IT Asset Management: Roles and Responsibilities
Many businesses are beginning to see how big of a role IT asset management (ITAM) plays in company success. After all, your primary business operations likely run on a lot of technology. Investing in managing its performance and lifecycle is an excellent idea.
In this article, we’ll provide a detailed breakdown of the roles and responsibilities of IT asset management. You’ll learn what IT asset specialists do and how their role benefits a company’s systems in many ways. Keep reading to get all the details.
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What is IT Asset Management?
IT asset management is a system that ensures businesses use IT equipment as efficiently as possible to get optimal value out of it. An ITAM system typically involves a framework of steps to help achieve that goal. The framework goes as follows:
- Creating an inventory: The inventory is the beginning of the ITAM system and is a pretty important step. Without it, none of the other steps in the process will go smoothly. You’ll want to account for all the IT equipment you’ve invested in and create a spreadsheet tracking system that can be updated regularly.
- Asset procurement: This step involves purchasing new equipment to meet the company’s operational needs. To assist with this step, IT professionals can work with vendors to purchase the equipment at the best price within your budget.
- Asset deployment: Once assets are purchased, they’ll need to be inventoried and then deployed into business operations. Your IT team will make this part go smoothly by scheduling time to set the equipment up and ensure it is running correctly to prevent malfunctions once it’s used on the job.
- Regular maintenance and audits: After assets are deployed, the process doesn’t end there. You’ll want to regularly maintain assets and audit processes to ensure everything is up to code. Continuous maintenance helps extend the life of assets and keep tabs on their performance to ensure they are replaced before they have any major issues.
- Asset disposition: The final step involves identifying assets that are no longer performing well, replacing them, and disposing of them. Part of the disposition process involves trying to sell assets to get value back from them, which helps ease budgeting concerns. Otherwise, they’ll be disposed of following the correct protocols.
As you can see from this IT asset management framework, asset specialists will have many roles and responsibilities in a business. They’ll help keep things running smoothly, which in turn ensures your business is as profitable as possible.
What are the Roles and Responsibilities of IT Asset Specialists?
If you’re considering hiring an IT asset specialist or team of specialists, you’ll want to know what their exact roles and responsibilities will be to see how they fit into your company’s processes. The typical roles and responsibilities of asset specialists are:
- Overseeing the inventory system: Asset specialists are essentially the facilitator of the inventory system that keeps the process running smoothly. They can help coordinate communication between team members involved and make sure all the bases are covered in this process so no equipment in the business gets missed.
- Coordinates lifecycle management: Tracking and planning for the asset lifecycle is very important. You’ll want a specialist on staff to keep the process running smoothly. The specialist will set up a regular schedule to maintain and audit current assets and estimate when old assets will need to be replaced and new ones should be purchased.
- Work with IT vendors/partners: Asset specialists will work directly with vendors and go to bat for you when you need to negotiate prices when purchasing new equipment or selling old equipment. This effort to work with vendors ensures you buy the right equipment at the best prices and get the most value every step of the way.
As you can see, IT asset specialists play a crucial role in this system. They can be your go-to person or team for all your asset management needs. Then you can focus more on other areas of your business, knowing the asset management aspect is handled.
What is an IT Asset Specialist?
You can probably already tell an asset specialist’s functions from the above roles and responsibilities. But if you’re looking for an exact definition, the asset specialist is the individual or team leading the company’s asset management program. They’ll be in charge of and oversee many of the core functionalities of ITAM to ensure things go smoothly.
Every team needs some leadership or guidance to direct business efforts to the right places, so investing in high-quality asset specialists is an excellent idea.
What Is the Role of IT Asset Management?
As for the role of asset management itself, this system is meant to organize all the IT equipment you have on hand. Large companies will have a lot of computer equipment they invest in. Without a dedicated system, keeping track of it all would be impossible.
Many organizations will run into more trouble as they expand their operations and have growing IT needs. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself scrambling when there are issues to find solutions and having trouble keeping track of which equipment is placed in what locations across the company. It can turn into a mess rather quickly.
Fortunately, teams like Multiply exist to help you in this process. If you’re running into frustrations managing all your equipment and IT needs, Multiply can help you get started implementing systems that can make your IT processes simpler and easier to manage. We can conduct full audits of IT assets, help you establish an inventory, and bridge communication between all team members involved.
Hardware Asset Management Roles and Responsibilities
A critical part of the asset management system, and what Multiply specializes in, is hardware asset management. Your hardware assets are the tangible equipment you use daily, like personal computers, hard drives, switches, and SIM cards.
These devices run your business systems and contribute to the overall success of all other IT assets like software or cloud-based programs. After all, if your computer malfunctions, you won’t be able to access things like your accounting software that are imperative to managing your company.
The roles and responsibilities of hardware asset management are the same as IT asset management roles above, applied to computer hardware. It’ll involve overseeing a full inventory system and asset discovery processes to locate all the hardware used in the business.
On top of that, it’ll involve tracking and managing the hardware’s lifecycle and negotiating with vendors to purchase new equipment or sell old equipment whenever necessary.
If you need help getting started with hardware asset management, partnering with our team at Multiply is the right choice. We’ll ensure the system gets up and running smoothly to take the worries and frustration off of your plate
What are the 3 Main Deliverables of IT Asset Management?
Since asset management contributes so much, you may wonder what the main deliverables are. The three main deliverables you’ll see from implementing this system are:
- It can save your company money: With every business decision, it’s essential to know how it impacts the bottom line. In this case, optimizing the bottom line is one of the primary concerns of asset management. It’ll help you get the most value from assets and ensure your business processes run at peak performance.
- Creating an organized system: Another deliverable of asset management is organization. Creating a dedicated inventory will help with this, along with helping teams involved learn their role and how to execute it appropriately. Ultimately, everyone will benefit, and you’ll see reduced stress throughout your work environment.
- Facilitating communication: Communication is also a primary deliverable of asset management. Everyone in your company can be affected by the management of IT processes, so you’ll want to set up a communicative system where everyone is notified when changes are made. ITAM helps execute that effectively.
Overall, an ITAM system delivers several positive impacts, and your business will benefit from it in the long run.
Asset Manager Job Description
If you’re looking for an exact job description of an asset manager, this individual helps manage the entire lifecycle of the IT assets you invest in. They facilitate an inventory system that tracks everything, help employees implement processes effectively, and work with vendors to make sure you get everything for the best price.
How Do You Put Asset Management on a Resume?
If you are an asset manager or have asset management experience, listing it on a resume can seem confusing. You can typically list your title as:
- IT Asset Manager
- IT Asset Specialist
- IT Asset Technician
Once you have the title down, you can describe your role as managing the lifecycle, processes, and financial needs associated with the IT equipment a business invests in. You can describe any experiences of creating and managing inventories, negotiating with vendors, or tracking and managing the lifecycle of assets.
How Multiply Can Help with the Roles and Responsibilities of Asset Management
If you’d like a dedicated team to help manage the many roles and responsibilities of asset management, Multiply can be your go-to resource. We are a team of senior service technicians and consultants who partner with businesses to create seamless IT asset and data management systems.
We help you implement the correct processes so you can take the many tasks involved here off of your busy schedule. It’s helpful to have a partner to work with through it all.
We’ll help you conduct audits, ensure you use compliant processes, create an inventory, and facilitate communication throughout the company.
To learn more about how Multiply can help, contact us today!
