🤔 Your options for equipping developers
Making sure your new joiners have everything they need to do their work is critical for a smooth onboarding experience. You need to set up an efficient system for delivering, maintaining and offboarding equipment for new developers on your team.
There are a few options available to equip developers, regardless of whether they are working remotely or not.
Make use of an external service provider
There are multiple services available that handle the equipment lifecycle in its entirety on your behalf, from procurement to offboarding. Examples of these services include Hofy and Workwize.
Pros:
- It saves time and internal resources as they take care of everything on your behalf.
- There is consistency in the type of equipment you can offer across your regions, the time it takes to deliver that equipment, and the amount of stock available.
- It can add to the team and the candidate’s experience of picking equipment on a dedicated platform, instead of doing so manually.
Cons
- It’s not a mature industry, and using a new solution typically needs extra buy-in from the stakeholders within a company.
- The initial cost per employee will be more expensive than just purchasing a device, this is because the price factors in the entire lifecycle of that piece of equipment.
Organise independent vendors
Alternatively, you can use dedicated vendor services for the different parts of the lifecycle. This can include the following:
- Use a regional retailer to choose and deliver equipment. Examples include CDW in the US, and Electric in Europe.
- Outsource your maintenance and support: Use a local IT support company for any issues that might crop up.
- Asset management and inventory management: These are dedicated online services to track all your equipment, including Setyl and Airtable, for example.
- Have vendors for the collection of equipment and delivery to a new location: This can include setting up a business agreement with UPS or FedEX, for example.
Pros:
- You have ownership of the process end-to-end yourself if you prefer a close overview of the decision-making in the process.
- If you have strong working relationships with trusted vendors already, you can maintain that instead of having to replace these services.
Cons:
- It is more time-consuming to manage vendors across the different phases of the equipment lifecycle.
- Depending on the regions you’re servicing, you might need a different set of vendors for each region which can impact your costs.
If you manage your own supply network, it might be a good idea to appoint someone in a dedicated role to handle the responsibility, such as a Procurement Manager.
Appointing someone in a role like this will prevent you from delegating these tasks to different departments. where it’s not part of their normal jobs — which can cause inefficiency and resentment among your team.
Their responsibilities can include:
- Managing your relationships with different suppliers
- Managing communication and alignment between departments
- Tracking your current and incoming stock
Read more:
- Four Considerations for Procuring Equipment in Time for a Developer’s Start Date
- How Better Equipment Management Can Help Attract and Retain Remote Developers