Conveniently located and affordable? What more could you ask for when selecting an IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) partner for your business? Actually, it could be a lot. Companies that primarily use cost and location to decide who should handle their retired electronic assets take significant risks.
When time is short and budgets are tight, a seductively low quote tied to a promise of getting the job done early could be hard to turn down! And, if the vendor happens to have a geographic advantage, how could you not sign on?
Factors beyond mere convenience are essential when it comes to the process of selecting an IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) partner. Here’s why:
Cost
A common misconception of the ITAD industry is the associated costs of the services. One could conclude, that fiscally, the addition of yet another supplier to your organization is an additional cost of doing business. However, an ITAD vendor will evaluate if that old laptop, desktop, server, etc. can be remarketed or reused.
There are many organizations nation-wide that have been able to achieve cost-neutral programs. Say your annual recycling fees for non-valuable IT products (phones, printers, keyboards) is $40,000 a year. A strategic ITAD vendor can recover those costs by remarketing retired IT assets that still hold value.
At OceanTech any equipment that still holds value is catalogued for reimbursement, sanitized of all data, reset to factory default setting and returned to grade-A condition to guarantee the best possible resale rate. Our expert sales and marketing teams will work within our exceptional network of trusted consumers to ensure your equipment is sold to the best end-user or IT broker for maximum return on your assets.
As a leader in the ITAD industry, it is vital to OceanTech that we meet or exceed all industry standards and data destruction regulations. We do this my maintaining R2:2013 Responsible Recycling, ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System and ISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health and Safety Management System certifications — that’s where cost comes in. Proper data destruction takes time and requires special equipment.
In other words, recycling costs tend to correlate with the rigorousness of asset disposition — and data cleansing in particular. Although it certainly does not mean the highest quote automatically equals superior service, it is wise to beware of quotes that come in way below the competition.
Location Proximity
Another wise move: Avoid selecting an ITAD partner based solely on location. Again, as convenient as it may be to enlist the nearest electronics recycler, consider your options. You run the risk of working with someone who does not live up to far more important criteria. The fact is location is less of a prohibitive factor than in the past. The cost of palletized shipping is typically not a budget-buster and is worth it when the receiver is just the type of trusted partner that you’ve been searching for. Your partner may even offer logistics services that make pick up and transportation easy. At OceanTech we do just that.
Data Protection
If the high-profile data leaks of recent years have taught companies anything, it’s to take data protection seriously, even if the product is end-of-life (EOL).
Data protection standards mean your organization can be held liable, not only tomorrow but years from now. As you part with data related to Patient Health Information (PHI), Personable Identifiable Information (PII), the payment card industry (PCI) data, and other sensitive information, a transfer of ownership certificate does not clear you of responsibility if it falls into the wrong hands.
Transparency
Upon arriving at our secure facility, our secure client portal will give you the ability to monitor and track all of your assets. Our custom reporting and tracking system will give you peace of mind by ensuring full accountability of your assets from pick-up to completion.
Certifications
Although certifications are only the beginning, they make up the foundation of ITAD. As the regulatory environment becomes more complex, certified ITAD services provide a systematic approach to managing the disposition of retired or outdated IT assets.
Each piece of equipment received by OceanTech is logged with its corresponding make, model and serial number during dismantling. Throughout the entire process, we track and catalogue your assets. Once the data destruction has been successfully completed, OceanTech will issue a Certificate of Data Destruction that details the make, model and seral number of each asset that has been secured, sanitized or destroyed.
Any reports or certificates issued by OceanTech may be stored on our secure online portal for client reference or retrieval at a later date.
Customization
OceanTech can help you tailor a customized solution around your needs. Customization paves the way for a real partnership in which you can leave the problem-solving to your ITAD partner while you focus on running your business.
In conclusion, if you let cost and location overshadow other, more important, factors when selecting an ITAD partner, you could pay a high price in the long run. Inadequate sanitization, the accidental release of sensitive data, disappointing resale revenue, out-of-the-box solutions, and lack of transparency each outweighs the benefit of going with a quote that seems too good to be true. There are many highly qualified ITAD partners to choose from, and you should make sure you work with the very best.
