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As an IT consultant, you should know most PC vendors would be happy to cover inexpensive items like a mouse under the standard warranty.

However, given that your client could purchase a spare replacement mouse for about $10 to $30, is it really worth one of their employees being without a mouse, or worse yet without a PC, for a day or two while they await the replacement part under standard PC warranty coverage?

Clients Should Have Spare Parts on Hand

If your clients have spare mice on hand, warranty claims can be deferred a few days, or a few weeks, until time permits. In the interim, as their IT consultant, you*ve helped your clients mitigate the downtime for a very nominal advanced planning expense.

As your clients* IT consultant, keeping a spare keyboard and monitor at their site also makes sense. The cost of these items is very inexpensive versus the potential productivity loss resulting from waiting for replacement parts to arrive. These three external items can all be installed rapidly by internal gurus.

Spare Desktop PCs

As the price of entry-level desktop PCs has plummeted and expectations for zero downtime have risen, we*ve seen many small businesses purchasing an extra PC, to keep fully-configured and plug-in ready.

Today, if the standard, fully-configured entry-level desktop PC only costs around $600, an office with as few as six PCs can fully fund the purchase of a spare desktop PC, simply by self-insuring on the warranty coverage for years two and three.

Advise Your Clients Wisely

As their IT consultant, you should recommend to your client that they invest some of their technology budget on select spare parts, and a full desktop PC.

This way, they can handle warranty claims at their leisure, not when their company is swamped and functioning in panic mode. If your clients are outsourcing this sort of project management work to you as their IT consultant, keeping spares on hand will lessen the need to pay costly emergency rate premiums.

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