During the process of optimizing your business operations, you may have heard having an IT asset management system is important. Managing all your company’s IT equipment can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Putting the right system in place will help immensely.
In this article, we’ll dive into everything you should know about IT asset management systems. We’ll cover what it is and some best practices to follow to get the best results. Keep reading to get all the details.
IT Asset Management System
First, let’s go over the basics of what an asset management system is and the specific elements involved in keeping inventory of all your IT assets.
What Is an IT Asset Management System?
An asset management system is the process used to manage all the assets your business owns and uses. It typically involves five distinct steps, which are:
- Creating an inventory of all assets currently on hand.
- The processes for purchasing new assets within budgetary limitations and at the best possible value.
- Deploying new assets into daily operations while ensuring they all function correctly.
- Continuously auditing assets and processes for compliance while ensuring all equipment operates as it should.
- Disposition of assets as they age, which involves selling old assets to get value back or recycling them while removing data and following proper regulations.
While these five individual steps are the basis of the asset management system, there are a lot of processes that fall under each category. To give you more detail, let’s look at the elements in the asset inventory process.
IT Asset Inventory Elements
Creating an IT asset inventory system can sound simple at first. It’s essentially a documentation of every piece of IT equipment a business owns.
However, business owners often get overwhelmed quickly when they think about how many IT assets are used on a daily basis in their company. Not to mention if they have employees that work remotely, or have multiple office locations.. There are processes that can make it much easier.
Before we get into the processes, let’s look at some of the individual elements of the IT asset inventory. The main elements are:
- Asset lifecycle: The inventory process is meant to track assets throughout their lifecycle within the company, from when they are purchased to when they are disposed of.
- Cost and current value: When assets are purchased, their initial cost should be marked in the inventory and accounting records. Additionally, factors like yearly depreciation should be updated in the inventory to always provide an accurate value of assets on hand.
- Location and users: Many asset inventories will track the equipment’s location and who is using it. This is especially necessary for national or global organizations with assets in many locations.
- Performance: Your computer equipment is the backbone of many primary business operations. Your inventory and asset management system should continuously stay on top of equipment performance to ensure business operations run smoothly.
- Compliance: Managing computer equipment and accounting records requires compliance with regulations. For example, there are environmental regulations for disposing of old technology, so you would be breaking compliance if you didn’t follow those.
These are just some of the many elements that would go into managing an IT asset inventory. As you can probably tell, there’s a lot of depth to an asset management system. Here are some IT asset management best practices to make things a bit easier.
IT Asset Management Best Practices
Managing IT equipment within a business can feel overwhelming, but putting some best practices in place will help a lot. Some IT asset management best practices are to:
- Create dedicated roles: Your IT team should have dedicated roles with detailed responsibilities outlined for each. When everyone knows their role, it makes it much easier to manage each step of the asset management process.
- Facilitate communication: You want to make sure all the teams involved in the asset management process communicate effectively. Systems should be put in place so everyone in the workplace can get notified of major updates that will allow everyone to assist in the process.
- Manage different types of assets separately: You’ll see many different types of assets throughout a business. It’s effective to break up different types of assets to make it easier to manage them. For example, one team can manage hardware while another manages software.
- Regularly audit assets and processes: You should check in on how your computer equipment is performing and if you’re using the best processes to manage it. This is especially important when considering compliance with regulations.
By putting these practices in place, you can create a well-planned system where everyone knows their role and can be part of a successful team environment. If you’d like assistance in that process, Multiply can help.
How Multiply Helps Create a Successful Asset Management System
If you’re looking at the different aspects of creating a complete asset management system and feel overwhelmed, Multiply can help make this process much easier.
Multiply is a team of IT consultants and senior service technicians. We help businesses we partner with create streamlined systems that simplify IT asset and data management.
We’ll help conduct audits, facilitate communication between different teams involved, and ultimately take work off your plate so you can focus on other daily functions of your business.
To learn more about how Multiply can help with IT asset management, contact us today!
