200 Unused Laptops in Storage: How IT Departments End Up Buying Excess Equipment

Today's economic climate is pushing companies to take a hard look at how they handle IT purchasing. According to industry reports, even as IT budgets grow in 2025, companies are determined not to waste money. The last decade has been a clear lesson in how easily spending can spiral out of control.

Companies are spending millions on IT equipment and software licenses, but it's not uncommon for half of those assets to get lost in a storage closet or for different departments to buy the same things without realizing it. 

My name is Evgenia Asoskova, and I'm the Product Owner for SimpleOne ITAM. In this article, I want to talk about how modern ITAM systems can help you build a transparent and manageable procurement process.

What IT Procurement Looks Like Without a Systemic Approach

IT procurement involves purchasing equipment, software licenses, and everything else the IT department needs to keep the business running. But unlike other kinds of purchasing, IT has its own unique challenges: the scale of spending on IT infrastructure can run into the millions, and it requires deep technical expertise. You have to buy specific equipment with specific parameters. Otherwise, a server might not have enough power, or a new system might not be compatible with the rest of the infrastructure.

Without a systematic approach, planning and buying things can quickly turn into chaos:

• No one has any idea how much spare equipment is just sitting in a warehouse;
• The people in charge of buying end up ordering way too much of the same thing;
• Purchases drag on for months because of long approval chains and last-minute changes to order volumes;
• The budget is spent in fits and starts, often with a mad dash to "use it or lose it" at the end of the year.
• Expensive equipment sits idle because you're missing a cheaper component needed to make it work.

Let's dig into why this happens.

Why IT Procurement Becomes Such a Headache

Any company, especially a large one with many different departments, is likely to run into a set of common problems that make buying IT equipment a real challenge.

Budgets are shrinking, but scrutiny is growing

This year has been tough for many organizations. Companies are tightening their belts on project budgets and cutting back on investments. In this environment, the task of optimizing procurement costs becomes critical. You need to be able to explain what your expenses are, why you need this specific equipment in this specific quantity, and always be on the lookout for ways to cut costs.

In the past, you might have been able to plan your budget with a bit of a cushion. That luxury is gone. Now, every single purchase has to be justified.

You're planning based on guesses, not on data

Too often, procurement is based on a simple formula: "last year's budget + a percentage for new hires." This immediately raises a lot of questions. Is everything purchased last year still relevant? Should some of that equipment be replaced with more powerful models? Maybe some of these items won't be needed at all this year. Are there cheaper, more available alternatives we should be looking at?

Another major blind spot is not knowing what you already have. A company might be buying brand-new equipment while perfectly good assets are collecting dust in a storage room. How many of them are there? How long have they been sitting there? Were past purchases even justified?

The mad dash to buy a year's worth of gear at once reduces planning accuracy

Procurement often happens in specific periods, when contracts are active. Figuring out what everyone actually needs is usually a manual process, involving surveys and endless email chains. The buyers are under a time crunch to process a mountain of information: they have to create a list, get cost estimates, and then run it all by the CFO and various department heads for approval.

When budgets are tight, a twisted logic often takes over: "We have to spend the whole budget now, or they'll cut it next year." This leads to a frantic scramble to buy anything and everything, often with a "just in case" surplus. But is all of it really necessary? Where is it going to be used? Who is it for?

The IT department is left out of the planning loop

In many companies, the procurement team and the IT team are in two different worlds. This means that the equipment and licenses the IT department actually needs don't always make it onto the final shopping list. The procurement team creates the lists and gets the approvals, and the IT director might only get a final look to sign off on it. But at that point, how much can they really influence the plan? It's the IT team that will have to live with and manage the equipment that's purchased.

This creates a huge information gap. The IT specialists know the technical specs, what's compatible, and which models are current. The buyers know the procedures, the suppliers, and the prices. When these two teams don't coordinate, the company ends up buying the wrong things, or the right things in the wrong amounts.

The unique challenges of buying IT equipment complicate the process

IT equipment is complicated stuff. For example, a server might need exactly 2-terabyte hard drives, and you can't just get 1-terabyte ones to save a little money, because it won't have the performance it needs. The technical details are critical for the health of your entire infrastructure. The hard part is clearly communicating these technical specs to the buyers and making sure you get back exactly what you need. The smallest mistake in the specs can cause big problems for the company's entire IT landscape.

How Procurement Management Works in ITAM: A Look at the SimpleOne Example

In SimpleOne ITAM, asset management begins long before they even arrive at your company. It begins with identifying a need and analyzing the available inventory. The ITAM system brings together all the different parts of asset management — strategic, tactical, and operational — into one smooth process.

At the strategic level, your IT department can gather what all the different business units need and figure out the best way to meet those needs. The tactical part involves reserving items you already have in stock, creating purchase orders for what you don't, and finalizing contracts with suppliers. The operational part covers everything else: registering new assets, tracking their use, and keeping an eye on their costs throughout their entire lifecycle.

Procurement is the crucial link in this chain that connects the planning stage with actually getting and using the assets. It gives you a complete history of an asset, starting from the moment a need for it arose. It also means that a specialist can quickly find the paper trail for a purchase, including all the related invoices, whenever they need to.

Using a Model Nomenclature — A Unified Way to Identify IT Assets

In SimpleOne ITAM, the whole process starts with a nomenclature directory. It is a structured catalog of every single asset model in your organization. This catalog holds information about manufacturers, suppliers, and the status of a model: is it currently in use, is it being phased out, or is it approved for purchase?

In SimpleOne, you can control at the nomenclature level whether a model is used in the company and if it's approved for purchase (or if it's being replaced by a model from a different supplier). Because all departments are buying from the same, single catalog, you can eliminate the problem of having duplicate assets.

Item-by-Item Needs Planning and Inventory Analysis

Responsible individuals from different departments can create requests for specific items right from the nomenclature directory. When a request comes in, the system immediately checks to see if that equipment is available in any of the company's warehouses and suggests reserving it from your existing stock first.

If you have enough in stock, the system reserves it for the request. If you don't, the item is marked for purchase and sent for approval. This simple step solves the problem of buying things you already have. The rule is: first, use what's available, and then, buy what's missing.

Creating a Purchase Order Based on Items Marked for Purchase

The system takes all the approved requests for new items and groups them into a purchase order. In the order, you can see the total number of items needed across all departments. You can either combine the needs of different departments into one big order or create separate orders for different cost centers.

At the order level, you can also note the fiscal period for the purchase and the cost item. This gives you a clear view of who requested the purchase and when, and allows you to prioritize orders based on how urgent they are.

Competitive Bidding or a Single Supplier

The out-of-the-box version of SimpleOne ITAM gives you three ways to make a purchase: a competitive process (where you choose a supplier through bidding), a direct purchase (from a single supplier), or a custom method (for any non-standard methods included in the organization's regulations). 

For direct purchases, you can even set a rule that only allows you to select items that are approved for purchase from that specific supplier. You can use the "nomenclature suppliers" directory for this, which helps reduce the risk of adding the non-approved items to an order.

Linking Supply Contracts to Your Purchase Orders

Every order is linked to a procurement contract, which has either already been entered into the system or is currently being approved. You can also attach other purchasing documents to the order. This creates a clear connection between all the different parts of the process, which gives you much better data for analysis, reporting, and comparing the cost of buying the same items from different suppliers. This makes it much easier to plan future purchases and keep track of your contractual obligations.

Controlling Purchases and Costs

In addition to tracking contracts, you can also load price information into the system to keep a record of how much you paid for each item. If the prices change (say, you get a discount), you can upload a new file, and the system will keep the history and show the current cost.

When new assets are registered, their purchase cost is automatically logged as an actual expense. Later, you can add other costs related to the asset (like for moving it, repairing it, or upgrading it). This way, you build a complete picture of an asset's total cost of ownership and can analyze exactly how much it costs to maintain your entire IT fleet.

The Results of a Properly Configured Procurement Management System

A systematic approach to IT procurement and the automation of key stages of the process solves the problems that have been eating away at budgets for years. You get much more accurate planning, with the ability to instantly see and use what you already have in stock. The system will show you what's available in your warehouses, and your company can stop buying new laptops when there are perfectly good ones sitting on a shelf.

The approval process speeds up dramatically because everyone is working in the same system. The IT director gets a powerful tool for analytics — they can see which models are being bought most often, compare prices from different suppliers, and track how the equipment is being used. Cost control becomes transparent. Every purchase is tied to a department and a project, and the cost is automatically recorded as an asset expense.

When it's time to plan the budget for next year, you're working with real data, not just assumptions. The system shows you your actual spending, helps you find unused assets, and gives you everything you need to build a solid, justifiable case for your budget requests.

When you're choosing an ITAM solution, make sure to look for one that has built-in procurement management features — the savings will start from day one.

So, how often does IT equipment at your company end up sitting on a shelf, unused?