Planning a Device Refresh: Trade-In, Leasing, and Zero-Touch Deployment

A device refresh is one of the larger line items an IT team handles, and it comes around often enough that doing it well makes a big difference over time when it comes to budget, process, and overall device health. Organizations that plan the refresh as one connected process tend to spend and disrupt less than organizations that treat each piece of a refresh separately.

Here’s how we see the pieces of a refresh fitting together.

Paying for the Refresh

There are three common approaches to paying for a device refresh. The best option depends on how your organization handles capital spending.

Outright purchase is the simplest option. You buy the devices, you own them, and the cost lands in one budget cycle. For organizations with capital available and a preference for owning assets, this works well.

Leasing spreads the cost of the refresh across the life of the devices. It lines spending up with the period the devices are actually in use. For organizations using an operating budget rather than a capital one, leasing is often the option that makes a refresh possible sooner rather than later. It also builds in a natural refresh cadence because when the lease term ends, the next refresh is already scheduled.

Trade-in applies value from the outgoing fleet to the incoming one. Apple devices hold their value well, which makes this more meaningful than it is for most hardware categories. A three-year-old Mac computer in good condition still carries real trade-in value, and across a fleet of several hundred devices, that value can cover a noticeable share of the new purchase.

These approaches can be combined for the maximum benefit. Trade-in value can reduce a purchase or a lease, and many organizations end up using a combination of methods.

What to Do with Outgoing Devices

Whatever the financial approach, there needs to be a plan for the old devices. They need to be wiped securely and removed from your device management platform and Apple Business, formerly known as Apple Business Manager. This is important for security reasons, and to have your inventory reflect reality. No retired device should stay associated with your organization.

The devices need to be accounted for, as they lose value over time and can represent an open item in an audit. Whichever way they leave the organization should capture the value that remains, and often that is done through trade-in, resale, or responsible recycling.

Planning what to do with outgoing devices at the start of the refresh can keep it from becoming a separate project six months later.

Zero-Touch Deployment

Zero-touch deployment is where a well-planned refresh becomes visible to the entire company. With Automated Device Enrollment (ADE) configured through Apple Business, new devices can ship directly from the reseller to the employee. When the employee powers the device on and connects to the internet, the device enrolls in your MDM platform and configures itself with the right apps, settings, and security policies. Your IT team never even has to open the box.

For a refresh involving many devices, zero-touch deployment changes the shape of the entire project. Instead of a multi-week operation that takes all of the IT team’s effort, the rollout happens in the background while everyone can keep working.

Two things have to be true for this to work: the devices need to be purchased through a channel that can assign them to your Apple Business account at the point of sale, and your device management platform or MDM needs to be built and tested before the first device ships.

Sequencing the Refresh

A refresh that goes smoothly usually follows the same order.

Start with an inventory of what you have. Include device age, condition, and which devices are approaching the end of their supported life. This inventory will drive everything else, including how many devices you need and what the trade-in value looks like.
Make a plan for the outgoing devices. How you handle these can impact your financial approach, so it’s important to have a plan.
Decide the financial approach. Leasing and purchasing outright have different lead times and approval paths inside most organizations, so this will have an impact on the rest of the plan.
Confirm the configuration of Apple Business and your MDM or device management solution. This is the step that we see getting compressed when timelines get tight, and it’s the one that determines whether zero-touch deployment actually works on day one.
Order the devices from an Apple Business Partner and get them to your employees via direct ship or your preferred option.
Handle the outgoing devices based on the schedule you set.

Planning Your Next Refresh

Most organizations refresh on a three to four year cycle. The decisions you make this time will be shaping your fleet by the time the next refresh comes around.

MBS handles device purchasing and leasing options, trade-in valuation, Apple Business and device management configuration, and zero-touch deployment as one process. If you have a refresh coming up and want to plan it as a connected project rather than a series of separate ones, reach out and we can help you map it out.

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Mac Business Solutions is a certified Apple and Jamf partner specializing in enterprise Apple device management, lifecycle services, and IT infrastructure for commercial and federal clients.

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