Some Highlights:
- Large global organizations typically have centralized or global compliance groups.
- An ITAD provider should provide a review of all the considerations and regulations in their client’s countries of operation.
- Parties involved in an RFP for global clients should include IT asset managers, procurement persons, data center guys, and environmental health & safety people.
- Compliance personnel from both sides should review and agree on relevant certifications to alleviate concerns.
- A good ITAD provider should stay on top of upcoming legislation and suggest proactive solutions to customers.
Todd’s assessment:
Todd Zegers,
President & CEO
Circular Integrity
info@CircularIntegrity.com
(949)346-1683
I think from the corporate side, talking about large global organizations, almost all those guys are going to have some sort of centralized or global compliance group. Maybe they’ve got an associate or resource in every country or every region to help understand that. What I would tell you is that in my opinion, when a good ITAD provider onboard you as a client, they should say, “OK, here’s your nine countries of operation, here are all the things and considerations in the world of ITAD that are going to apply to your business.” They should never expect their IT manager to understand all those compliance and complexities and regulations in those countries because it’s typically pretty vast and a lot of things we do in the ITAD world is tucked away and buried, so you need to have some tribal knowledge to do that. When you sit down in an RFP and try to win a large piece of a global client, you’re going to talk to the IT asset manager, the procurement person is going to be in the room, the data center guy is always in there but he always kind of runs his own ship. You’re going to have an environmental health and safety person in there, which may be part of compliance as well. So, typically heavily in that RFP or even once you’ve won that the onboarding process, the person from the ITAD business that runs compliance for the ITAD vendor will typically partner up with those compliance people on the client side, and review those, and make sure that they agree with everything that they’re trying to address. And again, if they’re using a partner in that country, making sure they are clearly conveying that partner’s capabilities and certifications that are relevant, that are going to alleviate the concerns of that end-user for doing ITAD services in those countries.
I think the other thing is a good ITAD provider, whether they’re US based, who uses global partners, they’re going to stay on top of upcoming legislation and new things that are coming out. So it’s the ITAD providers’ job, in my opinion, as a value added partner to be constantly telling those customers, hey, this just came out, this applies to your case, this is about to come out, we need to get ahead of this and think about how this may impact how we do business together. You don’t want to address the problem after the fact. You want to be a proactive consultant to help them out.
