Excerpt from: ITAD Best Practices: Managing Customer Agreements and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Minneapolis – Mar 2026
by Josh Feldman, VP, Professional Services
The goal of tracking performance isn’t reporting.
It’s decision-making, so you can be more competitive when possible and more cautious when necessary.
In ITAD terms, “competitive” often means saying yes to more work:
tighter pickup windows, faster turnaround times, higher volumes, and more complex requirements.
But if that “yes” is based on incomplete visibility, it can quickly cost money:
rework, escalations, delayed settlement, and margin leakage.
That’s why visibility matters. Not dashboards for dashboards’ sake, but practical operational signals like:
- What’s in progress (by work center)
- What’s blocked and why
- What’s approaching SLA risk (by service type / account / SLA)
- Where time is being added (pickup → sortation → tech bench → reporting → settlement)
- Which exceptions are accumulating
With those signals in place, teams can push when capacity is real, and tighten timelines only when performance supports it.
Why this matters
Whether it’s a formal RFP or a recurring customer review, ITAD performance is increasingly evaluated through specific time commitments and reporting expectations, not just “we’ll take care of it.” ITAD RFP guidance often calls out service levels such as timelines for pickup, data destruction, accuracy, and reporting.
ITAD partner evaluation checklists also commonly reference SLA metrics like pickup turnaround time, receipt reporting, reconciliations, and time to complete disposition.
In other words: commitments are operational and measurable.
The practical shift: track performance at three levels
A strong performance system lets you monitor delivery:
1) As a company
You need to know if the operation is generally healthy:
- Deadlines met by service type
- Estimated vs actual volume
- Productivity by work center (logistics, sortation, data sanitization, tech bench)
2) Per account
Not all customers behave the same. Some accounts create more:
- Exceptions
- Complexity
- Scope changes
- Reporting effort
Account-level tracking helps you see where delivery risk consistently comes from, and where you can safely tighten timelines.
3) Per SLA
This is where you stop managing “overall performance” and start managing commitment risk:
- What’s trending late
- What’s blocked
- What needs intervention now
- What can safely be promised faster
This is also why continuous monitoring matters: SLAs improve through measurement and adjustment, not by rewriting a document.
What “cautious hen necessary” looks like
Caution isn’t being slow. It’s protecting delivery and margin.
When signals show drift, caution means:
- Setting realistic timelines before the work arrives
- Preventing rework by enforcing required steps
- Slowing commitments for service types/accounts that consistently create delays
- Protecting reporting quality so audits don’t become fire drills
That’s how you avoid the expensive outcomes: SLA misses, disputes, and manual cleanup.
The key: monitoring only works when it’s system-native
If tracking depends on spreadsheets, manual check-ins, or someone building reports at month-end, you’ll always be reacting late.
This is where systems matter. A modern ITAD ERP should make monitoring feasible by:
- Capturing workflow status as work happens
- Making productivity and cycle time measurable by work center
- Surfacing trends by service type and account
- Reducing manual reconciliation and reporting cleanup
In practice, that means dashboards (and alerts) that show SLA risk by service type and account, and workflow status that doesn’t require manual reconciliation.
That’s the role Makor ERP is designed to play: turning monitoring into something teams can actually use day-to-day, so commitments are based on reality, not best intentions.
About Makor ERP™
Makor ERP™ is the leading enterprise software for ITAD, recycling, and refurbishment operations, purpose-built to deliver full lifecycle visibility, regulatory compliance, and operational excellence.
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