Extending the lifespan of PCs and laptops makes good sense from both a sustainability and a cost perspective – particularly as existing devices may still have adequate performance for current applications. But at the same time, organisations that delay their PC refresh without a clear strategy lay themselves open to additional risks and costs.
The negative effects begin with employee productivity. Older devices can be slower to start up and more unreliable, and may lack the capabilities to run powerful, business-changing applications. Battery life on laptops also diminishes with age, making it more likely that an old device won’t make it through a working day without a recharge.
Unexpected hardware failures can have serious business impacts, especially if problems affect multiple devices across the fleet. All of this affects productivity. A study of 15,000 CEOs and business and IT leaders revealed 73% of employees feel they don’t have the correct tools and technology to work effectively.
Security risks also increase with legacy devices, particularly if running end-of-life operating systems or software and firmware updates have stopped rolling out. Without advanced security features, including firmware-level protections and real-time malware and ransomware detection, they may be more vulnerable to emerging threats. What’s more, limited support for remote management tools can make it harder for IT teams to update and maintain the fleet or remediate faults as they arise. This effects user productivity while increasing IT workloads and total cost of ownership (TCO).
Enterprises have traditionally avoided these issues by adopting a three-year refresh cycle, but this can be a blunt solution, putting laptops and PCs out to pasture before their time. There is a better way. By adopting a TCO framework and a data-driven approach to managing their fleets, IT teams can minimise downtime, boost productivity, improve security and reduce TCO. This approach also helps CIOs align with finance leaders; the data is there to demonstrate what is and isn’t working, and the business impact.
Working with HP’s Modern Endpoint Management tools and Workforce Experience Platform, IT teams can combine real-time device telemetry data with AI-powered data insights to monitor and collect performance data and isolate issues that are causing friction. They can proactively spot hardware or software issues – and fix them – before they cause disruption. This, and the ability to manage and optimise the fleet from just one console, reduces management and maintenance burdens, not to mention support workloads and TCO.
The smarter way to refresh
What’s more, IT teams can look at how individual users are using their PCs and categorise them into personas, ensuring that they’re using the device that best fits their specific needs. This enables IT teams to address performance challenges on an individual basis, upgrading and reconfiguring devices where that’s effective, and targeting them for refresh where it’s not.
When piloted internally within HP, this data-driven, targeted approach resulted in a 70% improvement in Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores and a 9% increase in performance across the device fleet. While 85% of employees who responded to an internal survey said that the new PCs had improved their productivity. In fact, HP’s research found the replacement of some underperforming devices had resulted in a measurable 33% increase. Meanwhile, devices that continued to be useful could have their lifespan extended, helping with sustainability goals and reducing PC refresh costs by 40%. Research from the 2020 TCO Development Report shows that adding two years to the life of an average PC can reduce its carbon footprint by 30%.
A similar pilot scheme with IT solutions provider, CANCOM, delivered equally impressive results. CANCOM wanted procurement to be informed by real end-user data, along with improved device performance, with over 50% of devices in the fleet suffering from start times that had swollen to over three and a half minutes. Using the Workforce Experience Platform, CANCOM was able to right-size its device fleet and consolidate vendors, reducing TCO, while improving device uptime and reducing the risks of a security breach. Crucially, its employees are now more productive, spending less time dealing with issues and more working with their customers.
When it comes to PC refresh, doing nothing is not a solution. It hampers productivity and causes frustration, adds to IT workloads and results in higher TCO. It makes it harder to protect endpoints from attack. But with a managed device strategy based on real data, IT teams can make meaningful decisions on when to refresh and when to hold back. It’s the optimal way forward for a modern fleet.