- The vendor might offer you an “out” on the contract, with the proviso that you pay a penalty cancellation fee; or
- There might be other products or services that the vendor offers that would be useful, creating a possible “trade in” scenario in which the original fee can be applied to purchase the new asset. This can be a win-win for the vendor and your company; the vendor doesn’t lose a sale or a client’s good will, and you get a solution that works without incurring further loss.
Sell, repurpose, donate
There are cases where companies have been able to sell or trade unwanted assets to other companies or to third-party vendors. There is usually some monetary loss from the first investment, but the seller can recover a substantial amount of the original price paid. This works well for older hardware (e.g. disk drives, processors) that third-party equipment suppliers are eager to buy, re-certify, and sell.
Another route, as we took with the marketing system we purchased and regretted, is to seek ways to repurpose the asset. Hardware offers the most likely chance for a repurpose win. In our case, with the server redeployed for financial reporting, only the software ended up as a loss.
Unwanted or aging assets can also be donated to nonprofit groups, and you can use the donation as a charitable write-off. This isn’t a great way to “monetize” a failed asset, but it is a way to make something of your buyer’s remorse, including helping a charity of your choosing to improve its technology stack.
