An opex model gives companies a practical alternative that improves flexibility and budgeting predictability. (Image source: 123RF)
Tactile Technologies continues to expand its services offering beyond hardware and software, adding a new opex, or rental, model to its growing suite of financial tools for customers. Developed in partnership with Pendigo, the model gives Tactile customers a way to access the technology they need without paying for it upfront, sitting alongside Tactile's existing access to working capital solutions.
The move responds to a market that is putting increasing pressure on how businesses fund technology. Slow growth, high interest rates and rising security risks are placing strain on budgets and decision-making across the board, at exactly the moment technology is becoming more central to how organisations operate.
Why cash has become one of the most expensive resources
For a long time, paying upfront for technology through capex was the default choice, and for many years that made sense. That is changing. Higher interest rates have pushed up the cost of capital, and cashflow has shifted from something businesses could spend freely to a critical protective layer. When companies commit large portions of their own funds to technology purchases, they lose flexibility exactly when they are likely to need it most.
SMEs lose the working capital they need to manage volatility
Mid-sized businesses reduce the cashflow buffers that keep them stable through difficult trading cycles.
Large enterprises lock up capital that could otherwise support transformation, expansion or acquisitions with a stronger return.
Restrictive capex budgets also create a planning problem of their own. Capex requests can disrupt cashflow, slow down procurement and force decision-makers to delay other initiatives, often pushing organisations into a reactive cycle where technology upgrades happen only when capital becomes available, rather than when the business actually needs them.
“High upfront costs should not delay critical technology investment. We remove that barrier through flexible payment solutions aligned with each customer’s operational needs and budget cycles, enabling businesses to access essential technology while protecting working capital and maintaining control over cashflow,” says John Plant, Director of Pendigo.
What an opex model offers instead
The opex model gives organisations of every size, from SMEs through to large enterprises, a practical alternative that improves flexibility and budgeting predictability. In practice, that means:
- Protecting liquidity, by keeping capital available for operations, growth and risk management.
- Aligning payments to value creation, paying for technology over the period in which it delivers value.
- Avoiding the burden of outdated equipment, by replacing assets at the right time rather than holding onto them past their useful life.
- Creating predictable budgets, removing capital spikes in favour of manageable, consistent cost structures.
- Moving faster when conditions change, without capital availability dictating the pace of decision-making.
“Tactile has always looked beyond the hardware and software itself, to the practical realities our customers are working with, and increasingly that means how technology gets funded, not just which technology gets chosen,” said Amanda Bindeman, Head of Finance at Tactile Technologies.
“We already give customers access to working capital, and this opex model is a natural next step in that conversation. Global and local conditions are making things genuinely tough out there, and we wanted a way to help take some of that pressure off. We're glad to have found the right partner in Pendigo, which brings a competitive model, real experience and the flexibility to structure things differently where that's needed. Above all, we built this to be easy. It has to be simple for a customer to actually implement, or it isn't solving the problem we set out to solve.”
