If you are a business owner or senior manager at a medium or large corporation, you are probably involved in one way or another with the procurement and disposal of your IT assets such as laptops, desktop computers, monitors, printers, routers, hubs, wireless devices, mobile phones, servers, telephony and networking gear.

These technology devices have become so pervasive in our daily business lives, even handymen, plumbers, electricians, dentists, doctors, real estate professionals have websites and a computing footprint. No matter what the industry or business, or size of the revenue generation, we all require some level of technology to remain competitive in our respective marketplaces.

How often we upgrade differs from company to company and industry to industry and country to country. Not too long ago in our own presidential elections, Twitter and social networking sites were used in the election monitoring process just as when the Sichuan provence had an earthquake, it was first reported via Twitter and other social networking sites rather than the traditional news networks.

Why is this important? When technology becomes this pervasive it also becomes mandatory for use not only in our personal lives but in our business lives as well. Ensuring your business is at the top of its game with the latest technology is not an inexpensive proposition.

In the current recession, companies that can stay alive have done so by cutting back services, lay offs and not upgrading in their normal cycles. The chickens will come home to roost very soon. Business-minded individuals cannot rest when it comes to technology refresh. They must refresh to stay competitive, and when the economy does pick up hiring new people will enable new technology refresh. This is when there is great opportunity to liquidate the old technology or to attempt to gain a higher value back by planning and managing the re-sale event.

What does a Liquidation event get you? In most cases you may call in a liquidation specialist who uses formulas to calculate the value of your equipment. There is a well known variable formula, and I say variable because it uses such functions as Yield and Transportation but it goes like this:

Retail value $500
Multiplier as low as 50% and high as 75%, $250- $375
Then Mutiply by the Yield (depends upon the commodity but the range is 50-85% for $125-$318
Then divide by 2, range = $62 – $174
Minus Transport, again a range 10%-25%, $46 –$157
A $500 valued product will get you between $46 – $157 a 9% -30% range from high to low.

Treating these assets as a recovery project as opposed to a liquidation event can reap you higher returns for merchandise that is in good working order, even used. The above calculations take into account only the current market value, not the price you originally paid for the items; so that $500 item could be a three year old server for which you paid $3500.

Planning the sale of the asset can focus your efforts on real buyers who are looking for a bargain not a steal. They might prefer to purchase the asset from you for $350 because the current market value is $500 this is a 70% return as compared to 30% (at it’s highest) for the liquidation event. You can get as much as double the return in a planned resale event versus liquidation and 5 to 7 times as much as the worst case event.

To learn more about planning best practices, visit http://www.servoterra.com/seller/?id=b0724

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