No. Our current procurement guidelines have changed and Procurement no longer allows the purchase of desktops and laptops on PCards.
June 2016
NIU has contracted with Dell to provide standard configurations for low, medium, and high power versions of both desktops and laptops. Purchasing from the list of standard equipment will save your department money while greatly reducing the time to approve, purchase, and deliver your computer. There is an exception form that requires justification and approval for those who cannot make use of the standard systems.
For nearly fifteen months, IT directors from around campus have worked to reach agreement on how to configure, purchase, and maintain desktop and laptop computers. There are many advantages to having standard configurations: improved vendor support, increased availability of parts, reduced purchase cost, reduced support
The Division of Information Technology (DoIT), members of the IT Planning Council and Procurement Services collaborated on the Request for Proposal, and subsequent negotiations led us to select Dell as our preferred vendor. Dell will provide four models for desktops and four more for laptops. Desktops and laptops will have low, medium, and high power variants with the medium class machines having two options. These models will be revisited every year as Dell updates its technology options.
With these new purchasing standards in place, all orders will still follow the normal procurement process which includes requisitions and processing by the Division of Administration and Finance (Finance). Departments who have a multi-year refresh plan approved by the Vice-President for Information Technology and who are purchasing standard equipment will not have their decision to purchase held by Finance to evaluate the necessity of the purchase; rather, Finance will only verify the availability of funds. Units who do not have a documented refresh schedule should work with the DoIT and their local budgetary authority to prepare one.
Exceptions to the standard model are expected and allowed in many instances and the justification for these exceptions must first be approved by the local IT department and the local budgetary authority. The IT Planning Council will review exceptions annually to inform the selection of future equipment models and options.
For questions about how these new standards affect your department, please contact your local IT support person. For more global questions on the procurement or contracting process, please contact Procurement Services and Contract Management at 815-753-1671.
No. Our current procurement guidelines have changed and Procurement no longer allows the purchase of desktops and laptops on PCards.
First, make sure you go through any internal process that your own unit may have in place for purchasing computer equipment. Your local IT person will simply go to the Dell Premier site, order the relevant desktop or laptop, and the transaction will process through Procurement. Procurement will not reivew your purchase for necessity, but will only validate that funds are available.
Use the exception form (docx) to purchase an Apple desktop or laptop.
Unfortunately, this is still a paper form until we implement more automated processes in Procurement. This paper form should accompany your purchase request for non-standard equipment. As a reminder, be sure to include signatures from your local budgetary authority and your local IT person.
Work with your local budgetary authority.
The answer to this depends on your unit and how budgets and cost centers are managed. You may have an office who provides financial management that may be able to override your local unit’s decisions. On the other hand, your department chair or head may be the budgetary authority in your unit. The decision on who is a local budgetary authority must be made on a unit-by-unit basis.
The best place to determine whether, when and what computer you need is at the point closest to where that computer will be used each day. However, Finance still has a valid and necessary role to ensure that expenditures made against cost centers have sufficient funds to make that purchase. Finance’s role is to validate the presence of funds, not your necessity for the equipment itself.
Yes. Units may have procedures that require internal reviews before a purchase request may be sent to Procurement. All these procedures remain in place.