Organisations are often faced with the daunting prospect of either upsizing (upscaling), downsizing (downscaling), relocating, or in some unfortunate scenarios, closing. These transitional business phases tend to result in residual IT assets. The majority of which are typically surplus to your company’s requirements. However, these assets are still assets. Thus, they can be put to task to benefit your company in some ways. This is where IT Asset Remarketing enters the chat. The following guide will investigate what it is and how it can help your business.
Understanding IT Asset Remarketing
IT asset remarketing requires you to rebrand and refurbish used equipment, enabling you to resell it at its highest market price point
IT asset remarketing frequently gets mistaken for reselling. While reselling is part of the remarketing process, the two concepts aren’t interchangeable.
IT asset remarketing requires you to rebrand and sometimes refurbish used equipment, enabling you to resell it at its highest market price point. This allows your company to recoup as much money as it originally invested in the asset as possible. This additional income can then be used to acquire new equipment that further improves your infrastructure.
Types of IT equipment and assets that can be repurposed include:
- Storage drives
- Laptops
- Computers
- Servers
- Monitors and screens
- Peripherals (keyboard and mouse)
The Benefits of IT Asset Remarketing
In 2022, the IT Asset Disposition market was worth a reported 15.6 billion dollars. It’s expected to experience a growth of 7.4% in the next decade. By 2023, it should be worth 31.8 billion dollars. But why the sudden boom? Why has IT asset remarketing/disposition become so popular?
Growing social and environmental consciousness has been cited as one of the biggest reasons. As more companies become mindful of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), they’ve begun to adopt less wasteful practices.
Thus, in addition to supplementing a business’s income, IT asset remarketing can also enhance CSR. Finding ways to repurpose and reuse old equipment reduces wastage. Most decommissioned IT components end up festering in landfills. Dispositioning your unwanted equipment and ensuring that it gets into worthy hands could potentially reduce e-waste and positively affect the economy.
The Challenges of IT Asset Remarketing
Failing to wipe your equipment clean of all data before remarketing them can lead to security breaches and data leakages.
Remarketing your company’s IT assets internally can present a slew of pitfalls and challenges. Especially if you’re in the midst of scaling your business. Some organisations simply do not have the resources to create an IT asset management program or strategy that includes remarketing or disposition. Hence many businesses decide it’s cheaper to carelessly dispose of their old assets.
However, this comes with many risks and downsides. For one, it’s bad for the environment and can lead to security breaches and data leakages if your equipment isn’t (data) wiped properly before its disposal. If you do decide to pursue IT asset deposition in-house, these are some of the challenges you must overcome.
1. Defining an Effective IT Asset Remarketing Strategy
IT asset disposition requires an expert understanding of the rapidly changing dynamics of the IT asset marketplace. Your company must develop a process that cost-effectively determines the value of your IT assets. Furthermore, you must enforce a strategy that is unique to your IT remarketing.
Establishing a reliable IT asset remarketing strategy first requires you to identify all the parties that should be involved. If your company doesn’t have an Environmental and Risk Management department, you must form a task force that will carry out a similar function. This division or task force will be responsible for vetting buyers. This will arguably be the most important stakeholder in your remarketing process.
2. Considering the Environment
If you’re selling to foreign emptors, you must ensure that their country does not uphold lax environmental laws, cultures, or attitudes. Furthermore, your potential buyers should have a well-established infrastructure to manage e-waste. The goal is to ultimately remarket your IT assets in such a way that it spares the environment.
Potential buyers should have a well-established infrastructure to manage e-waste. The goal is to ultimately remarket your IT assets in such a way that it spares the environment.
3. Data Security and Compliance
There are many regulations to consider when reselling your equipment. You and your risk management staff must be aware of the regional restrictions of the parties whom you’re reselling your equipment to. For instance, European buyers will most likely fall under the GDPR while Malaysian procurers will fall under the PDPA.
Selling equipment that contains client information infringes upon their rights. It can also leave you vulnerable to cyberattacks. According to a study conducted by IBM, the global average cost of a single data breach is over $4.42 million. This includes penalties, lost business, and damage to your brand and reputation.
Thus, your risk management and IT team will need to identify how to safely resell your equipment in such a way that it prevents breaches or leaks. They must decide to what extent data should be destroyed. For instance, would it be sufficient to wipe the drives of every computer, server, or laptop you sell, or would complete destruction of all tapes and drives be more appropriate?
These are some of the considerations that your company will need to plan around. As you’re most likely inexperienced in this field, many mistakes will be made in the beginning. However, you don’t have to take this journey on your own.
Overcoming the Challenges of IT Asset Remarketing
Companies will save more money and time by outsourcing their IT asset remarketing to a verified and reliable ITAD and remarketing vendor.
Your company should not be handling IT asset remarketing on its own. You could save more money and time by outsourcing it to a verified and reliable IT asset disposition (ITAD) and remarketing vendor. One that is familiar with the regional regulations of potential buyers. One that can ensure that your IT assets are handled as cost-effectively as possible while ensuring the integrity of your brand.
These are just a few of the attributes you should look out for when selecting an ITAD vendor. The point is to pick a company that specialises in its field, the same way yours does. Picking the right vendor is a challenge in itself, but one that is substantially more manageable than building and implementing an IT asset remarketing strategy of your own.
How to Choose an ITAD and Remarketing Service Provider
There are many benefits to picking an experienced ITAD and remarketing vendor - from getting maximum value recovery for your equipment to ensuring that your organisation adheres to corporate laws and regulations.
There are many benefits to picking an experienced ITAD and remarketing vendor. From getting maximum value recovery for your equipment to ensuring that your organisation adheres to corporate laws and regulations. Nevertheless, the ideal ITAD and remarketing should feature:
- Comprehensive Inventory Management: Your potential vendor must have a thorough but transparent inventory management system. One that carefully categorises and labels your assets based on their resellability. It must be a management system that separates items that must be refurbished and resold from items that must be repurposed, repurposed, and disposed of.
- Refurbishment: The service you ultimately select should have experienced technicians who can renew equipment so that it can be sold at the highest maximum market value.
- Data Destruction: Your old computers will typically still carry much of your company’s data, including software, passwords, email messages, etc. Thus, your vendor must have ample procedures for erasing data. Furthermore, they should be able to provide certification to indicate that your data was safe and completely wiped.
- Repurposing: If any of your assets are listed as not reusable, they will be sent off for repurposing. Your vendor should be able to separate all materials that can be remarketed and safely destroy the rest.
SPW is one such vendor that offers the above services and more. With its impressive global reach, it can put you in range with the right buyers for your remarketed IT assets.
Conclusion
Your organisation must consider replacing any equipment older than seven years. Organisations must ensure that their equipment meets current benchmarks to keep pace with 4IR standards. The cloud has made IT infrastructure easier to scale. However, companies still require equipment to interface with this technology. As you replace old equipment with new equipment, you must be mindful of the social, economic, and environmental consequences. As such, companies should not be disposing of, dispositioning, or remarketing their IT on their own. Vendors such as SPW can make these tasks more profitable, smoother, and more sustainable. Contact us to learn more about how you can better manage your IT assets and unlock additional streams of revenue by remarketing them.We Have Your Back
Our secure IT asset disposal services provides the dependable solution you need for your e-waste and end-of-life asset needs. Our team applies safe and sustainable steps that are regulatory-compliant at every stage of the process.
From the point of collection, auditing, shredding and/or wiping to remarketing and/or donating your IT assets, you can be sure with our end-to-end services that we take your security seriously.
We have coverage against the loss of or damage to your goods during transportation. This includes marine cargo shipment from the ports to the warehouses
Our professional team of asset removers ensure your devices are packed safely into our vehicles which are also equipped with GPS-tracking systems. We have armed our warehouses with fingerprint-only access complete with security alarms and 24/7 CCTVs in place
Our reach spans across the globe through our networks of partners and vendors. Wherever your business is based, you can leverage our worldwide network and we would be happy to assist you throughout your ITAD journey
SPW is Asia's go-to solutions provider for data destruction, data erasure, IT asset remarketing, and environmentally-responsible IT asset disposals. Contact us and learn how you can incorporate an ITAD strategy into your business today.
