Buying equipment is not as simple as you may expect it to be. On the one hand, you need to find the right cost-effectiveness, seeing as how more frugal equipment increases safety hazards, ruins your productivity and even diminishes the quality of the end product. On the other hand, financing new equipment is far from simple and you need to consider all of your options carefully before committing to a single solution. With that in mind and without further ado, here are five trends to help you out.
#1. Financing is preferable to spending cash
In 2020, the majority of businesses have a hard time maintaining a steady cash flow as it is. So, why spend this money that you need for your day-to-day operations for a capital investment like equipment acquisition. Not to mention that limiting your budget to cash only might lower the bar for the quality of the equipment in question. For these reasons alone, about 79 percent of all companies in the U.S. use some sort of financing when acquiring equipment. If you want to apply for equipment financing you must run a successful startup for three years, or a regular business for two years.
#2. Focus on safety and quality
When choosing equipment, there are two factors that are quite hard to quantify – safety and quality of the end product. The problem is that while it is clear that the end product will be of higher quality, the actual financial value of the quality upgrade is somewhat hard to quantify. Still, this quantification would be essential for you to determine the potential ROI of the investment. This is why it would be smarter to focus on safety improvement. This is especially true when buying lab equipment, seeing as how here, everyone’s safety is in question.
#3. Technological innovation
The thing about technological innovation is that it penetrates all the aspects of our society in one way or another. For instance, while you may decide to buy a particular piece of equipment because it’s technically superior to the ones that you currently own, the acquisition process alone is a strong motivator to look more closely at technological innovation. New methods of payment and gateways, chances to browse advanced platforms that will give you a better selection and more, are just some of the perks worth keeping an eye out for.
#4. Leasing instead of buying
Perhaps the biggest single trend in equipment acquisition is leasing instead of buying. Generally speaking, there’s a belief that if you use a certain piece of equipment or heavy equipment 60 percent of work time or more, you would be better off buying it. The problem, however, can be found in fields where rapid technological innovation makes it quite expensive to replace the equipment in question later on. The depreciation will ensure that you can’t get more than a fraction of the price for your old equipment and the new equipment will probably exceed the original price of your previous equipment. Therefore, leasing gives you more flexibility.
#5. The age of uncertainty
Saying that things are not going that well at the moment could be seen as a massive understatement. For this very reason, a lot of companies are reluctant to invest in the purchase of new, high-end equipment. However, those who are not willing to take this risk and innovate their inventory might be left behind for good. It’s a risk definitely worth taking.
In conclusion
In the very end, acquiring your equipment is one of the most important managerial tasks for any business. It is also not something that you will do once and be over with it. The chances are that it’s a process that you will have to repeat on a regular basis, which is why learning how to do it properly is so incredibly important. All in all, the above-listed five trends are worth taking into consideration.
