Awarding an IT supply contract is easy. Discovering in month seven that your supplier was a trading company with a good quotation template is the expensive part.
These are the eight checks that actually separate suppliers, drawn from what goes wrong most often in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
1. Will they give you serial numbers before you sign?
This is the single most revealing question you can ask, and it costs nothing.
Ask for a serial listing as part of the delivery documentation, with the right to verify against the manufacturer warranty portal before you sign acceptance. A supplier confident in their sourcing agrees without hesitation.
Reluctance is the clearest warning sign available to a buyer in Pakistan. Peshawar sees more informally imported stock than anywhere else in the country because of the trade routes — much of it legitimate, some of it refurbished units sold as new. The packaging will not tell you which. The warranty clock will. Our guide to verifying genuine equipment covers the checks in detail.
2. Do their own technicians install, or is it subcontracted?
Tender language across KP consistently specifies “supply, installation, commissioning, training and after-sales support”. A great deal of equipment nonetheless arrives at a reception desk and is never properly commissioned, because the winning bidder was a trading company that subcontracted the installation to whoever was available.
Ask directly. Employed technicians mean accountability sits with one party in month three. Subcontracted installation means it does not.
3. Can they describe their commissioning process specifically?
Generalities are the tell. A supplier who genuinely commissions will describe concrete things:
- Cabling — per-run certification testing to category standard, with the report handed over
- Cameras — footage reviewed with you in daylight and after dark before sign-off
- Servers — a deliberate power-loss and restart test performed while you watch
- Networks — the primary uplink actually pulled to verify failover behaves as designed
If the answer is “we test everything before handover”, press for what that means. The specifics are what you are buying.
4. Who administers a warranty claim?
Many suppliers hand you a service centre number and consider their obligation discharged. Others raise and pursue the claim on your behalf, so you deal with one party.
The second arrangement is materially more valuable, particularly for organisations without dedicated IT staff — and particularly outside Peshawar, where the alternative is shipping equipment out of the province and waiting. Settle it in writing before you buy, not when something fails. Our warranty guide sets out the questions.
5. What documentation arrives with the goods?
The most common friction in institutional procurement in KP is not equipment quality. It is spending three months chasing a supplier for the paperwork that closes an audit file.
A complete pack means:
- Delivery challan itemised against the purchase order, not a carton count
- GST invoice
- Warranty certificates per warrantable item
- Serial listing for capital equipment
- For tender orders: line-by-line compliance statement with manufacturer documentation for any equivalent
Ask what they provide as standard. A supplier who cannot describe it has not thought about your process.
6. How do they handle a discontinued BOQ item?
If you are procuring publicly, this will happen. A BOQ written six to twelve months before evaluation routinely specifies a processor generation or panel model that no longer exists, making literal compliance impossible for every honest bidder.
Bidders willing to claim compliance they cannot support will quote compliant and substitute at delivery — when you have no remedy left. The right answer is a marked equivalent with manufacturer documentation supporting it, giving your committee grounds to record a defensible decision.
We cover the mechanics on our government sector page and in our EPADS registration guide.
7. Will they survey before quoting?
For anything involving installation, a remote quotation is a guess at the largest variable cost in the project.
This matters disproportionately at district level. The infrastructure assumptions that hold in a Peshawar office frequently do not hold in a tehsil office — no existing containment, a distribution board without spare capacity, buildings predating any structured cabling, and grid continuity poor enough that protected power becomes a functional requirement rather than an upgrade.
A supplier who quotes a district site without seeing it is either absorbing risk they have not priced, or preparing to raise a variation. Neither is good for you. See our KPK coverage page for how we scope district work.
8. Are they honest about where they are not strong?
This one is soft, and it is the most predictive.
A supplier claiming uniform national coverage, same-day response everywhere and the best price in every category is describing a company that does not exist. What you want is someone who tells you when a different supplier would serve you better — because that is the same person who will tell you when a cheaper configuration does the job, or when your existing cabling is fine and does not need replacing.
We are explicit that in Lahore and Karachi we take on project work rather than competing on commodity supply, and that our EPADS registration is in progress rather than complete. Those are not strong marketing claims. They are the reason our other claims are worth something.
A short checklist to take into a meeting
- Serial listing provided before acceptance
- Installation by employed technicians, not subcontracted
- Commissioning process described in specifics
- Warranty claims administered by the supplier
- Complete documentation pack delivered with the goods
- Clear method for handling discontinued BOQ items
- Site survey before quoting anything requiring installation
- Honest about scope limits and geography
If you are evaluating suppliers for a requirement in Peshawar or across KPK, we are happy to be measured against this list. See our Peshawar coverage page, or send us your requirement and judge the response.
