A truly effective IT asset management program can help your company manage capital and operational costs, ensure data security, and avoid compliance issues. As many organizations are transitioning indefinitely to remote work and hardware becomes spread out among many locations, managing and tracking an asset’s lifecycle from beginning to end has become more critical than ever.
The IT asset management (ITAM) lifecycle consists of procurement, onboarding, maintenance, and retirement. Asset tracking is an important management tool in each stage of the lifecycle as organizations have to manage the ongoing expenditures, maintenance, and usage of their hardware. Without a formalized system in place and the opportunity for automation, human error risks can rise exponentially wasting precious money.
Pre-production
The ITAM lifecycle is constantly revolving as assets depreciate and need to be replaced. This constant cycle of one stage ending and another beginning requires a solution for active monitoring. In a recent example, a state university lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to the lack of an efficient process to monitor the use and replacement of their hardware. ITAM and the organizations they serve can benefit from accountability and transparency in tracking their hardware procurement and allocation.
Tracking and monitoring what your organization has in inventory and what is being actively used can ensure that the right equipment and software are purchased. Or, if existing hardware is already available, it can eliminate the additional costs due to spending. Asset Vue can take this stage further by even working with your service and hardware providers to tag and track your new hardware deliveries. A guaranteed safe arrival can provide your finance department with the tools to track depreciation accurately from the moment your new hardware leaves the warehouse.
In-Use
Organizations can quickly fall into a reactive mode when inefficient assets start to encroach on productivity. If your organization depends on a manual process of monitoring existing inventory, wasted time and spending are often a result. Accurate inventory through a tagging and tracking system proves essential for security and financial operations, especially if your organization’s assets are spread across multiple locations.
Effective ITAM monitoring provides governance in the lifecycle process and allows for a regular cadence with actionable tasks assigned to specific individuals. Your IT manager will always have up-to-date knowledge of the upcoming renewals for software, licenses, and agreements, and the ongoing monitoring of security threats.
Maintaining an accurate inventory during the maintenance and in-use stage of the hardware’s life is also beneficial for preventing energy and hardware waste. On average, nearly $30 billion are wasted annually on unused software and hardware. In addition, “ghost servers” can cost data centers almost 40% in wasted power consumption.
Another benefit to a formalized tagging and tracking system is the information it can provide for help desk and IT troubleshooting requests. Your support team can eliminate the back-and-forth conversations necessary for gathering operating system or hardware data. With information such as hardware make and model, installed software details, recent updates, and warranty information easily accessed, your workforce can get back to work faster.
Post-Production
Many organizations want to keep up with the latest technology to ensure speed, security, and efficiency, resulting in a constant cycle of replacing hardware. Once the retired hardware is out of production, your assets may get lost in the “asset graveyard,” risking data integrity.
Asset management and compliance are an essential part of post-production. ITAM with tracking capabilities, including RFID technology, keeps your organization compliant. Retired hardware and assets that are storing sensitive data are still subjected to regulatory controls such as General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), or California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). ITAM solutions, such as Asset Vue, help your IT managers identify which assets carry sensitive data and where it moves 24/7, even in retirement.
Making Better Business Decisions
Tracking at all stages of an ITAM lifecycle helps organizations make better business decisions. IT managers can provide a more accurate cost analysis for retiring and replacing equipment when they have a more efficient process to identify unused hardware and the cost of the inventoried hardware.
Asset Vue is your partner in all stages of the lifecycle, ensuring that you know what you have, where it is, who is using it, and what you are spending. Many organizations make the costly mistake of believing ITAM is non-essential to the success of their business. However, without accurate tracking and monitoring of your assets, operational costs and digital security is at risk. Asset Vue eliminates the time-consuming process of manually tracking and paper-based record-keeping and human error risk while offering innovation and automation to your essential ITAM program.
