Education - Purchasing

[bruce]

Establishment procurement seems to rotate about someone else's idea of price, payment terms, compliance, and after sales service availability for the particular deal. There will be an assumption that the purchased item will have infinite life and never become outdated.

 

That may be how they appear to be - and for a long time I felt the same way. But the procedures and bureaucracy are actually designed primarily to keep you on the right side of the law, and to protect the organisation from litigation. They’re designed to stop the abuses of the system that were common back in the day when “purchasing was easy”.

 

At work, I’m spending several million pounds of public money every year. If I don’t do that transparently, I’d be in serious bother.

[Jevans]

This may not help you, but I know from previous experience buying as a university that when purchasing on account from Thomann that the correct procedure is in fact to pay their UK bank account, in pounds (and as I recall, with UK VAT) - attempting to follow their usual instructions for customers to pay their German account in Euros created a right mess once for us. They are quite happy to use account/credit payments for educational and public sector buyers, and seem to have set up a UK shell to make it easier.

 

Procurement rules almost always have some exceptions for cases where technical restrictions mean things have to be sole-sourced and so on - but it's up to your organisation who can give this authority. Using suppliers that are pre-approved is also entirely normal and sensible - but again it depends on how hard your organisation wants to make it to gain approval.

 

Approval also means someone has checked the terms and conditions, payment terms and warrenty conditions etc - we were always warned that anything bought on card and expensed would probably invalidate the warrenty, as different warrenty terms are often applied to B2B purchases.

[ninjadingle]

CPC's range of AV equipment is actually not too bad now for lower end budgets, and can be surprising for some higher end stuff (Van Damme HDMI cables are pretty good value there).

[Andrew C]

Establishment procurement seems to rotate about someone else's idea

of how easy it is to process the paperwork.

[tomo2607]

Thank you all for the responses, very helpful.

 

from previous experience buying as a university that when purchasing on account from Thomann that the correct procedure is in fact to pay their UK bank account

Jevens, that could be very helpful info. I will look into this further.

[kitlane]

It may be worth having a chat with Presentation Design Services who are based in Derby, and On Productions in Castle Donnington, although they concentrate more on Dry Hire and events production.

 

Is is also very handy that Theatre Sound Supplies have recently moved to Derby.

 

My BA Tech Theatre students often work with local schools to support their events. We are in the middle of 'Beauty & The Beast' at Derby Moor Academy at the moment. Feel free to PM me if you think there might be a project we can help out with. We are usually able to bring a few bits of gear with us to supplement what the school already has.

[ekul1978]

10 out of 10 have good deals and educational discount. CPC are good for routine stuff.

 

Do 10 out of 10 do an educational discount? We have ordered loads from them through the school I work at and never got a educational discount. I do agree they have some nice deals though.

[tomo2607]

It may be worth having a chat with Presentation Design Services who are based in Derby, and On Productions in Castle Donnington, although they concentrate more on Dry Hire and events production.

 

Is is also very handy that Theatre Sound Supplies have recently moved to Derby.

 

My BA Tech Theatre students often work with local schools to support their events. We are in the middle of 'Beauty & The Beast' at Derby Moor Academy at the moment. Feel free to PM me if you think there might be a project we can help out with. We are usually able to bring a few bits of gear with us to supplement what the school already has.

 

Thanks for the info, really helpful. Ill keep the offer of support in mind, I work for Littleover Community School, so actually very close to Derby Moor. Apparently we are sports team rivals...

[jamesperrett]

If you are in education shouldn't you be using Onecall rather than CPC or Farnell? The prices on the Onecall site are usually lower than the normal CPC/Farnell sites.

[bruce]

Pretty sure onecall is higher education only. Certainly used to be that way.

[paulears]

No - used to be but now the list is a bit wider - UK UNIVERSITIES, RESEARCH COUNCILS UK Schools & Colleges

[pmiller056]

My day job is with a higher education institution. For certain product categories (particularly CPC only items), there is no discount. I've found that Onecall tends to bias search results towards Farnell - however you may get better pricing through Onecall by feeding it the equivalent CPC part numbers. In my experience Onecall are Ok with non-account orders for personal use, provided that the order is paid for at the time with a card and delivered to a place that does have an account.

[p.k.roberts]

My day job is with a higher education institution. For certain product categories (particularly CPC only items), there is no discount. I've found that Onecall tends to bias search results towards Farnell - however you may get better pricing through Onecall by feeding it the equivalent CPC part numbers. In my experience Onecall are Ok with non-account orders for personal use, provided that the order is paid for at the time with a card and delivered to a place that does have an account.

 

I also use CPC/OneCall/Farnell in my day job (at a Uni) and depending on the item, discounted prices are offered via the NUWPEC pricing framework (also available from RS). I'm not sure whether this pricing structure is offered to other types of Educational customers, but probably worth checking.

[kgallen]

In addition to the suppliers already listed, I use Russell and Chapple a fair bit for scenic materials (canvas, calico, Bolton twill and the like): https://www.russellandchapple.co.uk/index.php/theatrical-supplies.html

[TonyMitchell]

I'd add Leisuretec Distribution to your list.