IT equipment leasing: 5 key benefits

For the full scope of professional IT equipment leasing at Leasetic (equipment, target customers, how it works and FAQ), see our complete guide. Here, we hand over to our founder.

Expert Insights is a monthly series in which an expert answers one big question, shares their experience, gives advice and offers the keys to move forward.

Emmanuel Rousseau, President and Founder of Leasetic, shares his expertise to answer a major question for business owners, CFOs and CIOs:

The expert

Why lease your IT equipment rather than buy it?

Emmanuel Rousseau is the Founder and President of Leasetic, founded in 2016 and launched in July 2017.

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What was your career path before founding Leasetic?

Emmanuel Rousseau: I started out as a sales engineer in financing and leasing at ECS, a subsidiary of Société Générale.
This company, founded by Jean Louis Bouchard, was one of the first to offer leasing services for IT equipment. Back in the 1970s, computers were so expensive that companies could not afford to buy them. IBM offered a rental service at the time. Leasing was born when IBM stopped offering that service.

I spent 11 years at ECS, where I rose from sales representative to branch manager. I then decided to leave Paris and move to Toulouse to open and run a branch.

Later on, I wanted to start my own company: FINEDYA. It was a real success! We distributed Econocom's products to very large groups such as Airbus, for which we managed the entire IT fleet. The contract was worth 110 million euros. We were so successful that we were eventually acquired by Econocom.

After the acquisition, I stayed with the company for a while. Then I joined CHG Meridian, which was looking for my expertise in leasing for major aerospace accounts.

With an entrepreneurial streak and a drive to innovate, Delphine and I quickly wanted to create a new company. The goal was still to offer leasing solutions, but with more purpose and stronger ethical and social values. Leasetic was born from that ambition!

Our mission is to support companies in financing their IT projects while building in a responsible dimension, in particular by measuring environmental impact, which was not yet very common when we launched!
We later created Colibris, an application that measures the environmental and financial performance of digital tools within companies.

We handle the whole workstation lifecycle end to end, from provisioning to end of life, and include disability-inclusive companies (entreprises adaptées) in the process.

We work with complete transparency with our clients, to the point of showing our margins in our reports.

After all these years in leasing, what have you observed?

E.R: Over the years, I discovered real inconsistencies in the way companies manage their IT fleets. The consequences were disastrous, not only environmentally but financially as well!
The way IT fleets are managed, and even designed, can generate avoidable costs and environmental impact for companies.

In your view, why should companies lease their IT equipment rather than buy it?

Better knowledge of your IT fleet

E.R: When a company leases its IT equipment, the same person manages both the financial data and the user data (including equipment assignment).
The calculation compares the number of users in the company with the number of people using IT equipment. At Leasetic, we call this the ownership ratio. It gives the number of PCs per person.

Today, the average ownership ratio in companies is between 1.3 and 1.5. This is mainly due to poor management of employee arrivals and departures. Yet it is the IT equipment a company owns that drives its impact, not just the equipment in service!

Leasetic helps bring these two figures closer together.

In normal times (excluding shortages, Covid, etc.), the ownership ratio we achieve with our clients is 1.1. That means savings of at least 20% for the company, because it is 20% less IT equipment, and therefore 20% less carbon emissions, raw materials and water consumed!

An accounting advantage

E.R: From a purely financial standpoint, leasing requires no cash outlay, only a lease payment. The lessor manages all the financial and depreciation flows.
Leasing contracts are subject to IFRS 16 standards. These accounting standards allow a lease contract to be treated as an expense. Owning IT equipment involves a whole range of costs (depreciation, inventory, etc.) until it leaves the company's books.

A social impact

Leasing can also be seen as having a social impact. It creates service jobs in France rather than manufacturing jobs in Asia. We take back all the equipment we lease.

It then goes through workshops to be audited, repaired and refurbished so it can be resold or donated. You are therefore supporting a whole local circular economy industry built on disability-inclusive companies.

It is important to understand that every reused PC or smartphone is one less PC or smartphone manufactured !!

An environmental impact

E.R: Digital technology currently accounts for 4% of global CO2 emissions. It is expected to reach 8% by 2025 and 16% by 2040. That is more than road and air transport combined!

Within companies, 80% of IT's impact sits right in front of the user: their computer, smartphone, monitor and so on. To have a real impact and achieve genuine results in reducing the environmental footprint of IT, you need to focus on the length of use, in other words on repair and reuse.

Many actions can be taken, for example extending the period of use by one year by buying better quality equipment, taking care of your devices, and so on.

The useful life of a computer is 7 years.

Today, a range of regulatory frameworks can help you make informed and responsible choices about your IT equipment:

• The AGEC law (French anti-waste and circular economy law): it fights waste and planned obsolescence and promotes reuse.
• Non-financial rating: it focuses on criteria other than economic ones to assess companies' environmental and social practices.
• The DPEF (Déclaration de Performance Extra-Financière, the French non-financial performance statement): a disclosure document reporting the measures taken on CSR issues.
• The REEN law (French law on reducing the environmental footprint of digital technology): it raises users' awareness of the environmental impact of digital technology and limits device replacement.
• The repairability index: the mandatory score that must be displayed on products at the time of purchase.
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• ESG criteria: they make it possible to analyze and assess how sustainable development and long-term issues are factored into corporate strategy.

Better management of usage

E.R: At Leasetic, we synchronize the billing period with the period of use, which means the client only pays a lease payment when the equipment is assigned to a user. We identify people who have two or more PCs assigned to them.

At some of our clients, we found that nearly 13% of people had more than 2 PCs ! We work with our clients to bring this ownership ratio down, reducing both their financial and environmental impact.

E.R: We have been supporting SPIE since 2019 with the financing and monitoring of its PC and smartphone fleet. That represents nearly 13,000 workstations and 14,000 smartphones.
The goal was to renew the IT fleet while reducing costs, improving the ownership ratio and meeting the Finance Department's requirements under IFRS rules.

To achieve this, we put several solutions in place:

• Creating a financing tool flow that separates the financial flow from the equipment flow
• Reducing IT fleet costs by precisely measuring the ownership ratio
• Measuring the environmental and economic performance of contracts with the Colibris application    

We are already seeing many benefits! Costs have fallen by 15% and the ownership ratio has dropped from 130% to 115%.
We have also given them visibility and stability through stock pre-financing and a 5-year lease payment forecast.

On the environmental side, we were able to reuse 90% of the returned equipment, manage WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) and set up the resale of unused or damaged equipment.

Why is Leasetic the ideal partner for leasing your IT equipment?

E.R: With Leasetic, leasing IT equipment will always cost less than when clients handle it themselves. Leasing and providing a digital tool, then taking it back, repairing it and reselling it has been our business for 30 years. As specialists, we have industrialized every process, which allows us to lower the cost of ownership of a PC or smartphone within a company. A client's cost of ownership is reduced by at least 15 to 25%.

We look for the most cost-effective solutions for our clients, in particular by running simulations with several financial providers. Finally, we do not just offer leasing: we also support companies in a more eco-responsible approach, enabling them to make real changes to their environmental impact.

Convinced? Switch to leasing to manage your IT fleet too! Ask our team for a simulation today!

To go further: discover the different business IT leasing plans and the full scope of professional IT equipment leasing.