Finding a home for unwanted assets

In the current economic climate, many companies are being forced to make do with what they have rather than invest in new IT systems

To squeeze every last penny from the IT budget, companies are turning to consolidation projects to streamline their environments. Many find that they suddenly have expensive, unused equipment lying around.

Failure to promptly redeploy or remarket this IT can effectively waste 20 per cent of the budget. Speed is the key to getting maximum returns from your unwanted IT assets.

Many companies make the mistake of leaving equipment sitting around until it has no value whatsoever. By failing to remarket it, they are missing an opportunity to plough money back into the IT budget.

The market value of IT equipment, particularly enterprise servers, storage and high-end networking equipment, does not decline steadily but in large, irregular steps.

As soon as a company starts on a consolidation project, it should be looking to recoup some of its initial expenditure by remarketing.

The money gained can be used to move to the next generation of IT. By getting into the habit of remarketing equipment, companies can ease the financial progression to the latest systems and keep pace with technological change.

To make this happen, IT directors should work closely with their financial team to ensure that accounting policy is aligned with IT policy.

For example, it is no good if new IT systems are being written off in the books over five years when they reach the end of their useful life after three.

There are also environmental benefits in ensuring that IT is reused and not dumped. The UK is moving towards full adoption of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive.

Companies have an obligation under the legislation to dispose of their unwanted equipment correctly.

Furthermore, companies looking to upgrade their systems can buy affordable high-quality equipment which is readily available and has been tested in a live environment. Remarketed components are also cheaper, more available and more reliable.

By getting into the remarketing mindset with their IT, companies are not just proving themselves good environmental citizens, they are making excellent financial and technological sense.

Phil Reakes is managing director of SML.