Corporate laptop procurement has not kept pace with the changes in how knowledge workers use their devices. The procurement criteria that dominated enterprise laptop purchasing for the past fifteen years — Windows compatibility, Intel processor, specific RAM and storage tiers, corporate image support — are still driving purchasing decisions in organizations where the actual requirements have shifted materially. The mismatch produces laptops that are enterprise-manageable but mediocre for the work employees actually do.

Enterprise software procurement moves at a pace that the software it is trying to purchase has long since left behind. The average procurement cycle for a mid-market enterprise software purchase — from initial vendor identification to signed contract — runs between four and nine months. The software category the procurement team is evaluating will have shipped multiple major releases during that period. The requirements documentation that anchored the evaluation will have drifted from what the business actually needs. The vendor selected may have been acquired.