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Enron Mail |
Enron requires that we purchase all of our equipment through a central
purchasing process. The reasons for doing this are two fold. 1) Enron supports only certain technologies. It is important to standardize the technology sitting on each person's desktop to ensure it works with other technology already on your desk and that the IT staff knows how to support the use of this technology. 2) Enron has cut deals with suppliers that give us good prices. In the past, the Portland office has not strictly adhered to this policy. We had good business reasons for not complying--we could buy the same equipment at the same price a lot faster if we just bought it ourselves locally. Here's the problem. People have not always bought the "same" equipment. For example, people have recently purchased flat screen monitors that are different than the Compaq flat screens that most of us use. This requires our technology group to understand how the different screens work, whether they need different drivers installed on your hard drive, and what to do with them if they break. There are numerous other examples. In aggregate, this practice has put additional strains on our already constrained technology support staff and will cause us problems in the future if any of the non-standard equipment breaks and can't be fixed or replaced in a hurry. Accordingly, Dave Steiner and I would appreciate it if you would do the following when purchasing technology. All pending and future purchasing requests should now go through the local IT Department. Please send an email to the "IT Portland" email account when you have an IT related need such as a Palm Pilot, LCD screen, special software, etc. The local IT team will then assure compliance and availability of the requested item(s) and get back to you with cost, ETA, and any other relevant information. If the centralized Houston purchasing process is too slow to meet our business need, IT Portland will investigate buying the exact same product locally. Again, our goal is to streamline the process while conforming to corporate standards. This will also assure that the items acquired will work with existing infrastructure and be easily supported by our IT team. The team has assured me they will be prompt in responding to your requests. If you have any questions, please contact Dave Steiner or me. Your adherence to this process is appreciated.
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