Completing regular audits is a necessary function for IT teams to continue to organize and manage company assets. As an increasing number of companies embrace remote work, the importance of IT asset auditing is easily understood. Companies understand that remote employees need the necessary equipment to do their jobs, and that includes both hardware and software. But to ensure remote employees and IT teams alike are not running into unnecessary issues, it is important to perform an asset audit regularly to ensure all assets are working for the remote employee and accounted for by the IT team. While you may not know where or how to perform an IT asset audit, Multiply has a dedicated team here to guide you through the process.
An IT asset audit for remote employees involves taking inventory of the hardware and software being used and determining if they are still useful to them. Outdated computers need to be replaced, software licenses need to be renewed or discontinued, new ones need to be added, and the list goes on. This can be made difficult for both employees and IT teams due to distance, miscommunication, and disorganization. But having this information all in one place allows IT teams to focus their efforts on ensuring assets are being used appropriately, without costing the company money and security, and that remote workers can do their job efficiently. As the audit is conducted, guidelines and procedures should be followed to ensure accurate and thorough information is gathered. At Multiply, our team has developed a process to conduct seamless audits for our partner companies. With us as your partner, you can rest easy knowing that we’ve got your audit covered.
Regardless of the size and scale of your company, there are important aspects to consider when preparing for an audit. One of those things, as mentioned earlier, is that a company should have guidelines and procedures. Whether they are newly created or revised, all the necessary instructions should be determined and standardized prior to beginning the audit. Another important element is establishing processes and lines of communication between team members conducting the audit. With all these pieces set up, the final step in preparing for the audit is creating a detailed audit plan and timeline. The audit plan serves as a roadmap for your team and the timeline ensures that goals are met throughout the process. Without proper planning, an audit has the potential to setback the team rather than providing the insight it should when done correctly. While this may all sound overwhelming, Multiply has guided and handled countless audits for partner companies that we’re confident in our process.
With planning done, it is time to focus more specifically on the logistics of auditing remote employees’ IT assets. That involves developing a comprehensive inventory of all company-issued devices for remote employees. It is also important to ensure the use of asset management software that will make the real-time asset tracking easier for your team. During the audit itself, your team should communicate with remote employees to confirm assets they do or don’t have. This communication can be done via email and/or text depending on the specific procedures established by your team during the planning stage. When developed correctly, this process can be done at any time for any employee. Multiply makes this easier with our ITAM client portal that handles both inventory and tracking for all audits, we are always open to new partnerships.
Auditing assets is only one part of the entire process. When completing your audit, you will want to focus on your IT storage and server rooms as well. This means documenting all physical servers, network equipment, and storage devices located in the server rooms. Along with documentation, you will need to check the condition and performance of all the hardware to identify any potential issues they may have. That also means checking security measures, such as access controls and surveillance systems, to ensure they are in place and functioning properly.
Once the audit is complete, it is time to analyze the results. To do this you will need to summarize the findings from auditing assets owned by remote employees. From there you should identify and prioritize the key issues found in order of importance. For the hardware part of the audit, you will want to evaluate the conditions of the IT storage and server rooms against your established audit objectives. By analyzing both steps separately, you will find patterns emerge and common areas of improvement can be found for your company.
When you have identified the key issues found during the audit, you should collaborate with the relevant stakeholders to address those same issues. Outlining the steps to improvement during the collaboration will help to improve remote employee IT asset management and security. From a hardware perspective, the audit findings will suggest enhancements for IT storage and server room organization to improve maintenance.
As you can see, there are various steps that go into auditing a company. But it is a necessary practice that serves to maintain optimal performance of assets and hardware for companies. At Multiply we perform quarterly storage and server audits for our partner companies, as is industry recommended. We also recommend rolling audits of employees, which serves as a flexible model for any company size. And it is never too early to start planning for the next audit by scheduling a new target date and updating IT asset inventories. An optimal auditing process takes time to achieve, especially a process specifically designed for your company. That’s where Multiply comes in, we work with companies to create that perfect auditing process and make it as hassle-free as possible for you.
Audits are an important part of maintaining a company, and with an increasing number of employees preferring remote work, it becomes even more so. Ensure your company hardware and assets are secure regardless of location by performing audits regularly with Multiply. We have built a team of experts that are always ready to perform audits smoothly and efficiently for our clients and their employees across the nation. If you’re ready to make auditing easier for your team, contact Multiply today!
