Risk, Reputation & ESG: Why ITAD Metrics Matter More Than Ever
Casey Dingfelder, EVP of ITAD
ITAD has always been about managing risk. What’s changing is how many people within an organization are paying attention to it and how much proof they expect to see.
At ITAD Summit, I had the opportunity to join a panel on Risk, Reputation & ESG: Why Boards Will Demand ITAD Metrics. We covered a lot of ground, but I took away four themes that I believe will become increasingly important for enterprise ITAD programs.
The metrics that matter most are the ones that help customers understand the impact of their ITAD program.
ITAD is an enterprise risk conversation
ITAD decisions can impact data security, compliance, sustainability, financial recovery and an organization’s reputation.
The panel discussed how that brings more stakeholders into the conversation. Procurement and IT asset management are closely involved with the day-to-day management of the program, but security, legal, risk and sustainability teams all have a reason to care about what happens to retired technology.
For ITAD providers, the responsibility is to give those stakeholders confidence in how assets are being managed.
Reporting is moving from “show me” to “prove it”
In my time at Dynamic, I’ve seen reporting expectations evolve significantly.
As I talked about during the session, we started including sustainability metrics in quarterly business reviews with our customers several years ago. We would sometimes see customers take that one slide and share it directly with their boards.
Today, the questions go deeper.
How was the number calculated? Can it be audited? Can the organization confidently stand behind it?
The panel agreed that the key to sustainability metrics going forward is being able to show your work and prove the metric.
That matters even more as sustainability reporting becomes more standardized and more closely tied to compliance and risk. Providing meaningful metrics is important. Providing the data and methodology to support them is becoming just as important.
Chain of custody starts before assets leave your facility
One of my biggest takeaways from the discussion was how closely reporting and execution are connected.
At Dynamic, we think about chain of custody by trying to answer two questions: “What did the customer send to us and what did we do with it?”
Those questions sound simple, but answering them requires strong processes throughout the disposition lifecycle.
We’ve seen more customers require onsite asset tracking over the years. Establishing visibility from the beginning creates a stronger chain of custody through final disposition and better information to support security, compliance and reporting.
The future of ITAD depends on connected, trustworthy data
Data was a recurring theme throughout the panel, and I believe it will be one of the biggest differentiators for ITAD providers moving forward.
The information must be accurate and auditable, but it also needs to be useful. That includes data tied to chain of custody, asset recovery, recycling outcomes, reuse and sustainability reporting.
The panel also discussed how organizations are looking more closely at environmental impact and material recovery. As those expectations grow, the quality of the underlying ITAD data becomes even more important.
That’s one reason we’ve invested heavily in APIs and our new ServiceNow app at Dynamic. Customers increasingly want disposition information flowing into the systems they already use rather than relying on spreadsheets and manual data transfers.
As ITAD becomes more connected to enterprise risk, compliance and ESG reporting, the quality and accessibility of that data will only become more important. We need to execute the process correctly and give customers the data to prove it.
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