The Total Economic Impact™ Of Dell PC As A Service

Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By PC As A Service

A Forrester Total Economic Impact Study Commissioned By Dell Technologies, November 2022

Dell’s PC as a Service (PCaaS) enables organizations to save valuable and increasingly scarce IT personnel productivity by reducing the required device lifecycle management tasks while also reducing hardware costs. Users are enabled with the latest devices improving productivity through reduced downtime and better performing applications. Dell PCaaS customers also realize hiring, budget, and project flexibility for the IT organization, enabling better support for an increasingly hybrid workforce.

With an increase in the variety of devices available to organizations and the workstyles of the employees who use them, management of the device lifecycle is more complicated and expensive than it has ever been, especially in light of the recent global trend of remote or flexible work. IT organizations must support a wide range of device and technology options to an increasingly dispersed and mobile workforce while maintaining low user disruption, all amid cost uncertainty. The rise of subscription services for traditional IT categories, such as devices, known to Forrester as device as a service (DaaS), shifts employee device purchasing from a one-time fixed cost to a continuous expenditure, an initiative that can improve digital employee experience while offering budget, hiring, and project flexibility to the IT organization.1

Dell Technologies commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Dell PCaaS.2 The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Dell PCaaS on their organizations.

Reduced device lifecycle support costs

33.5%

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Return on investment (ROI)

28%

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Net present value (NPV)

$1.84M

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed twelve representatives with experience using Dell PCaaS. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization, which is an industry-agnostic organization with 4,000 users and devices.

After the investment in Dell PCaaS, the interviewees highlighted the cost savings their organizations accrued by moving valuable IT talent off of device lifecycle management tasks and onto high-impact IT projects, avoiding labor and hiring costs. Organizations also reported hardware savings, shipping expenditure savings, and user impact. Increasingly hybrid users leverage newer, faster devices and lose less productivity to downtime.

Key Findings

Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:

  • Avoided device lifecycle support costs of more than 30%. The composite organization eliminates IT personnel support and management effort for the organization’s device lifecycle with Dell PCaaS. This saves more than 30% of the required support costs, measured in IT FTE labor.
  • Avoided device acquisition and refresh costs of 4%. By sourcing a homogenous fleet of devices through Dell PCaaS, the composite organization avoids 4% of the cost of the previous device fleet while reducing vendor management costs and refreshing devices more frequently.
  • Avoided personnel hires of three IT FTEs. By reducing IT’s burden in managing the device lifecycle, the composite organization reallocates several FTEs previously tasked with these activities to other higher-value IT projects. This avoids hires who would otherwise staff these projects.
  • Avoided user productivity losses (due to device downtime) of three days per incident. The composite organization’s users benefit from flexible repair or replacement options for devices that experience issues, improving resolution time for critical, productivity-impacting issues by up to three days. Furthermore, users benefit from newer, faster devices that experience fewer minor issues.
  • Reduced shipping costs by 50%. The composite organization’s users receive their devices imaged and provisioned directly from Dell, reducing one-way shipping costs on both ends of the device lifecycle. In addition, users experience fewer issues requiring repair or replacement (resulting from a newer device fleet), driving down off-cycle shipping costs that are often expensive, expedited options.

Before and after lifecycle services breakdown

Lifecycle services Without Dell PCaaS (FTE hours only) Dell PCaaS (Dell fees and FTE hours)
Procurement $102.14 $71.50
Imaging, Installation, final preparation $154.92 $163.85
Systems management $306.42 $288.04
Support $346.70 $86.90
Retrieval/retirement $32.11 $16.50
Total per device cost (36 months) $942.27 $626.78
Total per device cost (monthly) $26.17 $17.41

Reduction in device-related support tickets

25% - 40%

Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:

  • Improved security posture. On Dell PCaaS, device consistency means there are inherently fewer variables for IT and security operations teams to watch for across the device fleet, improving security posture.
  • Budget flexibility. Dell PCaaS customers also spoke about the benefit of a monthly payment model versus an upfront capital expenditure on their cash flow.
  • End-user experience. With Dell PCaaS, users receive their devices faster, receive support resolution an average of three days more promptly, operate on hardware that is one to two years newer, and can work with Dell to procure the support or devices they need.

Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:

  • Lifecycle costs with Dell PCaaS. As part of the monthly per-device fees, the composite organization pays for Dell ProDeploy, ProSupport, and Asset Recovery and Recycling services. In addition, some tasks will still need to be carried out by internal resources, such as the initial Dell procurement process and the creation and management of a central image or systems management.
  • Device financing through Dell. The composite organization leases 4,000 devices and 8,000 peripherals through Dell on a 36-month term.
  • Switching costs from previous hardware provider. The composite organization incurs switching costs for other vendors as it transitions its fleet of devices to Dell PCaaS.

The representative interviews and financial analysis found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $8.5 million over three years versus costs of $6.7 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $1.8 million and an ROI of 28%.

Key Statistics

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    Return on investment (ROI)

    28%
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    Benefits PV

    $8.2M
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    Net present value (NPV)

    $1.8M
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    Payback

    <6 months
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Benefits (Three-Year)

Avoided device lifecyle servies (annual) Avoided device acquisition and refresh costs Avoided IT personnel hires through reskilling Avoided user productivity losses due to devince access Avoided shipping costs

“Dell PCaaS means less overall IT management for us. We can standardize our device lifecycle while improving our ability to refresh and change devices out based on current technology needs — all this while giving ourselves cost predictability in
monthly pricing.”

VP of cloud architecture, financial services

TEI Framework And Methodology

From the information provided in the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework for those organizations considering an investment in Dell PCaaS.

The objective of the framework is to identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the investment decision. Forrester took a multistep approach to evaluate the impact that Dell PCaaS can have on an organization.

  1. Due Diligence

    Interviewed Dell stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to PCaaS.

  2. Interviews

    Interviewed six representatives at organizations using Dell PCaaS and six representatives at organizations managing the device lifecycle internally to obtain data with respect to costs, benefits, and risks.

  3. Composite Organization

    Designed a composite organization based on characteristics of the interviewees’ organizations.

  4. Financial Model Framework

    Constructed a financial model representative of the interviews using the TEI methodology and risk-adjusted the financial model based on issues and concerns of the interviewees.

  5. Case Study

    Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology provides a complete picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions. Please see Appendix A for additional information on the TEI methodology.

Disclosures

Readers should be aware of the following:

This study is commissioned by Dell Technologies and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis.

Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in PC As A Service.

Dell reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study.

Dell provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.

Consulting Team:

Richard Cavallaro

Zahra Azzaoui

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