Evaluating an IT liquidation provider to purchase your corporate IT equipment can be a difficult task to accomplish. There are a good deal of variables that can lead an IT manager down a path where he or she will be unable to accurately evaluate competitive quotes, incur unnecessarily high service costs, or set incorrect expectations of value returns that will not be achieved at the end of a project.
Here are some quick tips to make you aware of potential pitfalls and help you eliminate these variables.
1. Know what you’re selling. Having a good understanding and detailed inventory of the models, specs, functional conditions, and cosmetic conditions of your equipment is the most empowering tool you will have available in the process. The more details and assurances you’re able to provide to a vendor the more comfortable and competitive the solution the ITAD provider will be able to offer. Its understandable most IT departments will not have the resources to test equipment and note cosmetic issues on every machine, but if you’re aware of equipment defects and issues provide this information to your IT liquidation vendor and get an understanding of what the cost reductions will be ahead of executing the project.
2. Understand your service level requirements. Make sure to provide all IT liquidators bidding on your project with detailed information on what data destruction service level, packaging requirements, building access requirements, shipping requirements, or any other data and asset management requirements you may have. This can be particularly important when the service level will affect the value of the equipment. For example, if you choose to require a vendor to shred the hard drives from a laptop liquidation there be additional costs for the destruction services and the machines’ overall value will be decreased from removing the hard drives.
3. Set a rigid time frame for the project. The secondary markets fluctuate rather quickly and most IT disposal vendors will not be willing to hold aggressive return rates in effect for longer than 10 business days. Keep in mind that if you’re planning a project 30-90 days out to set these expectations upfront so the vendors are able to give realistic pricing that can be met. We suggest in these situations to get the IT asset recovery estimate from vendors early in the planning stage and qualify capable providers. You can then re-price the project and make final decisions closer to the release of the equipment.
Having a good understanding of your disposal inventory, conditions of the equipment, service levels required, and time frame of project will allow you to control the process and meet the expectations set with your IT asset disposal vendor.