Lowest cost Office 2007 – Bulk order under Home Use Programme for staff

This could be part of a “things you wish you’d heard about earlier…” series. If you’re working within a UK college, then there’s a fair chance that your university has signed a Microsoft Campus Agreement, and that this applies to YOU!

The deal, in a nutshell, is that you can place a bulk order, on behalf of employees at your college, for full copies of Office 2007 Enterprise for £6.93 each, for them to use on their home computer. Microsoft ship the software to you, and you can then recover the cost from staff who want a copy.

But here’s the catch. The £6.93 offer is only open until the 15th June 2009. And it is for employees’ home computers only, not for your use within the college.

• If you’re in the IT team, then you’ve got a chance to make your colleagues happy (as well as save money yourself)
• If you’re working elsewhere in a college, whatever your role, then there’s a chance to save some money

The Campus Agreement comes with a feature called Software Assurance, and that includes a benefit called the Home Use Programme (HUP). This means employees of the college can normally buy Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 for £12.93 for their own home computer. HUP is mainly designed for business users of Microsoft software, to increase employee satisfaction, employee retention, and training and productivity. (I’ll whisper this so that only the IT people hear - it’s also been seen to reduce support costs).

The licence allows employees to use the software as long as they work for the organisation, and as long as the organisation is covered by Software Assurance. Unlike the similar “Work At Home” scheme, the employee is the one responsible for correctly licensing (ie you simply have to let them know when they should stop using it, you’re not expected to enforce this).

Two things to do before Friday 12th June

It is easy to activate:

• Your ‘Software Assurance Benefit Administrator’ (quick, find a number for the IT department!) goes onto the Microsoft Volume Licensing Services website, and ticks a box to activate the programme (at http://licensing.microsoft.com).
• That person can then place a bulk order (at least 20 copies*) by emailing hupvalue@msdirectservices.com
• The HUP team will then give you a call, check all the details, and we arrange for you to pay us and to sign an order form
  At this price, we’ll ask you to pay in advance – either by credit card or college cheque – so we’ll issue a proforma invoice
• We’ll send you the software packs for you to distribute to employees

It’s that simple.

And instead of paying £90 in a shop for Office Home & Student, your employees have Office Enterprise for their home computers for less than £7.

We’ve got HUP Information Packs sitting here in the office, with a resources CD to help promote it internally. If you want one, just drop James an email

I completely recognise that this deadline is very short. And I don’t expect that you’re going to be able to get all of your staff to decide whether they want a copy with just a fortnight to place your order. But a quick email around staff could quickly identify some that want it. And after the offer is closed, your staff can still order individually via the normal route (I’ll write that bit up next) for £12.93.

* The maximum number of copies that you can order is the number of FTE’s (employees) that you’ve declared on your Campus Agreement