Selecting a PC Vendor for the IT Group at OHSU

The Information Technology Group {ITG} at OHSU is mandated to efficiently implement and support the information technology infrastructure at OHSU. Part of this infrastructure includes selection of hardware vendors for the desktop environment. ITG has tested and identified three vendors whose products are compatible with the core applications and operating systems used at OHSU. When it comes to selection of any of these three vendors, the decision is left to the buyer to decide which of the three vendors to buy from. Buyers tend to go by their intuition in making these decisions. Supporting multiple hardware platforms increases the operational cost for ITG. This paper proposes the use of a hierarchical decision-modeling tool to select one pc vendor out ofthe current three vendors in use at OHSU. As a pilot project, the author selected four respondents from key functional groups within the Information technology group. The intention is to demonstrate the applicability of the tool with a view to gain management acceptance of the model so that the model can be used for the pc vendor selection process and other similar decision problems