Behind an Apple reseller's million-dollar school rollout

How do you cope with school children being a bit rough on their devices?

Patrick: Part of the whole education experience is looking after your equipment. We have a mechanism of infringements on one hand and incentives on the other hand to help them realise that taking care of the machine is in their best interest. 

Being an Apple product means that there’s a certain bling attached to it. Some students take pride in their devices and will protect them at all costs. But you’ll always have mischievous students, so we get a fair amount of accidental damage, but we’ve got relationships with local providers to turn those devices round, plus a loan pool. 

We are very keen to maintain a loan pool so a student is never without a device. That is our policy. A student will always be able to walk down to our help desk and trade a broken machine for a working machine on the spot.

With loan devices, is it easy to spin up the standard operating environment (SOE) for individual students?

Patrick: We have a number of flavours [of SOE]. We have the ‘vanilla’, which is the generic SOE, and we have technology which is split into graphics, IPT, music and business. We have other small variations of this.

Jason, what was it like rolling out 700 Apple devices?

Jason: This rollout went exceptionally well. I don’t think there were any hiccups, major delays or concerns. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of anything that was delayed. We had everything timed so that we knew the exact day the devices would turn up, which filled a very large classroom with a lot of pallets very quickly. 

Who did you buy the devices from?

Jason: Avnet.

Any comments on working with Avnet?

Jason: They were brilliant.

Corrie: They were wonderful. Very professional, very quick.

Jason: When we put in a request to them with all the bits and pieces, they were willing to help with everything exceptionally quickly. 

Patrick, what do you look for from a supplier relationship? 

Patrick: We make no apologies for the fact that we seek competition as a first and foremost rule. It must be competitive, providing the best product at the best price, therefore we don’t have preferred suppliers. 

We go to market and give everyone the same opportunity. We have experience with a number of providers including Secure Access that we’re very happy to work with. In light of our concept of diversity and redundancy, we also utilise other companies that can provide equivalent services to Secure Access.

Corrie: The relationship has been ongoing for four years.

Patrick: It’s taken a long time to develop the level of trust that we’re now put into and enjoy with Secure Access. The rollout was excellent.
It surpassed our expectations. 

THE CUSTOMER

Matthew Flinders Anglican College

Established 1990

Students 1,300

Based Buderim, Sunshine Coast, Queensland

Industry sector Private education, from prep to Year 12

THE SUPPLIER

Secure Access

Established 1999

Headcount 14

Managing director Jason Garland

Location Maroochydore, Queensland

Specialties Microsoft Gold partner, Apple Consultants Network

THE PROJECT

Situation Apple device rollout

Technology deployed 117 iPad Air 2s, 554 13-inch MacBook Airs and 50 MacBook Pros, including installation and accessories

Value Over $1 million

Outcome Students provided with quality devices, with iPads for younger students, MacBook Airs for older students and MacBook Pros for certain students.