Illustrative case study · Enterprise IT
180 ThinkPads refreshed in 18 business days, 38% under OEM list.
A 600-person SaaS company’s summer refresh, planned around two deployment waves and one named AM. Names withheld until the logo lock drops.
- 38% saved
- Vs. OEM new-unit list
- 18 bus. days
- From signed quote to last desk
- 180 units
- ThinkPad T-series Grade A
About the customer
[Midwest SaaS company, 600+ employees]. Engineering-heavy workforce, mixed desk + remote, running on a 3-year laptop refresh cycle that had quietly slipped to 4 years. IT was under a hard freeze on new-unit spend — but the old fleet was losing hours/week to battery and thermal issues.
The brief
- 180 ThinkPad T-series laptops, matched to an existing spec (i7, 32 GB, 1 TB SSD).
- Must work with existing dock + monitor standard.
- Asset tags applied in our range (0x-prefix, 5-digit).
- Ship in two waves: 120 units for engineering in July, 60 for ops in August.
- NET 30 with PO; no surprises on the invoice.
What we did
Matched-batch sourcing
We pulled from two lease-end lots to get 180 units on the same CPU/RAM/SSD spec. Any variance flagged on the quote; buyer approved the variance tolerance (± one SSD size rung).
Asset tagging pre-ship
Their tag range and template shipped on signed quote. We applied the tags at the warehouse between QA and packout. CSV of serial ↔ asset tag ↔ test-result lineage delivered with the tracking number.
Two-wave scheduling
120 units shipped week one, staged into their internal imaging flow. 60 units held in our warehouse for 3 weeks at no storage fee, then released on the ops deployment window.
Outcome
- 0 warranty claims
- In the first 60 days post-deployment.
- 2 swaps
- Advance-replacement units, ground-shipped to users.
- ~$94K savings
- Vs. quoted new-unit spend.
- 98% CSAT
- Internal survey after wave-two deployment.
“The serial CSV dropped straight into our CMDB and the asset tags were already on the chassis. Saved three days of warehouse intake — and the users never noticed these weren’t new.”
What made this work
Three things, none of them magic. An honest grade rubric so the buyer knew what Grade A actually meant before the PO went out. Matched batches, so 180 laptops looked and behaved like one fleet instead of 180 science experiments. And asset tag templating — one CSV round-trip on signed quote — so the units hit the dock already inventoried.
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Send specs, volumes, and your deployment windows. We’ll come back with a matched-batch quote and a realistic ship plan.