Ingram Micro’s Asset Disposition Services Help Partners Take Out The Recycling

Ingram Micro is starting to see more and more partners come to the distributor because they don’t have the resources to perform IT asset disposition in-house.

As data security is of the utmost importance to any partner, Ingram Micro wants to make sure that data is secure when an electronic device is at the end of its life cycle.

“The number of devices in today’s world that capture and store data is like never before, and that’s not going to slow down anytime soon,” said Todd Zegers, global vice president of IT asset disposition and reverse logistics at Ingram Micro. “Using a reputable partner to do this type of work where we’re going to scrub everything, we’re going to capture everything and we’re going to erase everything and certify or physically destroy it, it’s probably more important than ever before.”

With its IT asset disposition offering, Ingram Micro offers cradle-to-grave services for its partners and their end customers to make sure no data gets leaked when their devices are recycled.

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And Ingram Micro is starting to see more and more partners come to the distributor because they don’t have the operations to perform such services in-house.

“They don’t have trucks, they don’t have the processing equipment, they don’t have the capability to do refurbishing and remanufacturing and reselling those devices,” Zegers said. “We’re really plugging in nicely as an end-to-end distributor for these partners who don’t have the capabilities.”

But first, it starts with security.

“That’s actually first and foremost,” he said. “Making sure when a client is disposing of equipment, whether the data is erased or shredded on-site by one of our shredding machines, that’s really important. But [so is]capturing serial numbers of data-bearing devices on-site.”

This is key so that when materials arrive back at the warehouse they’re rescanned and verified to make sure nothing was lost or stolen during transit.

Another benefit is the remarketing value. Zegers said 65 percent of what is brought in is refurbished and resold to secondary markets. A portion of those proceeds go back to the customer to o­ set fees for the services.

The third benefit is e-cycling.

“We have to track [items] all the way back into the manufacturing stream,” he said. “We could tell a customer at any point in time where the plastic from their materials went.”

Ingram Micro has a large footprint when it comes to IT asset disposition. If a customer is in a country where Ingram Micro doesn’t have a presence, it will set up best-in-class partners for that customer, he said.

Adam Kaye, senior program manager of asset recovery at Somerset, N.J.-based solution provider SHI International, said the appeal of Ingram Micro and its asset disposition services is its global presence.

“It’s being able to o­ er our customers a one-stop shop, whether they have a location in California, New Jersey, Australia or Japan,” he said.

Ingram Micro’s remarketing network is also beneficial to SHI as is the number of different sales channels it uses to maximize the reselling of the equipment, according to Kaye.

Using the services has an economic impact on partners as well. For SHI, it’s a unique service that it can o­ er to customers.

“It’s as simple as any hardware customer of SHI’s,” he said. “It gives us an easy follow-up question of, ‘What are you replacing? What are you doing with the old stu­ ?’ So it’s only a positive program financially.”

Jason Taylor, president of Cleveland-based MSP MCPc, said the company is also harnessing a holistic life-cycle management approach to recycling IT assets from cradle to grave.

“We wanted to be able to do the recycling ourselves. Ingram, specifically Todd [Zegers], was very open-minded to us creating a franchise-like relationship with them where it’s MCPc-based employees but we’re using Ingram’s software platform and process,” he said. “When it’s a local customer [their electronics] go to an MCPc facility and we do everything cradle to grave.”