"Our next purchase will probably be 30 PCs and we would probably get a couple of quotes just to keep our vendor honest and to know we are getting a reasonable deal," he said, adding that it is reasonable to assess both price and service, because support is critical.

"A small vender can't keep up with the big guys when it comes to service," Isaac said.

Gray Mercer project and sales manager Paul Byrnes said the amount of effort spent sourcing competitive quotes should be relative to the equipment needed.

"It depends on the scale of what is being purchased; buying a set of mugs is different to investing serious dollars in IT products" Byrnes said.

"If we were looking to buy a suite of antivirus or [anti] spamming software, we would look at the obvious players and compare their offerings against [unbundled] products from smaller companies."