Tech Planning

Re: How standardized is your office?

glamontagne — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:42:52 GMT

mceit, I had to chuckle at your post. Most large enterprises have purchasing departments to handle procurement. Our org has a purchaser, but our IT department handles any sort of IT purchasing including toners. You aren't using this post on an old thread to sneak in a promo for the services that you offer, are you?

We standardize as much as possible. All of our offices have the same fax machines that take the same toner and drums. We have multiples of each printer to minimize the different toners needed. Each user has Office 2003 installed, and the ones that have been resistant to Office have Word Perfect as well.

Re: How standardized is your office?

shipley.c — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:32:21 GMT

Really, what did you find most interesting about it? Personally, I've found that a non-profit's "procurement responsibilities" are usually best managed on a case-by-case basis. What does the enterprise have to do with this?

Re: How standardized is your office?

mceit — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:27:07 GMT

interesting article..... I work in IT infrastructure solutions, and find that an enterprise is way better off by outsourcing their procurement responsibilities.

RE: How standardized is your office?

jbutz — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:49:00 GMT

I am vendor that sells software systems to nonprofits. The 2 biggest challenge I see, are staff buy-in and multiple funders/Government Agencies, etc. get multiple systems. We try to counter that by having our system useful as a tool to staff as well as being flexible enough to work with multiple systems. But a centralized system is great (and more cost effective!) for several reasons, less staff training, better more complete data, less time pulling together reports, etc.

RE: How standardized is your office?

donc — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:25:00 GMT

I work with a number of NPO's and they all apply standards to software and hardware - however this doesn't stop people from choosing appropriate software/hardware; it just means their choice may itself become an organizational standard. If someone seeks something outside the standard the request is evaluated on it's merits.

How standardized is your office?

wcook — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:26:00 GMT

When it comes to purchasing equipment and software, how standardized is your office? Do you make all decisions centrally, or are people allowed to make their own choices about what types of hardware and software to use?