Smarter IT hardware procurement: reduce costs and increase resilience

Managing IT hardware procurement can be time-consuming. Without specialist buyers, it’s easy to overpay or end up with mismatched equipment that slows your team down.

The answer is outsourcing your IT hardware procurement as part of your managed IT support services. The right partner will have the specialist team, the connections, and the oversight of the B2B wholesale market.

In this article, we explain why outsourcing hardware procurement can cut overheads, improve cost effectiveness, simplify planning, and streamline operations.

Table of contents

1. What is hardware?
2. Common IT hardware procurement challenges
3. Ways outsourced IT procurement helps your budget and your operations
4. What to look for in IT procurement services
5. Get started with smarter IT procurement

What is hardware?

‘IT hardware’ refers to the physical devices and components in your IT systems — such as computers, servers, networking devices, and peripherals. It’s the tangible equipment that supports software, data storage, and digital communications.

Examples of IT hardware include:

• Desktops, laptops, and servers
• Network equipment - Routers, switches and access points
• Backup and recovery systems
• IT peripherals such as monitors, keyboards, mice, etc.
• Printers and multifunction devices
• Other standard IT hardware, such as video-conferencing systems
• Components such as solid-state drives and memory modules

Common IT hardware procurement challenges

Procurement inefficiencies are often the cause of significant challenges. A recent US study found that an unmanaged approach to IT procurement leads to higher costs and more time spent on admin. Companies with a mature, dedicated procurement function, on the other hand, spend on average 21% less than their peers.

Here are some of the most common challenges:

• Lack of technical expertise: a mismatch between business needs and hardware specifications can inflate costs and hurt productivity.
• Warranty optimisation: without alignment between procurement and business goals, warranties can be too expensive or provide insufficient coverage.
• No volume leverage: securing bulk discounts is not possible for businesses procuring hardware infrequently and in relatively small quantities.
• No supply-chain buffers: hardware supply-chain disruption is common. However, keeping contingency stocks of vital parts is too expensive for most SMEs.
• Difficulty managing technology lifecycles: without lifecycle monitoring, emergency and ad-hoc device replacements increase costs and hurt performance.
• Set-up and provisioning challenges: configuring and provisioning new hardware for every user can be time-consuming and involve extensive rework.
• Risk management: whether it’s spotting counterfeit goods, data-protection flaws, or cyber security gaps, risk management is a complex, specialist task.
• Legal and contractual difficulties: without expert oversight, contracts may unfairly limit vendor liability, contain onerous conditions or have other problems.
• Incorrect licences: often, for example, individuals or teams buy their own laptops with Windows Home installed and must pay extra to upgrade to Pro.

According to Amazon’s 2025 State of Procurement Data report, 21% of decision-makers say costs and budgets are common procurement pain points.

An expert IT procurement team can help you avoid issues such as requirement mismatches, over-specification, and unplanned downtime, which commonly lead to inflated costs and budget overruns.

Ways outsourced IT procurement helps your budget and your operations

Rely on your partner’s detailed market understanding

Working with an expert in IT hardware procurement, you get instant access to market-leading expertise in technology, contracts, service-level agreements and more. The right team will help you achieve the optimum balance of cost, specifications, reliability, and user satisfaction.

A full-service IT procurement specialist doesn’t simply purchase hardware on demand. They will work with you to understand your business model and roadmap. They will also source and provide intelligence on external issues — for instance, forthcoming obsolescence or end-of-support events — likely to impact your procurement needs.

From market analysis to cost control

Using this information, your procurement partner will then engage in needs analysis and lifecycle mapping. Based on your current IT hardware assets, expected asset retirements and the business roadmap for the year, they will create a procurement plan. This will enable you to secure the best long-term hardware costs while avoiding under- or over-provisioning.

A hardware procurement specialist can also help with cost control in a range of other ways. At the most basic level, but with the potential for a significant positive impact, they can help you consolidate vendors and negotiate bulk discounts.

The right partner will be able to model hardware costs across the lifecycle and factor total costs into the purchase decision. They can also help by modelling costs for leasing as compared to outright purchase of IT hardware and by tracking warranty status and expiry, to ensure that repairs and replacements are carried out at the right time, and at the lowest cost.

Hardware with security and compliance built in 

A specialist procurement partner can also help with IT-related compliance issues. These can range from the straightforwardly commercial, for instance, to ensuring that assets are used in compliance with warranty terms to avoid unnecessary costs. At a more elevated level, your partner can help you ensure that your procurement, life-cycle management, and disposal of IT hardware always comply with relevant environmental and data protection legislation.

A good IT hardware procurement partner will also work with your IT and software specialists. For instance, they can ship devices with permission-based user controls that are pre-configured to ensure that authorised installations and licenses are tracked and unauthorised installations are prevented.

What to look for in IT procurement services

IT hardware procurement services will provide you with the vendor relationships, market knowledge, asset-tracking systems and other skills and expertise you need.

Here are some of the things you should look for in an IT hardware procurement partner:

1. Strong vendor relationships but also vendor neutrality, so they always recommend the technology that is right for you.
2. Cost and pricing transparency, with the ability to give you a clear breakdown of what you’re paying for.
3. Market intelligence, such as the ability to demonstrate how they track pricing trends, variables that will impact asset lifespans and other relevant factors.
4. Asset-life cycle management expertise. From initial deployment, through asset tracking, to timely replacement and compliant disposal.
5. Configuration and integration expertise, so new devices arrive compliant, pre-populated with the right applications, and ready for use.
6. Sustainability and compliance credentials, such as compliance with WEEE recycling regulations or relevant ADISA certifications in safe data sanitisation.
7. High standard of logistics and device turnaround capabilities, as evidenced by the RMA times and other metrics in your service-level agreement.

Get started with smarter IT procurement

Texaport is one of the UK’s leading outsourced IT procurement specialists. Our buyers and consultants help optimise your long-term procurement operations to help you cut costs, improve resilience, mitigate risk and increase user productivity.

We offer hardware procurement as a standalone service and as part of our managed IT services package. This covers everything from 24/7 helpdesk services, endpoint protection, and vendor licence management to hardware procurement, configuration, and delivery.

Talk to our experts today to see how we can help.