The COVID situation has created some pretty severe supply chain challenges.

The most obvious effect is that equipment is taking a long time to deliver.

People used to contact us if they had a new employee, for example, who needed a new computer. We’d usually have the equipment available in a day or two, but now it’s taking weeks.

In extreme cases, if it’s specialty equipment, it could be months before we actually get what they’re looking for.

Plan Ahead for Supply Chain Challenges

One of the things we’re telling all of our clients is that you need to plan ahead. Get a few spare pieces of equipment on hand, for example, and look ahead at your plans for the rest of the year.

If you know that you’re going to be adding some people, or maybe there’s some equipment in your list of devices that need to be upgraded this year, it’s a good idea to order that a couple of months before you really need it.

Recently, we were looking for about 50 computers for one of our clients. When we talked to our distribution partners, we were told that they could come in November or February — they weren’t really sure.

This is a unique challenge in an industry that is used to getting pretty much anything overnight.

That’s why we’re really encouraging people to think ahead a little bit and do some planning. You don’t want to end up in a position where a new employee is starting, or something breaks, and you really need equipment the next day.

The IT Roadmap

One of the things we do with our clients is we work with them to plan for the future.

Each of our clients has an IT roadmap that lays out where they are today and where they’re headed in the future. That could be the rest of this year and into the next several years after that. It’s really designed to make sure that we’re supporting the business and wherever the business is going.

One of the areas that we’ve been focusing on right now is the supply chain. If there are devices in your inventory that need to be replaced this year, let’s start planning several months ahead. Let’s figure out how we are going to replace that and get it ordered so that it’s here when we need it.

We had a client that needed more endpoints out on their plant floor and it took them about five months to get the devices that they needed there. And the only thing you can do is plan ahead. Make sure that you’re thinking about what your needs are going to be. Not just today, not just next week, but from now to the end of the year.

Being Proactive is Key

CopperTree’s big focus in working with clients is being proactive. What can we do today that will prevent issues in the future? What can we do today to set you up for success in the future?

Part of that is planning. We look at where the business is going to understand what the challenges are.

We set out to understand the things that are planned from a business perspective. If there’s growth, if changes are coming down the line, if there are new applications or new technology to implement, that’s all planned. How can we set ourselves up to be able to take advantage of those tools in the future?

One of the practical applications of that this year is making sure that we have the right equipment available for new employees or if there are changes in the works.

Replacing Outdated Equipment

In our quarterly vCIO meetings, for example, we look at the asset list that each of our clients has. We have scheduled replacement dates for each of those devices. And when we meet with our clients every quarter to go over our strategy and recommendations, we’re looking further ahead than we might have in the past.

At the beginning of the year, we used to be able to plan out which devices we needed to replace by the end of the year. We’d make sure that those updates were in the budget. And as we went through quarter by quarter, we would pick the machines that needed to be replaced, order new ones, and replace the old ones.

Now we’re having to look further ahead. If it takes several weeks or months to get the equipment in, we need to look into the future more than we did in the past.

Are you facing supply chain challenges with your IT department? Click here to contact us at CopperTree and we’ll help you find a solution!