IT Lifecycle & Logistics
Hardware costs the most attention at the beginning and the end of its life. We take on procurement, staging, storage, rollout, swaps and certified disposal, so your team does not spend its weeks unboxing laptops.
The cost of a laptop is not the invoice
A device is bought once and handled a dozen times: unpacked, imaged, labelled, registered, delivered, collected on departure, wiped and disposed of. Every one of those steps takes time from people you hired for something else, and every step that is skipped comes back later as an unregistered device or a disk that leaves the building with data still on it.
We take that chain off your hands as one service. Devices come in at our staging location, are prepared according to your image and your naming convention, are registered in your asset administration and are then delivered to the right site or the right home address, ready to use.
This makes sense when you run several sites, when you onboard and offboard people regularly, or when a refresh of a few hundred devices is coming up. Buying ten laptops a year and handling them yourself? Then this is more machinery than you need, and we will say so.
What we take on
- Procurement independent of brand. We buy what suits your situation. We are not tied to one manufacturer, so the advice is not a sales channel.
- Staging and imaging. Devices arrive with your image, your software, your settings and your label, ready to hand over.
- Warehousing and buffer stock. An agreed buffer on the shelf, so a new starter does not wait three weeks for a laptop.
- Rollout across sites. Delivery to your locations or straight to a home address, planned so the work floor loses as little time as possible.
- Swap and repair handling. A defective device is exchanged from stock and the repair runs through us, instead of the user chasing a supplier.
- Complete workstations. Not just the laptop: docking stations, monitors, keyboards and mice, delivered and installed as one working desk.
- Certified disposal. Data destroyed to standard with a certificate, and equipment reused or recycled where it can be.
IT asset management for SMEs
At thirty to a hundred devices there is no lifecycle process, but there is a lifecycle. Devices are replaced when they break, old laptops disappear into a cupboard because nobody knows whether there is still data on them, and nobody can say how many are in circulation.
Little effort is needed to put that right: a list of what exists, a fixed moment at which replacement comes up, and a disposal route with a statement attached. That makes replacement plannable and clears out the cupboard whose contents are a liability.
- Knowing what is in circulation A current list per user and serial number, including what is sitting in the cupboard.
- Replacing before it breaks A fixed moment per device instead of replacement at the point where somebody is already stuck.
- Disposal with a statement Certified wiped and disposed of, so old data does not end up with a second-hand buyer.
- Residual value returned Devices with value are taken back and settled rather than written off and stored.
IT lifecycle for enterprise organisations
With thousands of devices across several countries, lifecycle is a logistics process with an administration attached. What sits where, who uses it, when the warranty ends, which site is due when, and how you demonstrate that a disposed device was genuinely wiped.
We run that as one chain with one administration, even where the sites are in different countries. Purchasing, preparing, rolling out, taking back and disposing, with a record per step that can be checked afterwards.
- One administration across countries The same records for every site, so a report does not have to come out of four spreadsheets.
- Prepared before it ships Devices arrive configured and enrolled, so nothing remains to be done on site.
- Taken back when someone leaves A fixed return process including wiping and redeployment, instead of a device that goes missing.
- Evidence per device A wipe statement per serial number, usable in an audit and in a discussion about liability.
One chain from order to certificate
The same route for every device, so the administration stays in step with reality.
Standards and stock
We agree which models you standardise on and what buffer we hold. That is what makes delivery times predictable.
Order and staging
On an order we prepare the device: image, software, settings, label and registration in your asset administration.
Delivery and start
Delivery to the site or the home address, with a start-up moment for the user if you want it, so day one is not lost to setup.
Return and disposal
On departure or replacement we collect the device, wipe it to standard and you receive the certificate of destruction.
An administration that matches what is actually out there
Lifecycle management stands or falls with knowing where every device is. These are the components you get.
- Asset administration kept currentEvery device registered with owner, location, serial number and warranty status, updated at every handling.
- Agreed delivery timesA device from stock within a set number of working days, recorded in the SLA instead of estimated per case.
- One image, every siteThe same configuration everywhere, so support does not have to ask which build someone is running.
- Buffer stock on the shelfAn agreed number of spare devices, so a broken laptop is a swap rather than a purchase.
- Certificate of data destructionPer device, so you can demonstrate what happened to the data on it.
- Reuse where it is possibleEquipment with life left in it goes back into circulation or is sold on, with the proceeds settled.
- Reporting per quarterWhat came in, what went out, what is in stock and which part of your estate is due for replacement.
- Secure transportSealed and tracked between our location and yours, including for devices still holding data.
A replacement round is a planning problem, not a purchasing problem
Buying three hundred laptops is the easy part. Getting them into the hands of three hundred people without their work stopping is where a refresh actually succeeds or fails.
- Planned by group, not by buildingWe roll out per team and per shift, so a department is never without equipment all at once.
- Prepared before it arrivesEvery device is complete before it leaves our location. Nothing is configured at the desk of a waiting colleague.
- The old device goes back the same daySwap on the spot, old equipment straight into secure transport. That prevents drawers full of untracked hardware.
- Data intact, verifiablyProfile and files migrated and checked with the user before the old device leaves.
What this connects to
Hardware is one link. These services take care of what runs on it and around it.
Questions we get about this
The ones that come up most, answered briefly.
Why would I outsource this?
Because the cost of a laptop is not the invoice. Ordering, preparing, rolling out, replacing and disposing with certification takes time from people you would rather deploy elsewhere, and it goes wrong at the handovers. One chain from order to certificate removes those handovers.
Do you know what we actually have in use?
That is half the work. We keep records that match what is actually in use, including where it is and when it is due for replacement. Without that overview a refresh is a guess and an audit is a search.
How do you plan a replacement round?
As a planning question and not a purchasing question. We look at the age of what is there, at when it affects your organisation least, and at what can be done at the same time. That stops half a department having to set up new equipment in one week.
Do we get proof of disposal?
Yes. Equipment going out is wiped according to the rules and disposed of with certification, and you get the certificate. You need that to show the data is gone, for instance during an audit or under NIS2.
What happens to the data on devices being disposed of?
It is erased using a fixed method, and you get a certificate per device with the serial number on it. Drives that cannot be erased reliably are physically destroyed. That certificate is not a formality: in an audit it is the proof that a departed colleague’s laptop was not resold second-hand with the mailbox still on it.
Do we get residual value back for old equipment?
Where there is any, yes, and we settle it rather than keeping it. Three-year-old business laptops still have value, servers usually less, and equipment old enough to have stopped receiving security updates has none. We say which category it is up front, so you are not counting on a return that will not come.
Do you track which device sits with whom?
Yes, and this is the part most organisations get stuck on. The register holds, per device, the serial number, who has it, when it was issued, when the warranty ends and when it is due for replacement. That tells you what has to come back when a colleague leaves, and shows you a year ahead how many devices need replacing instead of it being a surprise.
Deeper into this subject
Pages that work out a single question from this service.
Our own certifications
ITproposal is certified for ISO 9001 (quality), ISO/IEC 27001 (information security), ISO 14001 (environment) and Kiwa NEN 4400-1 (labour hire and secondment). That says something about how we work and how we have our own processes assessed; it is not a certification you inherit from us.
Stop unboxing laptops
In a half-hour conversation we work out how many devices you handle per year and what that costs you in hours. After that you know whether outsourcing the chain is worthwhile.
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