Making Sense of Device Insurance

Administering a 1:1 device program is not a fixed cost. In fact, it’s far from it.

The invoice for 2,000 Chromebooks may average out around $450,000.00 – but that is not where the financial responsibility ends. There will be a number of devices that are stolen. There will be a number of devices that are lost. There will be a number of devices that are damaged and need repair. There will be a number of devices that are damaged beyond repair and need to be replaced. These are absolutes. This will happen. The only question is to what degree and how much will it cost to make your program whole again.

In truth, sometimes the figure is marginal and easy to recover from. However sometimes it’s an absolute nightmare for the district. It is not uncommon that we speak with a district that ran a program that was ‘self-insured’ which ultimately lead to the demise of thousands of devices. One district with whom we work that will remain nameless is currently sitting on a warehouse full of over 4,000 broken Chromebooks. They were so overwhelmed by the volume of broken devices and severity of the problem that they just bought 4,000 new devices rather than try to fix the lot that was growing every day. That is money down the drain.

For these reasons, we look at insurance as outsourcing not only the financial risk of running a 1:1 program, but outsourcing the work that goes into keeping it running optimally if our clients prefer that we repair the devices for them through our network of local and mail-in repair depots. This is where we begin to make sense of school device insurance. After all, there is an upfront cost and as with any, it needs to be justified. That justification usually rears its head quickly, as device issues begin to roll in after sustaining damage.

With a School Device Coverage insurance program, your 1:1 program is a fixed cost. Going back to the average cost of 2,000 run-of-the-mill Chromebooks for education, we can take that $450,000.00 and add an average insurance cost of around $20.00 per device to insure, bringing it to $40,000.00 for full coverage against loss, theft, and accidental damage. For under $500,000.00, your district has a fully insured, fixed cost 1:1 program. There are no deductibles with School Device Coverage, no hidden fees, and no added costs.

Let’s hop back to the italicized part above. “Their in-house staff simply could not fix them fast enough without completely neglecting all the other duties that technology departments have within districts.” This is such an important metric and it deserves your attention. The amount of time and resources repairing damaged devices consumes can and does add up on a daily basis – all too often to the point that it becomes a losing fight. One common misconception is that insurance will put district technology department employees out of work. Quite frankly, the opposite tends to be true. For the average salary of one technology department employee, most districts can insure around 2,000 Chromebooks, thus freeing up other technology department employees to focus on all the other components of their jobs and performing them better than before.

There is a reason why outsourcing is so popular. When you find the right partner, it just works. Contact School Device Coverage today and let’s see what a partnership would look like.