Though most associate equipment costs with the initial purchase,
there is really much more to be considered. Several costs may be
incurred throughout a component’s life cycle, including that of <a
href=”http://www.wisegeek.com/why-is-e-waste-dangerous.htm”>disposition
at the end of it’s usefulness. Environmental regulations prohibit simply discarding
end-of-life technology, it must be disposed of by organizations qualified to handle such disposition. Does your organization have a program in place to dispose of retired equipment? Adding costs of installation, maintenance, and end-of-life removal to the budget when calculating equipment cost at time of purchase will save money in
future.
How to reduce IT costs
A. Choose an appropriate partner. Choosing a partner capable of
handling the needs of your organization is key. Make sure the vendor
is logistically able to handle the equipment. One way to ensure a
potential partner is qualified to handle your organization’s old
technology is to look for <a
href=”http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/recycling/changing-e-waste-recycling-landscape”>industry standard certifications, such as
e-Stewards, NAID AAA, and ISO 14001.
B. Provide as much information as possible, work together with the
vendor to plan ahead. Making the vendor aware of the types of
equipment you’ll be sending in advance will reduce costs.
C. Don’t risk environmental non-compliance. The costs in fines and
bad publicity will quickly outweigh the “savings” perceived by
non-compliance. Requiring at least one of the certifications above
will help avoid this problem.
D. Make sure a program is in place to safely erase data from old
components. Data breach is a serious problem that brings a high cost.
Safely eliminating data, by erasure or destruction, is the surest way
to avoid this problem.
E. Pack the tech in-house. Packing the end-of-life items in-house
saves costs. questions to be considered when deciding if this is a
viable option.
F. cost of personnel, including cost of taking staff from other
jobs.
G. Training and documentation, from retirement to disposition. Items
that are to be resold must not be damaged. Careful training and
documentation will help prevent this.
H. Space. Designating a space for this purpose will help keep things
organized and flowing smoothly.
I. Your IT disposal partner can send detailed packing instructions if
desired.
Considering these nine guidelines and having an enterprise-wide
plan in place, with well-documented procedures for each step, will
eliminate problems with environmental non-compliance, data breach, and
end-of-life disposition. This program must take in to account the
needs of every stakeholder. No-one likes to deal with disposition, but
with these guidelines in place, IT retirement is easier than ever.
Unlike some vendors, which charge a price for equipment recycling,
SMS Assembly actually pays organizations for:
servers, memory, processors, networking equipment, and more. By partnering
with SMS Assembly, businesses not only save money, but recover a
return on the original investment in the equipment.
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