Scary Stuff! Ghost assets, overprovisioning and fees paid on retired IT assets adding unnecessary costs
Troy, Mich.---June 5, 2023---Laptops, monitors and keyboards, oh
my! Where does all that technology equipment go - and how does it get from
Point A to Point B and back safely, securely and accounted for when employees work
offsite, return to the office, or leave the company entirely? Re-Source Partners,
a Michigan-based IT asset management services firm providing national and
global companies with a variety of IT asset deployment, warehousing, imaging
and disposal services throughout the asset lifecycle, puts a priority on
helping large organizations figure that out.
Re-Source Partners, recently awarded the Ally Financial 2023 Technology Partner of the Year award, processes IT assets for Fortune 1000 companies, handling the process from start to finish while always implementing and monitoring robust security measures to keep data secure. Along the way, it’s not uncommon to uncover the existence of so-called ghost assets: IT hardware that is reported in the books but isn’t actually ‘there’. These ghost assets are expensive, according to Re-Source President Mike Loria.
“It’s a bit of an IT asset treasure hunt. Our life cycle process helped find and deploy hundreds of thousands of dollars in ghost assets for one company and reduced another’s maintenance fees by a similar amount by identifying retired equipment with active maintenance and licensing contracts that were still being paid,” Loria said. “The uncovering of ghost assets is a common situation for us when new clients come on board and the amount of money in saved fees alone merit an IT asset review.”
In addition to ghost assets, Loria adds that
overprovisioning or incorrect shipping of IT assets is also a common problem.
“In our experience, 3% to 5% of IT assets that companies order never arrive, while 3% to 5% arrive, but are not what the company ordered. That can be a discrepancy of up to 10%. And is all that technology really needed? When a company ‘finds’ 500 laptops in a storage room, it doesn’t mean they were lost. They were just never properly accounted for – and likely never needed,” Loria said. “If a company’s annual technology budget is $50 million, what may seem like a small percentage discrepancy translates into $1.5 million to $2.5 million in laptops, keyboards, headsets and other hardware that was paid for but never received—or received but never utilized by employees.”
With workplaces continually in transition, Loria affirms the importance of reclaiming IT equipment from remote employees—which has reported reclaim rates as low as 32%. As a result, Re-Source Partners launched Office
in a Box in 2022 to alleviate the difficulty employers may otherwise
experience in deploying and recouping their assets. Office in a Box expedites the process of deployment and return—all from a securely packaged, custom-designed box of IT equipment based on the client’s requirements. To date, Re-Source Partners has processed more than 3,000 Office in a Box transactions for
its largest client, with a number of other clients also participating in the
program. In addition to convenience, Office in a Box reduces client freight
costs and environmental impact from using one box instead of several and offers
companies the ability to reclaim their investment while safeguarding against
data breeches and trade secret theft.
“An interesting aspect of Office in a Box is that we are increasingly fielding queries about it from human resource professionals. Portable tech has gone beyond the realm of traditional IT as HR juggles new challenges in employee onboarding, re-boarding and signing off permanently following big company buyouts,” Loria said.
About Re-Source
Partners
Celebrating more
than 20 years in business and named the Ally Financial 2023 Technology
Partner of the Year, Re-Source Partners is the industry leader in
integrated IT asset management solutions, offering customized, end-to-end ITAM
lifecycle services to optimize the digital transformation of IT assets. From
acquisition to disposition of hard and soft technology assets, we deliver the
value and results necessary to maximize service, security, and compliance at
each stage in the hardware management lifecycle. Re-Sourceful. Re-Liable.
Re-Lentless. Re-Source Partners is guided by our commitment to client success and
continuous technology innovation, performance accountability and transparency.
Learn more at our website.
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