‘We’ll buy three now and three next year’: The real cost of partial EdTech rollouts

It’s one of the most familiar conversations in EdTech sales. You’ve scoped out a school’s requirements, put together a thorough proposal, and your contact comes back with a variation of the same answer: “We love it. We just can’t fund all of it right now. Can we do half this year and revisit the rest in September?”

It feels like a reasonable compromise. For the school, it’s a pragmatic way of managing a tight capital budget. For you as the supplier, it represents a partial win rather than a flat no.

But what rarely gets examined is the real cost of phased purchasing. And that cost isn’t just absorbed by you. It’s absorbed by the school, by the staff, and ultimately by the pupils sitting in classrooms with a mish-mash of old and new EdTech.

The problem with ‘a few now and the rest later’

Let’s look at a concrete example. A school has nine classrooms that each need an interactive screen. Their capital budget will stretch to three screens per year. So they plan a three-year rollout: three screens in Year 1, three in Year 2, three in Year 3.

On paper, this looks manageable. In practice, it means that for the first year, six classrooms are still using outdated or non-existent tech while three get the benefit of something new. For two years, the gap between the haves and have-nots is felt in lesson quality, teacher confidence, and the sheer frustration of making do.

And that’s before we consider what happens if budgets are squeezed in Year 2 and the second phase gets pushed back. Or if the supplier’s pricing has shifted by Year 3. Or if the models available in Year 3 are no longer compatible with the software the school selected in Year 1.

Phased purchasing introduces a whole layer of risk and inconsistency that the school is simply accepting as the cost of working within its means. 

The hidden costs for you, the supplier

From a commercial perspective, phased rollouts are expensive for suppliers in ways that aren’t always immediately obvious. Every split order comes with its own logistics: separate deliveries, separate installation visits, separate sign-offs. You’re doing the groundwork three times for what should be a single project.

There’s also the sales cycle to consider. Closing a deal once is hard enough. Closing it three times, against a backdrop of changing personnel, shifting priorities, and the ever-present risk that a competitor gets in the door between phases, is a significant drain on your time.

Plus, of course, you’re waiting three years to collect all of your money! 

Device inconsistency: a problem hiding in plain sight

One of the less-discussed consequences of phased purchasing is the device inconsistency it creates. When a school buys in batches over several years, it accumulates a patchwork of different makes, models, and generations, each with slightly different specs, software compatibility, and support requirements.

For IT managers, this is a headache. Managing a mixed fleet is significantly more complex than managing a uniform one. Troubleshooting becomes harder. Maintenance contracts become fragmented. Software that runs smoothly on a 2026 device may struggle on a 2021 model – and if those devices are being used in the same lesson, the experience for pupils has the potential to be disrupted.

Schools that lease a full fleet in a single go eliminate this problem from day one. The devices are identical and run on the same software. Teachers and pupils can enjoy smooth-running lessons, while IT support breathes a sigh of relief! 

What full-fleet deployment looks like in practice

Through our sister company Classroom as a Service (ClaaS), that nine-classroom school with a three-screen annual budget can have all nine screens on day one. Instead of a large capital outlay, the school pays a regular, manageable subscription over the useful life of the equipment. The monthly cost is often comparable to what they’d spend on three screens outright, but the impact is immediate and school-wide.

For the school, this means:

•        Every classroom equipped from the start.

•        A uniform fleet that’s straightforward to manage and maintain.

•        Capital budget preserved for other priorities.

•        The option to upgrade to the latest models at the end of the contract.

For you as the supplier, the benefits are just as clear. You close the full deal at once. You get paid by us within 72 hours of project completion, not in separate tranches over several years. And at the end of the contract term, you have a clear, natural opportunity to upsell the school to your latest models.

Direct funding: why it makes the difference

One of the reasons schools get stuck in the phased purchasing cycle is that traditional finance routes are slow, complex, and uncertain. Applying for funding, waiting for approval, negotiating terms is a process that often drags on long enough for budgets to shift and deals to fall through.

ClaaS works differently because we’re a direct funder. We don’t broker your deal to a third party; we use our own capital – backed by Utility Rentals’ 40-year track record in education finance – to fund the lease ourselves. 

All UK state schools and colleges are pre-approved for our IFRS-compliant finance through our inclusion on the DfE-approved Everything ICT framework. Schools don’t have to worry about whether they’ll be successful in applying for our finance: they just e-sign a straightforward agreement, and the project moves forward.

A different conversation to have

The next time a school comes back with “we’ll buy three now and three next year,” you have a choice. You can accept the reduced order and hope the next instalment materialises. Or you can introduce a better option.

Using ClaaS’s proprietary quoting tool, you can turn your full-fleet proposal into a co-branded subscription proposal in a matter of seconds. The school sees the same equipment offered by the same supplier, but instead of a capital sum they can’t afford, they see an ongoing payment they can. There’s even a built-in response form so they can say yes on the spot.

Phased purchasing is a workaround for a cashflow problem, ClaaS is the solution to that problem. 

If you’d like to see how the quoting tool works, and what your proposals could look like as a subscription offer, get in touch with ClaaS today.