Don’t Messi Around, Grab a Bargain!

Lionel Messi has a contract release clause of £200m allegedly. He is still young...he has enough miles in him to justify the fee. And who wouldn’t pay to see the little maestro...as long as he isn’t plying his trade at Stamford Bridge at any rate.

My point is that everyone and everything has a price. And you can sell anything these days. We have eBay and other auction sites whilst Facebook is full of local selling pages. As long as your expectation is not too high I reckon you could offload most things if the price is right.

For me, the second hand market for electrical goods came as something of a surprise. I had never really thought about it I suppose. I am not gadget mad and my stuff tends to be with me until it dies a natural death. I only got a new TV when my huge, incredibly heavy year 2000 model failed to cope with wide screen broadcasting. I was watching football matches and never seeing the ball hit the back of the net. I did try but I literally could not give it away.

And I never thought of going for a second hand TV. Why would anyone replace a TV set that still worked and coped with wide screen sporting events? It did not compute. But I have to say my next computer will be second hand. I do not game. I do not download video or indeed music to my computer at home and I do not need loads of storage or memory. I like Facebook, I use Microsoft Word and Excel a lot, and I do a little light emailing at home. State of the art is therefore not that important to me, as long as the internet loads fairly rapidly.

Luckily for companies like eReco, other people are rather quicker on the uptake than me. Keeping costs down is important for small businesses and remarketed, refurbished equipment is one way to save some money. That is why old operating systems live on much longer than Bill Gates would probably like. Well, that and the fact that Windows 8 is an abomination of course. One hopes Windows 10 will be an improvement, but ones breath is not being held!

If you or anyone you know is looking for cost-effective options for your business, or indeed home, it makes sense to check out sites like www.ereco.co.uk in case we have what you need. You can pick up tested working kit for a fraction of the cost of new and if you get a year or two out of it you will be as pleased as punch, and a sustainability king (or queen) to boot.

Tulips from Amsterdam

Let me tell you a story. For anyone who remembers Max Bygraves, he was an entertainer of dubious merit in my opinion, but he was also infamous for being a bit tight with his money. Hence using his trade mark act-opening line is most appropriate. The following is a hypothetical lesson in why you cannot do what we do for free.

Let’s just say you are a multi-site operation with one big head office, a regional centre and a lot of satellites. All in all you have 200 printers and you are going to replace all of them from a new supplier. But that leaves you with 200 problems at the very least.

These 200 printers are not new. You do not know what condition they are in but you talk to those nice people at eReco, amongst others as this a well proper procurement job, and they point out that each one of those printers is a possible data nightmare. I must confess to sometimes being the bringer of sad tidings and this is one of those moments. Data safe means data safe.

Just about every printing device retains the last couple of jobs. Not all of them have a memory as such, in terms of a wipable or removable hard drive, but a reflection of the last jobs it did that can only be removed by a sort of tricky factory reset operation.

So, as this is a proper procurement job, with risk assessments and careers on the line, we are not going to risk any data breaches, therefore the job has to be done securely. And the satellite operations are quite literally all over the place. The logistics are a potential nightmare.

Pricing such a job takes about a day in all. The 200 printers are all different makes and models and we need to know how much they weigh, for transport purposes. We need to assess their remarketing value if they are in good condition. We need to know where they are. There are good reasons why I often fall asleep in front of the TV, the next instalment of this blog half-finished on my laptop...

And let me tell you something ladies and gentlemen, this job is not flipping FREE. You may have noticed that I don’t like that term when applied to offering our services. I have blogged about it several times before and I shall blog about it again. But in this instance, let me take you through some rule of thumb costing and see what you think.

Each one of our vehicles goes out with two men on board. Well, people if I am in a politically correct mood, which I rarely am, but I am making a special effort for everyone today. So the cost of running the van based on mileage and two salaries, because damn it all, we all expect to get paid. And our collections are always secure, so CRB checked personnel and experienced people, not minimum wage by any means. So basic costs of the van, the two people and the stuff needed to run all day is somewhere north of £500, but I will settle on that for the moment.

Having wrestled with the logistics, I work out that we have 6 van days. So there you have £3000 and we have not man-handled a printer yet...or is that people-handled? We are then going to do several thousands of miles getting round to all these offices, so there is a per mile charge to cover diesel and tolls and parking and maintenance and bacon rolls. Our people will not go anywhere without the promise of a spectacular bacon roll.

Then we have the weight of all these machines, which have to be loaded and unloaded, and tracked into our system, and be processed, cleaned, tested and, if possible, resold. Let me tell you that the final quotation is going to be about £12,000 or £60 a printer.

I have to say that is on the dear side. Our scenario is unusual in its multi-site nature and the geographic spread, but to get back to my point, how can anyone cover that for free? Even by cutting the corners on process, security and bacon rolls, you still have to do the mileage and move upwards of 4500 kilograms of kit.

If every printer is in good order, we reckon we could get £3,500 for them. That is £17.50 each. Scrap value would be barely £500, so the final figure will be somewhere in between. And still people are surprised that we want to charge them for our recycling services?

Yes this is an extreme case but we get one of these a month to quote on average. You cannot do things properly for free, as the actress said to the bishop.

Old Max was quite fond of the ladies too, as I remember.

To Cut a Long Story Short, I lost my Mind!

Spandau Ballet got me thinking.

We really overcomplicate life. It should be easy. All we need is a roof over our head, the means to heat it, enough food to eat and water to drink. The human race has turned that into a convoluted nightmare of education, work and endless responsibility. We end up worrying so much about our worthless lives that I wonder if running around in an animal skin with a spear in my hand mind not have been an altogether happier existence.

I wonder that most when someone tells me they don’t expect to pay for the IT recycling. Deeply illogical positions adopted by apparently sane people flummox me. I mean, if someone sits opposite you and says that the latest X Factor winner is a cross between Jesus and John Lennon, you are bound to be a bit bewildered. It’s not an easy thing to deal with.

We deal in waste. Essentially we are simply offering to remove something you have either replaced or broken. You have no further need of it and in this overly complicated world of ours you are legally required to dispose of it in certain ways, whilst ensuring that your data security is not compromised during the disposal process. Or to cut a long story short, to paraphrase Gary Kemp, you can’t just dump it.

How much is a piece of string? Second hand value is largely arbitrary. Look at eBay and you will get an idea. You might think you are throwing out the business silver, but try and remember why you replaced it in the first place. Do not overcomplicate what should be a simple decision.

You have an environmental responsibility.

You have to manage the risk of losing your data.

And you have to get the kit out of your way.

It’s not a difficult thing to do. Human beings have managed risk since time immemorial. If I run across this clearing after my prey, will something else eat me? If I let Maureen from accounts brother’s mate from the pub collect our old laptops, will my customer database end up in the hands of a master criminal?

As I said before, we have enough to worry about. Do you really have to worry about what happens to your kit after that nice man in the white van took it away for free? You have Ebola, Syria, Iran and North Korea to worry about, let alone the January transfer window, and now Adrian Chiles has been sacked by ITV. Who cares about landfill in Ghana, or child labour in Botswana?

The bloke in the white van sent me some paperwork. It will do, won’t it? I am pretty sure he wiped those hard disks before selling a pallet load of assorted PC’s to Abdul down the road. Maureen said he was a good bloke, always stands his round in The Dodgy Ferret, so he is not going to let me down is he?

Oh and look, he forgot to take those boxes of old keyboards, the three cracked monitors, that broken chair and the racking from the old server room. How am I going to get rid of that?

Face it; isn’t life complicated enough without making it more difficult?

Questions, questions? Give me no answers. That’s all they ever give me. Questions, questions. To cut a long story short, I lost my mind...

Words of Wisdom from the Youth of Today

Most businesses outsource some things. Most business owners recognise where their skills lie and choose to get someone else to do the bits they find difficult to manage. Toilet cleaning and office cleaning for instance. Network support. Even HR, credit control and marketing.

No business can do everything for themselves. So every business needs trusted partners who make all those nasty little problems go away. We all spend precious time agreeing SLA’s and wording contracts, but when it comes down to it we are looking for solutions. We want people who get their thing done and leave us to get on with our own thing.

Choosing a partner is always difficult. Everyone always talks a good game. I have done a fair bit of service and product procurement in my time, and it involves the same skills as recruitment and finally a leap of faith.

The trouble with IT recycling is the different audiences we service. At the IT Manager or Facilities Manager end of the spectrum, we solve problems. Dismantle and clear those desks, lift that barge and tote that bale...why of course sir, no problems. Normally we are loved and valued once we do some stuff.

However, at the very top, we are not providing a service, we are managing risk. 

These are big picture people and the big picture is a £500k fine or being named and shamed, watching the brand get kicked about like a football. At this level we have to sell the process, and exude confidence about data security.

Then in the middle is the budget holder, the bloke who is often tempted by a cheap price. He is blasé about the risk and unsympathetic about the excellence of our service, but he signs off the estimate and always represents the biggest hurdle.

And sometimes one person can be all three of these people, with all the conflicting pressures that involves. So it is sometimes hard to know which button to press. We are green, we are data secure and we are cost effective, but we are neither free nor cheap.

My son had an interesting and sweetly innocent view on this. Like all teenagers, he is seldom if ever interested in what I do for a living as long as he can scrounge a tenner whenever he wants. But recycling captured his interest, as did data security. And this is strange. My fifteen year old is more worried about data security than quite a lot of adults who should know better, because he thought he had got caught in a phishing scam and it bothered him.

Anyway, I digress. His view was that recycling was crucial. Kids seem to get sustainability. They are often attending an ECO school (did I tell you we are the official IT partner of Eco Schools? Thought not.) and they do some environmental stuff here and there, but also they are looking to be around a lot longer than us. The things we occasionally find a bit annoying they take in their stride, so they happily separate their rubbish (paper on the sofa, plastic on the floor and food waste...well not with a teenage boy in the house!).

He got the data stuff too but it was the recycling thing that got him engaged. He appreciated WEEE for what it is and felt quite strongly about keeping stuff out of landfill, and away from Africa. His naiveté only showed when he expressed surprise that businesses did not necessarily want to pay to recycle their redundant kit.

He considered it our duty, a cost of doing business, and it made sense to him to outsource the problems to someone like us who are experts in what we do. So there you go, you have been told by a member of the generation who will be managing our twilight years. Stop worrying about the costs and get eReco in to help you save the planet. My lad has big plans for it.

He also wants me to have a never-ending supply of tenners at his disposal...

Cry Freedom!

Perception is everything of course.

In IT recycling terms, once you perceive that what you are getting shot of is just waste, the problem tends to be simplified. Jane Taylor, eReco’s MD, and I discussed this at some length the other day. It would have been a coffee machine debate, but we don’t have one. Anyway, Jane said she had spent years trying to convince people it was not waste.

And from her perspective, she is right of course. We are in the business of extending life, of using the bits again, of remarketing and recycling. It is our green side, and it is important. Sustainability is important and we should never undermine that simple fact.

But that does not mean that we are dealing with incredibly valuable assets. We are not. We are dealing with the stuff a particular business does not want anymore, and in most cases that means quite old, well used or even broken kit.

I priced a job this morning. 300 kilograms of broken kit. Our customer knew it was rubbish. She knew there were some data bearing items, and she knew it was worth very little. And it was a real junk mountain. When we collect it tomorrow I am sure she will be glad to see the back of it. It was all done and dusted in a flurry of emails.

Another prospect had some PC’s. One 8 years old and one 4 years old, plus a few other bits and pieces. He was hoping he could get some money back. Really. Humming and hahing doesn’t do the process justice.

Do I blame someone for looking for the cheaper option? Not really. Well, obviously there is the sales part of me that hates losing any job, ever, but sometimes you have to be realistic. We operate nationally but small jobs in an area we do not go to regularly for anything else do sometimes get a bit wince-worthy. 

But it is the perception of value that annoys me.

My first ever work desk top was a 264k Dell. The iPhone 4 in my pocket is 8gb and that is now too small to take the latest Apple operating system without removing all my songs and apps. Time moves on, things become obsolete, and therefore this is waste.

We are disposing of ‘stuff’. In my not so humble opinion we have 3 things to think about: data security, sustainability and cost. People are blasé about the first one because they never think they will get caught out, a portion of society will always ignore sustainability and so we are just left with the third one.

Any person’s reaction to one of our quotes is directly related to their perceived value of the stuff they are disposing of. They do not think of what we have to do to their waste. They think any old supplier will deal with their data. All they think about is getting ripped off.

Or someone has offered to collect it for free. The assumption is that the value of the waste will pay for the collection and disposal.

So let’s think about free. Let’s think about what we have to do for free. Collection means a van, with diesel, a driver, a second driver, road tax, insurance. We send two guys for security purposes and to help load. I have done some back of an envelope calculations and I cannot see that costing less than £250 a day.

Then you have to have a warehouse and it has to be secure. In order to keep your data safe, security and process are important. We track every device from the moment we get it home. We give waste transfer notices when we collect, asset lists when we track it in and certificates of destruction for your data, as the law says we must. Yes, a lot of this is mostly automated but it still costs money to do.

Then we have to actually wipe the data. Man, time, paperwork. And only at this point do we really know if the kit is worth anything.

If it is not, the only way to make any money is not to do much of the above. You collect it and you sell it on to one of the many people who export used IT kit to other markets. £200 a pallet and sod the environment. But is the data safe? Do you get your paperwork? Is it going to come back and bite you on the proverbial?

So if someone offers you a free collection, ask yourself what costs he is going to cover with your old kit? It does not take a genius to work out the potential value. You know if it is a beaten up old Ford or a pristine, one driver BMW polished to a permanent shine.

Usually the only way to make ‘free’ pay is to cut corners on the service. And it’s the service you need in the end.