Over 50% of IT managers renew all or part of their IT assets every three years. However, between programmed obsolescence, loss of performance and replacement costs, it is not easy to determine the most profitable approach for the company.
We have selected a number of criteria that should allow you to implement an effective strategy to renew your technological equipment. They are as follows :
Keep your equipment in working order
Most manufacturers offer a three-year warranty on IT equipment. Beyond this period, machine support is no longer guaranteed. This can not only cause spare parts delivery problems, but also software update problems. This de facto hampers the productivity of your employees.
Arbitrate between updates and technological progress
IT equipment that is four years or older significantly slows down productivity because, as described above, it no longer supports the latest versions of operating systems, software or antivirus programs. This means that your frustration of your employees will be proportional to the slow response time of your IT equipment.
Technological developments are accelerating the needs, especially in terms of performance.
For example: data storage is no longer as it was 2 or even 5 years ago: remote servers cheaply replacing individual high-capacity hard drives.
Safety first
Guaranteeing the security of your computer equipment is a major task.
This obviously depends on the network architecture chosen by the company but also on the ability of the IT department to anticipate certain risks that may arise, for example and among other things, from the very fashionable BYOD trend (Bring Your Own Device). At first sight, this trend may seem like an advantage for the company (cost reduction, flexibility…), but it can also be harmful (data security, interference with apps, data recovery, loss of equipment…).
No company is immune to incidents or negligence. Ensuring business continuity in the event of an incident or breakdown must therefore be the priority of every IT Director.
Unfortunately, it appears that it is only after a major disaster or loss of data that many companies begin to have serious concerns about the security of their computer equipment.
Focus on preventive maintenance
To extend the life of your equipment, it is important to carry out regular preventive maintenance. To do this, it is essential to check the expiry dates of each warranty.
Regular maintenance also makes it possible to avoid many unexpected breakdowns or incidents, which can lead to a downtime whose duration could be detrimental to the company.
Anticipating the evolution of user needs
The IT department cannot afford to have a heterogeneous hardware, often due to the gradual acquisition of dozens of different solutions for everyone’s comfort.
It is therefore a question of choosing and identifying alternatives that are manageable in the long term depending on the needs and professions of the different users.
Taking into account the cost of use instead of the purchase price
Changing hardware involves hidden costs that are often underestimated: data recovery, time to configure the new device and adapting the user to it, etc.
A Gartner study would show that regularly modernization of a company’s IT equipment would reduce its cost price by more than 15%.
The frequency of change obviously depends on the needs of the users: a graphic designer, engineer or architect will need more power to run more demanding software. They will therefore change equipment more often than an administrative employee using exclusively an office suite.
The right question is: “how long does it take for the user to lose productivity? »
It is at this stage that the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) becomes important: you should therefore not forget that the intrinsic purchase price of the equipment is not the only cost to be taken into account, but also all hidden costs linked to the installation of the equipment (swap), breakdowns and start-up errors.
Smooth the costs thanks to evolutionary leasing
In order to regularly replace your technological equipment, evolutionary leasing has more than one asset on hand:
- a linear, constant and predictable budget for the CFO,
- more time and better performance for the IT Director,
- functional and the latest generation of equipment for the users…
Thanks to evolutionary leasing, you can benefit from this flexibility !