By Elena Avesani, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Oracle
As more and more companies establish sustainability initiatives in their reverse supply chains, it is increasingly clear that there is a positive correlation between environmental and financial benefits. The more sustainable the reverse supply chain is, the more cost efficient it becomes. Companies can reduce procurement costs and resource depletion through parts harvesting and recycling, improve customer satisfaction, and achieve fewer returns because of improved product designs. Furthermore, increased take-back improves supply of spare parts to enable extended support life to customers, lowers the cost of parts, and protects the environment while complying with government mandated recycling programs.
Issues around waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) in particular are becoming increasingly important for commercial IT organizations, posing both significant risks and opportunities. As a responsible producer of hardware products, Oracle offers various take-back programs to allow customers and suppliers to return excess used products or retired equipment. These programs help protect the environment and provide valuable services to our customers as well as substantial cost savings.
Oracle now automates and manages its returns and take-back of retired computer equipment from customers, internal labs and data centers for asset recovery and recycling through the Oracle Returns Management System (ORMS), an implementation of Oracle Depot Repair. The Oracle Depot Repair solution enables businesses to profitably recover, re-use and recycle products and parts by providing best-in-class tools and intelligence.
The implementation went from proof-of-concept to go-live in just over three months. When integrated with other program improvements, it led to 61 percent increased volume of systems returned compared to the previous year. Improved customer ease-of-use triggered dramatic changes with more than 1,800 systems received, and about 4,000 spare parts harvested for reuse at half the cost of open market purchase through the System Return for Credit (SRC) program. Reduced spares for Last Time Buy (LTB) savings amounted to $8.2 million.
Download Oracle's Depot Repair Implementation white paper for more details.