As technology improves and your business grows, sooner or later your IT assets will need to be replaced and/or retired. However, finding a new home for these assets, which can include servers, storage arrays, laptops, and much more, is easier said than done. If you’re planning to re-purpose the equipment, the asset will need to be repaired or refurbished to increase the remaining value and the demand for it. If you’re not looking to re-purpose the equipment, it can be recycled but you may be leaving significant value on the table when doing so.
In these cases, an IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) provider can help you get some of the leftover value out of your retired equipment. Specifically, they can help you re-purpose, re-market, or otherwise decommission and liquidate your retired equipment. Or, they can recycle the equipment that cannot be re-purposed, while making sure that industry standards for environmental-friendly recycling are met.
How IT Asset Recovery Services Can Help You
For starters, an ITAD provider can use their network of other organizations to re-market the hardware. Typically an IT asset recovery company will know many other contacts that buy and sell IT hardware, or there are plenty of end-users that like to buy the hardware for themselves. Once sold, you would receive a portion of the purchase price from the hardware.
Secondly, an ITAD provider can help when reselling licensed hardware, such as firewalls. In addition, the equipment may have software or security features that handicap its new owners; an ITAD provider can help solve these issues, as well. They can also help you transfer equipment from one department to another and coordinate between departments to make sure the transition goes smoothly.
Which ITAD Vendor Should You Choose
There are quite a few ITAD companies out there and most are going to make claims about their capabilities and tell you how great they are. However, there are a few objective things you can consider but they will require you do some of the legwork to vet the vendor properly.
1. Referrals or Past Projects
Ask for referrals or evidence of past projects. Will they be able to refer you to a client who can corroborate their proficiency? Have they worked with companies similar to yours? Have they dealt with policy restrictions and compliance requirements similar to yours?
2. IT Asset Recovery Certifications
If you really want to get to know a vendor, ask them for their certification audit reports. This is a great way to determine if there is any non-compliance in their organization. OceanTech, a trusted leader in the ITAD industry, is proud to hold the R2:2013-Responsible Recycling certification as well as the ISO 14001:2015 environmental management system and ISO 45001:2018 occupational health and safety certifications.In the process of attaining these internationally recognized certifications, our environmental, health, safety, occupational, and security procedures have been stringently evaluated and certified by an independent third-party auditor.
3. IT Equipment Pricing
In addition to the above, you can submit a basic IT Asset inventory list to multiple prospective vendors to see what price they are willing to offer for your equipment. When submitting your list, make sure you include the components of each of the systems and things like model numbers and/or dell service tags.
From there you can weigh the companies’ capabilities, size, reviews/reputation, and the aforementioned factors to make your decision.