Hint: It’s Always Cyber Monday
Kids, cover your ears. Thanksgiving deals aren’t the best time to buy PC parts.
We’re not saying Cyber Monday at Newegg isn’t awesome fun. We’ll have zoot allures galore—no coal in your stocking. But you’re old enough to understand tech discounts aren’t magical November miracles.
Holiday electronics blowouts certainly aren’t a strategy in any conventional procurement sense.
What? You Knew?
You’ve probably had this suspicion for some time already. After a certain length of time in IT, you learn that surprises are overrated. Expensive, mostly.
A better virtue to embrace in November? Patience.
Patience, when coupled with deliberation—that’s when you start shopping like a pro. Consider Black Friday and Cyber Monday a way of “getting in shape” for buying IT in a sensible fashion. You can live every day like Cyber Monday if you’re smart about planning.
Eight best practices for smooth IT sleigh rides
On Seagate! On Samsung! On Packard and Hewlett! See? We’re festive. Now eight words of wisdom for practical IT savings all year long.
- Securing fair budgeting for maintenance isn’t a gift. Earn it. Not every stakeholder will embrace running sound IT operations. Contextualize spending in language financial types understand—cost of downtime, ROI, efficiency increases, and so forth—document with a one-page IT proposal.
- Emphasize that it’s impossible to shop for bargains when faced with an emergency purchase. This opens up important conversations about refresh cycle.
- There will be pressure to forgo backups, both with data and equipment. Stave, save—but don’t cave. Can you count backwards? The 3-2-1 backup chart will help get the point across to budgeteers.
- Holiday blowout deals are fun, but you want to stock your IT closet and toolbox with your brands and products of choice. Set price alerts to remind when yourself when prices are low. Buy PC components you prefer instead of relying on luck.
- If you obsolete equipment inside of five years it is a waste of company money. Early retirement mothballs depreciation tax write-offs prematurely. Plan to scale or plan to fail.
- Learn about IRS tax code for writing off IT equipment expenditures even when you lease or finance technology spending.
- Many IT managers lease equipment to manage unexpected growth spurts.
- Loop in your account executive when you can. We love hearing from customers. It’s never an interruption when you call us. The more we know, the better we serve.
