Bullish Stone is happy with its Lot
System builder and VAR wants to oust Dell as top supplier to education market
Stone is gunning for the top spot in the education supplier space after winning a place on all six Lots under a new framework agreement.
The Desktop Hardware & Peripherals Framework agreement was awarded last week by the Crescent Purchasing Consortium (CPC), with other six-Lot winners including Viglen and Softcat.
The two-year framework comes into play on 11 April and is estimated to be worth a share of £100m to successful suppliers. CPC has 675 member colleges in the UK and is the only consortium exclusively dedicated to the further education sector.
A CPC representative confirmed that a total of 32 suppliers were awarded a place on one or more of the six Lots: desktops, laptops, peripherals (printers, monitors), interactive whiteboards, maintenance and Apple.
Speaking to CRN, James Bird, chief executive of Stone, said he was delighted with the win. "This translates into a huge revenue opportunity for Stone," he said.
"We are one of a handful of suppliers to make it onto all six Lots - we are particularly pleased to be on the maintenance and Apple Lots because we only secured our Apple Mac accreditation at the back end of last year."
Bird said Stone has its sights set on the number-one supplier spot in the market, and is determined to oust Dell in the next year.
"If you look at our trading in 2009, we were £10m behind Dell in terms of share, but in 2010 we narrowed that gap to £3m. Our ambition is to displace Dell and go for the number-one supplier spot. The gap between us and the third supplier is also significant," he said.
Bordan Tkachuk, chief executive of Viglen, agreed that the pressure was on Dell.
"We have regularly beaten Dell in the IT sector over the past 12 months. It is a huge player, but it is very broad. Companies such as us and Stone are both focused on public sector and education, which gives us the advantage over a global company such as Dell.
"We recently won deals with Glamorgan University and the University of East Anglia - both of which had Dell as an incumbent," Tkachuk said.
"It is a tough market, but getting on a framework like this is good for us because it means we can go out and start winning new business."
A Dell representative told CRN it had no comment to make on Stone's claims.