Given the importance of technology in the daily operations of an increasingly digitizing corporate environment, efficient management of IT assets is essential in today’s business climate.
But what is an IT asset? In short, an IT asset is any hardware, software, applications, or information that an organization values. The machines and software licenses that enable the development, marketing, and maintenance of a company’s software and the servers that house it are among the most valuable assets in any organization’s IT department.
This is where IT asset inventory management (ITAM) comes into play. The useful life of IT resources is limited. Therefore, it is necessary to proactively manage the IT asset lifespan to optimize the value an organization can derive from them.
Each company may define the stages of that lifetime differently, but they usually comprise planning, procurement, deployment, maintenance, and retirement. Applying processes at every phase of the asset lifecycle to comprehend the total cost of ownership and maximize asset usage is a crucial component of IT asset management.
In light of how modern teams operate, IT teams must be adaptable and modify their asset management procedure to support the business effectively. In this blog, we will discuss what IT asset inventory management is and its importance, the steps involved in the asset inventory management process, and, last but not least, its benefits.
What is IT Asset Inventory Management (ITAM)?
IT asset inventory management (ITAM) is recognizing, monitoring, and controlling every piece of hardware and software a company uses for its operations. The company’s IT infrastructure comprises many technological things, such as servers, laptops, mobile devices, printers, network devices, software licenses, and other associated products.
The scope of ITAM exceeds beyond identifying IT assets; it also involves managing IT assets during their whole lifecycle, from acquisition to retirement. An asset inventory management system gives companies a single platform to manage and keep an eye on all their assets, ranging from tangible items like computers and machinery to intangibles like software licenses and intellectual property.
The IT asset inventory management process aims to account for an organization’s complete and current inventory of all its IT assets. Effective ITAM is built on this record, which helps businesses make the most out of their IT expenditures and cut expenses related to needless software licensing, equipment purchases, maintenance, and support.
Importance of the IT Asset Inventory Management Process
Any organization that depends on technology to support its operations must maintain an inventory of its IT assets. Here are a few reasons that explain why ITAM is important:
- Providing a Single Source of Truth: Numerous parties often track assets in multiple locations. This makes it difficult to make well-informed resource allocation, utilization, and management decisions. The asset management process provides IT teams, management, and entire organizations with a single source of truth and order.
- Enabling Cost-Effectiveness: By getting insight into all IT assets, organizations may maximize their spending on IT hardware, software, and maintenance. This information can decrease business expenses related to extra purchases, excessive licensing, and under-utilization of assets.
- Promoting Increased Data Security and Compliance: Companies can also detect possible security threats, including unpatched software or unapproved devices, and take the necessary precautions to reduce them by using an IT asset inventory. Keeping an updated inventory also enables businesses to comply with regulations, get ready for audits, and stay out of trouble if they don’t.
- Supporting Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) practices: Asset inventory management enables organizations to support Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) procedures, such as change, incident, and problem management. The IT department can make it possible for the whole company to be more creative and productive rapidly. Facilitating the democratization of insights gives the organization a competitive advantage and expedites value delivery. Any business that wants to stay up with the rapid advancements in technology today must have a systematic approach to managing, tracking, and controlling IT data.
Steps Involved in IT Asset Inventory Management
ITAM is an ongoing process, and the steps for asset management must be carried out regularly or when resources, objectives, and instruments shift. Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can conduct an IT asset inventory management cycle in your organization:
- IT Asset Inventory: A thorough inventory of all IT assets is the first stage in IT asset management. Your inventory lists all the assets you own, where they are, when they were bought, and how much they cost.
- Cost Calculations: The lifecycle costs of each asset in your inventory must be determined in the second phase. There is a great potential for additional expenditures, such as maintenance, capital, and disposal costs, during the life of an average asset.
Making lifecycle cost calculations adds accuracy and actionability to your asset inventory.
- IT Asset Monitoring: The third stage is using an asset management solution for tracking. The objective is to closely monitor contract, license, and warranty expiration and other IT asset lifecycle events. Maintaining an advantage over the fourth step is another benefit of tracking.
- IT Asset Maintenance: Upgrading, replacing, and repairing assets are all part of maintenance. To gain insight into the asset’s overall performance, all maintenance operations ought to be recorded in an ITAM tool.
- Financial Planning: This last step enables you to make future decisions with a clear understanding of your IT assets, including their lifecycle stage, pricing, and location.
One of the financial planning objectives is determining the funding required to preserve or raise the “levels of service” your team offers for your most valuable assets. Underperforming assets can eventually require more expensive, higher-level maintenance.
Benefits of IT Asset Inventory Management
Managing an asset inventory can be labor-intensive and time-intensive; however, it can also be gratifying and set your company up for long-term success.
Here are the advantages of asset inventory management:
- Enabling Well-Informed Business Decisions: Asset inventory management reduces entry errors by enhancing asset inventory tracking and documentation. It facilitates an accurate picture of your stock levels and assets so companies can make well-informed selections.
- Elevating Customer Satisfaction: Companies with adequate inventory are better equipped to satisfy customer needs. This results in a decrease in customer acquisition expenses and an increase in recurring business. This aids in the positioning of a brand’s image in the marketplace as well.
- Increasing Employee Productivity: Tracking asset usage and inventory movement into and out of warehouses is made simpler by asset management. Knowing when to refill the inventory and arrange asset maintenance for maximum efficiency becomes simpler. Your employees can also create and monitor thorough reports on stock levels and assets.
- Promoting Transparency in Operations: Monitoring the movement and use of each asset and stock inside the organization is another advantage of asset inventory management. This increases accountability and transparency by lowering the number of theft and improper handling incidents.
- Simplifying Audit Trails: Asset inventory management makes an audit trail easy to follow. Demonstrating regulatory compliance also gets simpler. You may further find methods to enhance how your business operates. Operational managers can conduct audits to determine what is functioning well, what isn’t, and how frequently preventative maintenance should be performed on equipment.
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