How keeping schools secure keeps your pipeline full: The hidden revenue opportunity in tech obsolescence

Many EdTech suppliers consider obsolescence to be a problem for the school's IT manager to worry about. A device ages out, support gets withdrawn, security gaps appear, and eventually the equipment needs to be replaced. 

So why not structure your offer around that inevitability?

Offering your EdTech to schools on a subscription, rather than a one-off basis, means you have a natural opportunity to upsell at the end of the lease, instead of hoping they still have your contact details 5 years later when they’re in a hurry to replace equipment that’s become a liability.

That’s exactly what we enable you to do at our sister company, Classroom as a Service (ClaaS). We work with established suppliers, who have a proven track record, to provide schools with high quality EdTech on an affordable subscription.

(But don’t worry – you don’t wait months or years to get paid. We sort this for you in a matter of days!)

Why ageing EdTech is a problem for schools

Technology rarely announces its own failure. Instead, it builds over time in a variety of ways:

•    Lost vendor support, which leaves devices exposed to security gaps the moment updates stop – as thousands of schools discovered when Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 last October.

•    Rising vulnerability to ransomware and cyberattacks, with over half of UK organisations reporting an attempted breach in the government's most recent cyber security survey.

•    Downtime and disruption, as aging systems crash more often and take lessons and communications with them.

•    Compatibility problems, locking schools out of the newest educational software just when their pupils need it most.

•    GDPR exposure, since outdated systems are a soft target for anyone looking to get at student, parent or staff data.

Every one of these poses a specific threat to a school, meaning they’re also a sales conversation waiting to happen – if you're top of mind at the right time.

Obsolescence is expensive

Last month, we wrote about Apple's sudden price rise. When the standard iPad jumped by over 30% overnight, with live quotes and orders instantly out of date, we talked about what that meant for suppliers trying to close deals in real time. Meanwhile, it was business as usual for all our suppliers with schools on fixed price ClaaS subscriptions.

With global memory chip shortages expected to keep pushing hardware costs up well into 2027, schools have every incentive to squeeze a few more years out of ageing devices rather than replace them outright. This might sound like a rational response to a tighter budget, but it’s also an approach that leaves schools running unsupported, insecure technology for longer than they should. The more expensive new hardware becomes, the more schools will be tempted to sit on the security risk instead of retiring it. That's bad for pupils, and it's a slow leak in your sales pipeline too, because a school that can't afford to replace its fleet outright is a school that either shrinks its deal size or stops buying altogether.

Turning ad hoc sales into recurring revenue

Think of the subscription model the same way you'd think about a phone contract: the school is buying a fixed-term subscription with a natural opportunity at the end to upgrade to the latest model(s). When the contract at ClaaS concludes, the school doesn't have to find a new capital budget or start a fresh procurement process: instead, they (and we) buy from you a second time.

Suppliers who lean into the subscription model transform from a vendor to a trusted advisor who keeps a school's technology current, compliant and safe by design. Nobody needs to wait for a ransomware scare or an OS that's about to lose support to justify the next order. The school knows it has a consistent fleet of supported devices that will be replaced at the end of the initial term.

About our EdTech subscription finance

We're a direct funder with a 40+ year track record in education finance, and our inclusion in the Everything ICT framework means UK state schools and colleges are pre-approved for our IFRS-compliant leases from day one. Our proprietary quoting tool turns your equipment quote into a co-branded subscription proposal in seconds, and we pay you within 72 hours of project completion. 

Get in touch for an exploratory chat or read our supplier's guide for more information.

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