Which Shop? The University Computer Shop!!! By Jessica Chong

One day, Jane was asked to buy a PC for her department. Being a new staff member and knowing little about PC, she was at a loss on what to buy. Fortunately, someone suggested her to try the University Computer Shop. She did try and at the end was pleasantly surprised with the quality products and services. What impressed her most was the one-stop shop service, from the ordering of PC and delivery to installing the hardware and connecting it to the network.

Jane was very happy with the service and became curious about the Shop. Being a servicing unit, the Shop is very glad and willing to let Jane, as well as all of you, know what is going on behind the scenes.

Why Set Up Computer Shop?

Why does the CSC set up the University Computer Shop? The purpose is to offer the University community with high quality computer-related products and services at reasonable prices. With the Shop, you can immediately have floppy disks, toner, computer forms and other computer stationery items refilled when you run out of them. No need to shop around but just simply order PCs, software, printers and other computer equipment for your office in one spot. You can also have the in-house maintenance workshop that provides quick fix for your problems about software or hardware.

How It Evolves?

The Shop was established as a small-scale operation in late 1990. Initially, it just sold some popular computer stationery and consumables to departments, staff and students. The evolution came to a revolutionary moment when the University decentralised the equipment budget, resulting in departments having their own budget to buy computer equipment. Questions arose. Which kind of computers was compatible with the campus network? What was the quality of the different brands of computer equipment? The CSC was faced with plenty of such questions.

A year later, rounds of testing were conducted by the CSC on the computer equipment to ensure their compatibility, reliability and performance. Only those that had successfully passed the evaluation could be offered by the Shop. This move, as now can be seen, was able to make central support possible and more economical.

Scope of Services

The Shop expands its service scope continuously to meet your needs. You may find that the Shop not only sells products but also provides installation and maintenance service. Having a close link with computer vendors, it is granted the campus dealership of several well-known brands like SUN, Dell and Microsoft licences.

The Shop provides a full-range of computer-related products and services. Take a look at the following and see which services you have used before.

Is It Profit-making?

Absolutely NOT. The University’s policy does not allow the Shop to retain any profits. It has to return all the profits, if any, to the central pool. The Shop is a self-financed operation and a small mark-up is inevitable in order to cover all the operational and administrative cost. The mark-up is, however, much lower than that of other commercial counterparts because of its non-profit-making nature. Being the campus dealer of some major brands like SUN & Dell, the Shop can keep the ordering cost to a minimum, thus maximises customers’ benefit in the end.

Are the Goods More Expensive?

Of course NOT. Customers are free to choose their suppliers. Currently the Shop is being treated by the Business Operation Office (BO) as one of the suppliers. If the prices were not competitive, the BO would not place orders through the Shop for the departments. Other customers would not shop at it as well. The market force and the procurement procedures of the BO are the best mechanism to ensure the Shop’s prices to be competitive. Apart from the reasonable prices, the Shop also guarantees that its products are compatible and of good quality.

What Benefits the Shop Brings?

The Shop has brought a lot of benefits to University departments, staff and students. Some of the benefits are explicit while others are so implicit that you may not be aware of though you may have already enjoyed them. Here are some of the biggest benefits:

Without the Shop…

Imagine what would happen without the Shop. You’d have to go out to shop around for various computer stationery items. And, you need to keep a stock of them to maintain continuous supply. You might have bought a PC but ended up finding that it was not compatible with the network or the quality was not up to your expectation. At departmental level, the bargaining power was always too weak to make it possible to negotiate favourable rates with the vendors. While your hardware was out of order, you’d have to wait for at least several hours for outside suppliers to repair them. They’d take a long time to fix your problems since they were not familiar with the network environment. No supplier would be willing to provide the essential services (i.e. Computer for Student-in-need Programme, booklets, laser printing, licence distribution, etc.) at cost or even lower than the cost. In short, without the Shop, you would not be able to enjoy the benefits being offered to you now.

Difficulties & Challenges

The Shop in many ways operates like an ordinary shop. Nevertheless, the identity of being a University operation has caused many misunderstandings. Many user departments consider it as a centrally funded service department and expect a free service. They thus complain that the Shop’s prices are not reasonable though indeed they are. On the other hand, as an internal operation, the Shop is required to abide by the policies and administrative procedures of the University. This has thus caused the Shop more workload than the outside retailers. As a result, the Shop’s flexibility is compromised.

Customers’ feedback is most important in assisting the Shop to overcome the difficulties and challenges. The Shop is most happy to listen to your suggestions on how it can further improve its services. Come and visit the Shop now or simply contact us at ext. 8318.