Recovery platforms are priced and built for fleets that produce a steady flow of returns. A company under 200 staff produces perhaps two or three a month. Whether a platform is worth it turns on one thing, and it is not the tooling: it is whether your devices are in one country or twelve.
TL;DR
- At this size you have two or three returns a month, which is below the volume most recovery platforms are built around.
- One country with predictable addresses: a courier account and a named owner beats any platform.
- Several countries: a platform earns its fee on packaging, customs and the collection booking, not on tracking.
- Every recovery provider in this category quotes on request. None publishes a figure, so plan for a sales process.
- Recovery rate is set by the sequence, not the tool. Ask during notice while email still works and book the collection yourself.
- Decide in advance the device age at which you stop chasing, because that decision made case by case is always made late.
The arithmetic that decides it
A collection has a real cost: a courier movement, packaging that protects a laptop, and somebody’s time to arrange it and chase it. For a device in the same country that total is modest. For a device two borders away it is not, and it carries a customs process with it.
Set that total against the device’s residual value and most recovery decisions make themselves. A machine issued eight months ago is worth recovering almost anywhere. One issued four years ago, with a wiped drive and no remaining warranty, is frequently worth less than the collection, and chasing it is a decision about principle rather than economics.
Which is why the issue date is the field that drives this, and why a register without one produces a company that chases everything equally or nothing at all.
The three options at this size
| Courier account, run in-house | One country, addresses you can rely on | Cheapest and entirely adequate. Needs a named owner and a packaging arrangement |
| Recovery platform | Several countries, or regular returns | Buys packaging to the employee, customs handling and a booking they can use. All quote-based |
| Write off deliberately | Old devices, low residual value | A legitimate decision when recorded. Corrosive when it happens by default |
The third row is the one companies do without choosing it. A device nobody chased is written off either way; the difference is whether the register says so and whether the data obligation was closed before the machine disappeared from view.
When a courier account is enough
If your people are in one country, the addresses in your register are current, and one person will own the process, a business courier account does the whole job. You book a collection to the employee’s address, the courier brings the label, and the device arrives.
Two things make it work and both are commonly missing. Packaging has to reach the employee, because asking somebody to find a box for a laptop is where returns stall. Either send one or use a courier service that supplies it. And somebody has to own the booking, by name, since a process that depends on the departing person arranging their own return has already failed.
At two or three returns a month this is perhaps twenty minutes each. The reason it still goes wrong is not effort, it is that nobody is waiting for the outcome.
When a platform earns its fee
Cross-border returns, mainly. The work a platform removes is not tracking, which your register already does. It is the awkward middle: getting suitable packaging to a residential address in another country, handling the customs paperwork for a used device, and giving the employee something simple to interact with rather than an email chain.
The second case is a company that already runs a steady rhythm of joiners and leavers and wants one system for both, so the collection is triggered by the offboarding record rather than by somebody remembering.
Workwize, Deel IT, Firstbase, GroWrk and allwhere all operate in this space to varying depth, and none of them publishes a price. That is worth planning around: comparing three of them means three sales conversations before you have a single number to put in a budget.
A worked example
A 160-person company had a recovery rate it described as poor and assumed it needed a platform. It had 29 leavers in a year and had recovered 17 devices.
Looking at the twelve that had not come back, nine were in the same country and three were abroad. Of the nine, seven had been asked for the device after their last working day, by which point their email had been revoked. The failure was the sequence rather than the logistics, and no platform would have changed it.
Moving the request to the first week of notice, with a collection date already booked, took the rate above 85 per cent in two quarters using the same courier account. The three abroad remained hard, which is the case a platform does address.
Fixing the sequence first
What to do:
- Revoke high-risk access on day one of notice, and keep email and chat until the last working day.
- Send the equipment message in the first week, naming the device and its serial rather than company equipment.
- Book the collection yourself and state the date, rather than asking them to organise a return.
- Confirm the address you hold and ask them to correct it, since it is often two years old.
- Leave device management in place until the courier confirms collection, then lock it.
- Decide the device age above which you stop chasing, and record the write-off when you apply it.
Run that for two quarters before buying anything. It costs nothing, it is the largest single lever on the number, and it tells you how much of your gap is logistics and how much was timing.
Disclosure: RemoAsset is owned by the same people who publish PeopleOpsHQ. It is relevant at this size because offboarding in the HR record triggers the collection directly, and because it already holds the serial and the delivery address for hardware it supplied, which is what a return depends on. It publishes no price and requires a demo, it is much weaker for hardware it did not supply, and it is not a certified disposal vendor. The alternatives are compared in our laptop retrieval comparison.
Final thoughts
Under 200 staff, a recovery platform is worth it for cross-border returns and hard to justify for domestic ones. A courier account plus a named owner plus packaging that reaches the employee does the domestic job at a fraction of the cost.
Fix the sequence before you shop. Ask during notice while email still works, book the collection yourself, leave the device usable until it is collected, and decide in advance when a machine is too old to chase. Then buy a platform for the markets that are genuinely hard, knowing you are paying for packaging and customs rather than for tracking.
Frequently asked questions
Does a company under 200 staff need an asset recovery service?
Only if devices are in several countries. At this size you have perhaps two or three returns a month, and for domestic returns a business courier account with a named owner and a packaging arrangement does the whole job far more cheaply. What a platform genuinely buys is packaging delivered to a residential address abroad, customs handling for a used device, and something simple for the employee to interact with. None of that is tracking, which your own register already does.
What actually improves laptop recovery rates?
The sequence, not the tooling. Ask for the device in the first week of notice while the person still has email and a reason to engage, name the specific device and its serial rather than referring to company equipment, book the collection yourself with a date instead of asking them to arrange it, and leave device management in place until the courier confirms pickup. Locking a laptop at the start of a notice period removes the last incentive anybody has to post it back.
How much do recovery platforms cost?
Nobody publishes a figure. Workwize, Deel IT, Firstbase, GroWrk and allwhere all quote on request, as does RemoAsset, so comparing three of them means three sales conversations before you have a single number for a budget. Plan the evaluation around that elapsed time, and ask each provider to quote against the same written description of your markets and your expected return volume so that the numbers you eventually get are comparable.
When should you stop chasing a device?
Decide it in advance by device age rather than case by case, because a decision made case by case is always made late and inconsistently. Set the collection cost, including packaging and somebody’s time, against the residual value: a machine issued eight months ago is worth recovering almost anywhere, while a four-year-old laptop with a wiped drive and no warranty frequently is not. Then record the write-off at residual value and close the register row rather than leaving it open.
What stops a domestic return from happening?
Usually packaging and ownership. Asking somebody to find a box suitable for a laptop is where returns stall, so either send packaging or use a courier service that supplies it at collection. And a process that depends on the departing person arranging their own return has already failed, because nothing in their week prompts it. One named owner booking the collection is the difference, and at this volume it is about twenty minutes per return.
Should the device be wiped before or after it comes back?
On arrival, as part of receiving it, rather than later when it is reissued or disposed of. Wiping on arrival closes the data obligation at the moment the device enters your custody, which means a cupboard of returned machines carries no exposure, and it removes time pressure from the decision about what happens next. Record the date, the method and the person against the asset row, because an undocumented wipe is close to one that did not happen.
