Leasing IT Equipment

[DanTheLacky]

Hi all,

I have been tasked with looking into the pricing of leasing IT equipment instead of buying outright. Do any of you do this? If so can you advise a company and also let me know of any positives / negatives to do with leasing. I very much doubt we will go down this avenue due to financial restraints but, doing as I have been asked none the less.

 

We are looking at mainly:

Desktops,

Laptops,

Projectors.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Edit:

In case anyone was wondering we have roughly 400 Desktops, 300 laptops, 80 projectors and 50 printers (hopefully to be replaced by photocopiers soon).

Edited September 5, 2016 by DanTheLacky

[njc235]

Talk to Deb or Chris at Axis Leasing. They specialise in Education leasing. 01269 844 442

[mikeprice]

I have been involved in this - to some extent

 

I suggest that you produce a cost over 5 years - and include predicted failure

 

don't forget to include fixes for damage to leased equipment - I have had problem in the past with leased equipment not being repaired as per contract because it was deamed to be caused by misuse by kids

problem we had was with multiple damaged laptop keyboards and a few laptop screens with fist sized patterns in them (and one foot)

[Net-Ctrl]

Hello, depending on what you're looking at we may be able to assist with providing different financing options.

[pete]

We lease desktops and have done now for several years. We don't lease laptops (accidental damage is too easy).

 

Leasing companies we've used successfully include CHG Meridian, Econocom and HP Financial Services. In terms of service and going above-and-beyond I'd pick CHG out of that lot, but if you're leasing HP kit, HPFS shouldn't be able to be beaten.

 

Pros:

 

IT expenditure year-on-year is easier to plan for.

Hardware gets refreshed in a timely manner.

 

Cons:

 

It's a bit more expensive in total. It may not be if you factor into the opportunity cost of less disruption because the hardware's more reliable.

Paperwork takes roughly twice as long (extra company involved, more back-and-forth for signatures) and this needs to be remembered if trying to purchase against a time-limited offer.

 

When shipping equipment back, inspect how the courier is planning to do it. If they don't have appropriate packaging, document that (take a few photos of the inside of the van) and proactively inform the leasing company.

[Fazza]

Make sure any kit you lease has maintenance/warranty on it else once the manufacturers warranty runs out you will end up still leasing faulty kit you are unable to use!

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

Hi @DanTheLacky,

 

I'd also be delighted to help run you through this. We do the quote for the kit, Leasing company turns that into a leasing option with payments detailed (you can get pretty accurate costs immediately), Forms signed off and all costs agreed, Leasing company sends us the PO, We deliver the kit to you, You confirm that to the leasing company.

 

Options exist at the end of a lease to continue renting, refresh with new kit or have the devices collected. Over the summer the costs were very low despite Brexit and over a 3 year period tended to work out 5-8% cheaper than buying outright (but you give the kit back at the end so no resale value for you).

 

Leasing this way is a great way of freeing up capital expense, planning for refreshes, keeping kit up-to-date and moving your ICT budget for this into an Operating expense borne by the organisation.

 

Happy to help, PM me if needed.

Best,

Col

[pete]

Make sure any kit you lease has maintenance/warranty on it else once the manufacturers warranty runs out you will end up still leasing faulty kit you are unable to use!

 

Our lease terms have always been "kit needs to be under warranty for the duration of the lease". I think that's standard for non-shady outfits.

Edited September 8, 2016 by pete

[DanTheLacky]

Thanks everyone, much appreciated.

[Brad_Sarge]

The school I work at leases everything (Desktops, Laptops, Servers, projectors EVERYTHING!) sometimes it can be a pain but you can save a little money. I believe the school IT manager came to some sort of agreement through softcat. Hope that helps.

[mukz]

Myself and our school do not least anything whatsoever bar photocopiers. We buy refurbed kit every 2 years and save a hell of a lot of money.

[mikeprice]

BTW - I used to be at a school who leased the printers. Part of the terms of the lease was to only use genuine HP toner - the price difference made the deal a bit of a problem. It seems better to own these and then be able to get cheaper toner - -then be prepared to replace them every few years.

[HPlum78]

I have done this in recent years with Econocom and HP Financial Services as mentioned above, and again also mentioned above insisted that the kit have a warranty that also covered off accidental damage and the like for the term of the lease. Yes you will overall spend a little more than outright purchased kit but when you start to take in the cost of disposal at the end and all the other bits its not all that bad (assuming you all follow the law on disposal!) being able to add kit to the lease when needed and also have the option of if the kit is in good shape by the end of the 3/5/.... years to extend the lease for a minimal cost it all starts to look pretty good. There are downsides like never owning the kit and having to seek approval to upgrade and the likes but none that are insurmountable. Talk to Dave Castle (0845 345 8340) at EE he made the process extremely easy and took care of everything with about 2 mails and a telephone call, also did the cost break down between the leasing and buying options and all that jazz so that I could present that to SLT!

[mikeprice]

Surely cost of disposal is minimal - I have several contacts that pick it up for free??

[HPlum78]

It depends on your information security policy, that can change how much disposal costs. You can like you say just get shot of them and people will pick them up for you or if you implement a policy around information then HDD's have to be removed and destroyed and if you guys don't get paid for the removal of your old IT gear then I suppose you can get it done for "free" (or are we classing staff costs as sunk cost and its just part of running IT?) even then its a cost! Was just drawing out all IT infrastructure has a lifecycle not just a fire and forget activity.

[mikeprice]

The people I am talking about guarantee to destroy all hard drives - and give a certificate to show that it has been done

 

Obviously I also delete all data anyway using appropriate utilities (i.e. not just delete the files or format it) - but they still do it for free

[Fazza]

The people I am talking about guarantee to destroy all hard drives

 

Some of our Teachers are very good at doing that!

 

 

Never leased any IT equipment myself but one of our schools did and it was a right mess so good that you're asking advice on here which I'm sure will be useful for anyone thinking about leasing in the future.

[pantscat]

In my last school-based role I leased all of the hardware.

In a nutshell, the school IT was chronically underfunded, all the kit, and I mean pretty much ALL of it wasn't fit for purpose, and so I had to find a way to make a huge capital investment palatable. After showing SMT the figure they needed to invest to get everything up to scratch, the leasing figures seemed much more reasonable. It was also a fairly good way of guaranteeing future investment in IT - the threat of the all the kit being taken away if the money wasn't made available seemed to do the trick quite nicely.

 

I used Econocom for leasing, and found them to be pretty competitive, they were certainly very easy to deal with and had no issues returning kit. In some cases, depending upon what kit was being purchased, and the terms of the lease, it was cheaper than purchasing outright (assuming you'd replace the kit after 3 years).

 

Oh, and check the terms of the lease for what would happen if you decide you want to retain ownership of the kit... costs vary depending upon the residual value and the deal you negotiate.

 

One thing I would say is that you have to make sure your record keeping is spot-on, as kit moves around and you need to keep a track of it so that returns are as painless as possible.

 

Happy to answer any other questions.

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi there, we offer a rental only model, which can be attractive when compared to the challenges of arranging leases in the education environment. We also offer traditional leasing, but find the rental model becoming more popular,

 

If you would like more info, drop me a line,

 

regards

 

Lee