Can You Cut Corporate Costs By Renting Your Office Equipment?

Anybody involved in procurement should be looking at the cost reducing benefits of renting over outright buying when it comes to ICT equipment and software.

Owning your own equipment brings with it many disadvantages that leasing doesn’t. When you own all of your hardware you’re best tracking its value and depreciation with depreciation software. The value goes down but you’re still required to declare it for tax and insurance, fixed asset management software can produce a detailed database of where everything is, how much it’s worth and the dates licenses expire, when they need servicing etc. but leasing from some-one else takes all that grind off your hands.

As well as giving you savings on outlay and initial investment, leasing future-proofs your office as you’re not stuck with outmoded equipment that you can’t get rid of should there be a shift in your requirements. If you need to find the money to put into a major change in your ICT activities then leasing can be a more sensible way of dealing with the cost than an outright purchase. The futureproof advantage comes when you can send the equipment back at the end of the fixed term and get a whole lot of new equipment without having to worry about disposal or resale of your old hardware.

Getting the newest hard and software put into your office isn’t solely about pride, refreshing your equipment means that you’ll be using the fastest running machines possible and you’ll always be ahead of the curve on developments and updates. One of the newest developments which shows how sensible renting is over outright purchase is the migration to the cloud that so many businesses are undergoing at the moment. If you’ve bought all your own data storage you’ll be loath to migrate over to the cloud as it’ll mean that you have rooms full of equipment that you don’t need and might have trouble getting rid of to anyone but a recycling company who’ll charge you for the pleasure of taking it away. If you had leased it all you’d do is wait for the rental period to end and send it back, then use your cab room for more productive equipment, say, a pool table or gym!

When you lease your contractor will have a lease management system which offers flexibility in strategy and purchasing. If your budget is set for you at the beginning of the year you might buy up some deals in April and find that you’ve no budget left for other contingencies you hadn’t foreseen. Leasing means that you’ll be able to rent the same equipment at the beginning of the year and still have money over for those contingencies as well as being able to return the unnecessary tools you thought you weren’t going to be able to live without a few months ago.