You redo the image and reimage the machines that were already done.Trickle replacement
A few machines show up each month.
You unbox them in your office and put them all on your workbench.
You deploy your image and keep working on other tasks.
You deploy them to a few users and troubleshoot any issues.
Make a note of issues and tweak image for the next round.
Order up the next round and repeat next month.As new OSs or software comes out, you can try it on your next cycle without disrupting the entire company. You don't have to update everything all at once so that users are getting a new OS and new software. In the mass upgrades, how long do the machines sit on the bench depreciating before they are put in front of a user? As employees are added ordering another computer for a new user can be done quickly. If you are in the 3 year of a mass upgrade, you have to price shop and all that since your original model likely won't be available.
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@mike-davis said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
machines sit on the bench depreciating before they are put in front of a user? As employees are added ordering another
One tweak I would make to your listing there - if you are doing a massive rollout, get your hands on a half dozen or so units up front. Built the image and deploy it. My average image takes at most two days to tweak. Deploy those 6 units out - find issues, update redeploy - imaged locked. In the mean time your order has arrived and now you can start with the replacement machines.
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Sure it's a lot of work to deploy a large number of machines at once, but when most of your workers do the same tasks, need the same machine, supporting multiple devices with different drivers, etc is a PITA. Of course images today don't have near the issues they did 10-15 years ago with multiple drivers being included, but still, one less thing to worry about.
Plus it cuts down on end user whining that so-n-so's computer is newer than theirs, etc. SMBs suffer this problem a lot more than enterprise customers seems to.
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I might suggest that one reason I've not seen mentioned at all, is replacing computers when they begin costing time waiting on the device to do it's job.
If your users have to wait say.. one minute an hour, for 8 hours a day, every day of a work year just because the computers are getting old; even if everyone is making $12/hr, you are going to spend $416/yr per-employee to pay employees to do nothing but sit and wait at their PC accomplishing nothing (with which, you could almost buy a brand new PC anyway and save all that wasted labor money). None of this accounts for potential savings at the wall outlets for upgrading to immensely electrically superior computers either, because half a decade sees a pretty substantial improvement to the cost of electricity to power dozens of computers.
It's part of why I'm not a big fan of internet-based solutions unless the overall speed of the connection and the systems on both ends can reduce the performance penalty sufficiently. It doesn't matter if I can access a system anywhere if the availability slows everyone's access down to the point where it's actually not a net-improvement on efficiency or productivity (although just net-neutral is fine) over running the solution locally for instance. Ideally, I would want the solution available directly/locally for improved speed, and remotely available for access so I get the best of all worlds, but I'm not a fan of slowing down labor to save money. Time = money, so any/all business calculations that don't account for it (of which there should be none imo) are quite simply going to yield errant results. Also, it's worth pointing out that labor is almost without exception the single largest controllable expense in virtually any organization, so maximizing the value of labor is almost always going to yield the most benefits.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
I might suggest that one reason I've not seen mentioned at all, is replacing computers when they begin costing time waiting on the device to do it's job.
This is covered by #2
- new equipment is more efficient and will make workers more efficient
Efficiency is all about cost and value. For example, we had an employee complaining that her computer was slow. She had a process that took 3 hours to complete on her old machine. With a temp new machine that process was reduced to 20 mins. She was granted a new machine ASAP and ROI was well under a year considering only that one process.
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@dashrender Fair enough, I apparently glossed over that point too quickly. Although I would say there's no scenario in which a 5 year old computer, laptop or desktop, would ever not be past-due for replacement if you are including the content of my previous post as being covered under your second point.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@dashrender Fair enough, I apparently glossed over that point too quickly. Although I would say there's no scenario in which a 5 year old computer, laptop or desktop, would ever not be past-due for replacement if you are including the content of my previous post as being covered under your second point.
I have a 4 year old laptop at home. I have a brand new laptop here in my office. They perform the EHR based tasks in exactly the same amount of time. There is no reason to replace my home laptop for this process. The laptop in this case isn't the issue, it's the online system we use. Considering we use that for 95%+ of our daily work, the computers barely matter anymore.
Now that said, my 2007/2008 computers replaced in 2014, OK yeah, we saw a time reduction in tasks, but sadly, other non computer processes prevent us from taking advantage of the new found time savings, so again, replacing computers for that one reason alone wouldn't have been worth while.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
even if everyone is making $12/hr, you are going to spend $416/yr per-employee to pay employees to do nothing but sit and wait at their PC accomplishing nothing (with which, you could almost buy a brand new PC anyway and save all that wasted labor money).
That is nowhere close to the cost of a desktop PC. In fact it is pretty much half.
I buy a desktop at least monthly for one client or another. The price tag is never less than $800.
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@jaredbusch said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
even if everyone is making $12/hr, you are going to spend $416/yr per-employee to pay employees to do nothing but sit and wait at their PC accomplishing nothing (with which, you could almost buy a brand new PC anyway and save all that wasted labor money).
That is nowhere close to the cost of a desktop PC. In fact is it pretty much half.
I buy a desktop at least monthly for one client or another. The price tag is never less than $800.
Agreed. I typically spend around $800. In case anyone cares, I'm buying HP EliteDesks. And this price does not include a monitor.
I can probably get something for less, but these units have done very well for me. I have over a dozen that have been in service for 4+ years with only one HDD failing (and they are mostly in small overheating places).
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If your users utilize Microsoft office alongside your EHR for instance, I'm fairly certain they would see a pretty sizable impact to attempting to use both simultaneously on a 5+ year old device. I'm guessing the EHR is essentially web-based access? If there's minimal multi-tasking, it's probably less of an issue for you than many. Although if there is a significant level of multi-tasking going on, I would suspect there's probably been a lot more machine-based delay occurring that users may not be complaining about because they just think it's normal perhaps?
I just paid $700 for new EliteDesks, and those were 7th-gen i5 with 8GB of RAM and SSDs with 3-year business warranties. >.> I guess I'm doing something right?
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
I just paid $700 for new EliteDesks, and those were 7th-gen i5 with 8GB of RAM and SSDs with 3-year business warranties. >.> I guess I'm doing something right?
Well, I haven't bought one in over a year, so yeah, I'd say you got a good price - where did you order from?
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Here is the last desktop a client ordered.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
If your users utilize Microsoft office alongside your EHR for instance, I'm fairly certain they would see a pretty sizable impact to attempting to use both simultaneously on a 5+ year old device. I'm guessing the EHR is essentially web-based access? If there's minimal multi-tasking, it's probably less of an issue for you than many. Although if there is a significant level of multi-tasking going on, I would suspect there's probably been a lot more machine-based delay occurring that users may not be complaining about because they just think it's normal perhaps?
I'm sure you're right - but as I already mentioned, non computer tasks prevent them from gaining any noticeable work gains from spending less time waiting on the computer. The primary gain they do get is less personal frustration, which definitely has value, but only so far, considering how those other non computer things are still forcing a delay. So now, the extra free time (which remember is only an extra min or so per hour) is spend gabbing about some BS that ultimately upsets a patient who over hears them gabbing about said BS (damn people are to freaking sensitive - true story.. patient called and complained that staff was talking about food - the patient was financially poor and because of that they were hungry.. the staff talking about food made her upset because it make them more hungry - wow, just wow...)
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
I just paid $700 for new EliteDesks, and those were 7th-gen i5 with 8GB of RAM and SSDs with 3-year business warranties. >.> I guess I'm doing something right?
$700 is just over 80% more than $416.
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I got them through PCMG, but they were only a few bucks less than buying through TigerDirect Business, Newegg for Business, and one or two other outfits.
FWIW, there do tend to be times when computers tend to be cheaper to buy than others (typically as new models are released in conjuction with new hardware availability). Just likes cars, TVs, and Cellphones, I've noticed that there are cycles for product releases (they're much longer for business and enterprise-class kit) that last about a year in between refreshes. I presume for commercial kit, it's due to increased testing time and just because businesses replace less frequently than consumers, but I could be totally off on the reason(s).
I try to line up my purchases to snag the out-going version of a new hardware refresh, or the brand-new entrant to the model I've been looking to buy. Had I had a sliver more luck, I would have gotten those desktops for $620, but I couldn't get approval processed due to our grant rigmarole, and missed out by less than 48 hours. =(
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@jaredbusch Sure it is, but it's still more than half the cost of brand new computers every year.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
I try to line up my purchases to snag the out-going version of a new hardware refresh, or the brand-new entrant to the model I've been looking to buy. Had I had a sliver more luck, I would have gotten those desktops for $620, but I couldn't get approval processed due to our grant rigmarole, and missed out by less than 48 hours. =(
How much time do you spend trying to constantly figure that all out? Sounds to me like you sunk the savings just in your time.
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@tirendir said in Business thinking - PC replacements:
@jaredbusch Sure it is, but it's still more than half the cost of brand new computers every year.
Sure, but now you need a metric that shows that you actually get that much more work out of the employee for the send.
Plus you haven't included the IT cost or bench cost of deploying those new machines, the employee downtime from the transition, etc. Though you did mention the possible power savings so that's a bit of an offset to the these and other expenses.
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Far more in the past than I do now. It's taken me a few years to get my ED to agree to allow me to institute a consistent hardware refresh policy, so I've had to spend an annoying amount of time finding and buying new equipment as needed over the past few years. The patterns for business kit follow that of consumer kit, albeit lagging almost exactly a year in desktops with HP and Dell anyway. I could get Gen 7 Intel CPU-equipped business kit about the same time as consumers could, but almost exactly a year later, the premium hardware becomes the common-fare and gets your run-of-the-mill pricing instead of the premium hardware pricing much as happens in about 6-months in the consumer realm.
I spent many years around consumer hardware retail, but worked on the service side doing sales on occasion. So seeing the similar pattern wasn't too difficult or surprising. It just took me a little while to catch when the patterns do their transitions (seems to be mid-summer between typical new hardware releases and the big, consistent software releases like Microsoft). Hardware vendors want to divest themselves of the kit they've been producing for the previous iteration while they begin shipping the new iteration(s) that replace them. Either way, I've found that we can save a few K just by timing our bulk hardware purchases to somewhere in June or July.
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@dashrender I try and approach it this way: If my staff are waiting X amount of time because computers aren't fast enough, then that is time wasted because the resources I provided are inadequate. That waste is due to an inefficient solution, so successfully addressing that problem will result in eliminating the waste so long as I do so effectively. It's not about getting that much more work out of the employees by replacing their devices, so much as eliminating the guaranteed waste due to device inadequacy. Time spent waiting on a computer is time spent not doing something else if the time spent waiting is not long enough to spend accomplishing some other task, as switching tasks too frequently just drives up inefficiency.
If an employee has to wait on their computer to perform a task, that time is lost, period. If I remove the delay from the computer, then that time is no longer lost, hence I've saved however much time we are no longer spending waiting on the device to do its' job. As far as I'm concerned, IT has saved X amount of money in eliminating an inefficiency caused by IT's provided solution. If the employee doesn't make full use of the improvement, that is not IT's fault or problem. My job isn't to play taskmaster, but to provide the most effective and efficient solution for employees to get their jobs done as I reasonably can. I can save X amount of time by upgrading, which results in saving X amount of money. How they spend the time difference is not on me, but on their supervisors/managements' heads. IT is only responsible for what IT is responsible for, which is providing technical solutions that enable employees to work as close to their potential as possible. If my kit isn't slowing them down, then the problem isn't something within my realm of authority or influence to address.
As far as IT cost for bench and deployment time, we swap devices while most employees are not at their desks, so their interruption time is minimal if any. We also copy/paste shortcuts and personal folder contents to the corresponding location on the new device, so the user-end transition is minimal as well. If it costs my minion an hour per device, we're still netting about $400/year rough improvement in efficiency from IT's perspective when the swap is done properly, and still not including the electricity draw improvements.
