Partnering with an IT asset disposition (ITAD) provider can save your organization significant money and aggravation. The disposition of your retired IT equipment carries the risk of significant costs, data breach, and environmental violation. But with the right vendor, the burden is transferred into experienced hands with the facilities and logistical capabilities to meet your company’s ITAD needs at all of its locations. How can you be sure an ITAD provider is a good fit for your organization? Ask the right questions.
1. Can they reach all your locations?
Make sure your IT asset disposition partner has sufficient processing locations to serve all of your sites and the logistical capability to offer the service level your organization requires at each of those locations. Having multiple locations around the country lowers the cost and environmental impact of IT asset disposition. The ability to provide packing and pickup services to any location, large or small— in a big city or remote outpost—is an important advantage. Even if your company only has a few locations, and they only need occasional or small pickups, those locations should be served by a certified vendor that can meet all of your internal standards.
2. Are they certified for environmental compliance and data security?
A data breach or environmental violation can cost your company a lot more than any disposition fees. The fines alone can be huge, and the bad publicity can have lingering consequences. How can you be sure your vendor is doing ITAD properly, in full compliance with all state and federal regulations and meeting all industry standards and best practices? Look for industry certifications to validate your vendor’s capabilities and compliance: R2/RIOS, e-Stewards, ISO 140001, and NAID AAA.
3. Do they understand the resale market?
Most unwanted technology assets still have some remaining life and value. Remarketing your IT assets is an opportunity for your organization to recoup some of its initial investment or cover some or all of its disposition costs. But to maximize investment recovery from your IT assets, they need to be in top shape and hit the market at the right time. Your ITAD provider needs to ensure your retired equipment isn’t damaged during shipping and storing. It should understand price trends on the resale market to help you determine when your assets will go from revenue generators to cost creators. A knowledgeable ITAD provider should be able to help you plan your refresh cycles to ensure you get the optimal return value on your decommissioned equipment.
4. How do they document disposition?
Disposition data can have financial, data security, and software asset management implications. Choose a vendor that can reliably provide detailed audit reports by serial number and asset details, formatted to meet your system requirements, so you can easily integrate them into your asset management system. Some ITAD vendors can provide onsite scanning of assets prior to packing, which will give you a report before the truck leaves. This option can save your team time and provides stronger chain-of-custody tracking.
Choosing the right vendor is key to the programmatic ITAD approach
The right ITAD vendor will have the capability, locations, and expertise to meet the needs of every stakeholder in your organization – including the need to minimize cost – by implementing an enterprise-wide program with specific roles and procedures for every link in the chain. No one wants to worry about disposition. Our IT Asset Manager’s Guide to Disposition discusses how a holistic ITAD program can respond to your concerns about ITAD costs, investment recovery, and integrating disposition data into your existing asset management system.
