Asset management, in our experience, typically falls to CIOs and their IT departments, since IT assets are some of the most important that a company relies on to get work done.
However, the physical square footage of an office building is one of the most expensive assets a company has to work with. Leveraging asset management technology can help make sure that space is being used in the most cost-effective way possible to increase productivity. And while annual audits are increasingly not enough for IT teams to understand their IT asset needs, occasional checks to make sure key fob scanners, security equipment, and audio/visual meeting equipment is working and located where it should be is also not enough.
More CIOs than ever before – 78% according to last year’s Deloitte Global CIO survey – see their departments function as providing the tools to facilitate strategic business goals.
“CIOs create value by delivering capabilities that are in tune with business priorities. Rapidly shifting business priorities mean that CIOs can’t afford to just react to business needs; they need to develop the business acumen to anticipate and pre-empt future business needs,” said Khalid Kark, managing director, Deloitte LLP, and director of research for Deloitte’s CIO Program.
Aligning IT with strategic business goals means being able to plan maintenance in advance, not just react to issues. It also means mapping out procurement in advance, not as warranties expire or things simply break, to avoid downtime and be ready to grow as the company does.
Asset Management helps IT and facilities teams work better together
Office buildings today are increasingly blurring the delineation between facilities and IT departments. These teams find themselves working hand in hand as businesses require increased flexibility for power and networking needs. In addition to data security, IT teams work closely with facilities teams to manage the physical security of the building and employees within it.
How do you know all your exterior and interior cameras and sensors and scanners are working properly? Who is managing key fobs or key cards, and the scanners that read them at entrances and exists, for your organization?
Furthermore, while stationary assets, like fixtures or room-specific hardware and equipment – does not need to be tracked in real time in order to pin-point location, they do need to be monitored more than just a typical random check every couple of months.
We’ve spoken to large organizations that have discovered how useful it would be to know the utilization rates of conference rooms and other physical spaces in their offices. For example, which conference rooms are used least, maybe because they are too out of the way. Maybe there are conference rooms that are always fully booked because they are the right size for what most workers at that organization need for a meeting room.
Annual audits are not enough for today’s corporate IT asset managers
Modern IT teams cannot rely on traditional annual audits when the scale and complexity of today’s it operation as grown beyond a certain number of laptops.
Annually is also not frequently enough to get a sense of the overall health of your IT infrastructure. While audits are important for getting a birds-eye view of the IT infrastructure in play, they are manual, periodic, and demand a lot of time and energy from the IT team. That is simply not the ideal process to use in planning for next quarter.
Real-time, on-demand information about the functioning status and current warranty status of any piece of equipment – not to mention its physical location – makes your next annual audit easier, but also gives you more data between now and them to inform decisions. and plan ahead.
Increasing productivity, improving security, and bringing a more strategic approach to asset management – of all kinds – requires that IT teams and facilities teams worth together and align on the right processes and tools to do their jobs. When that is in place, magic happens: the physical infrastructure a company needs to function and grow becomes a unified system about which asset managers can access data with just a flew clicks as well as more accurately plan ahead of future needs that align with corporate goals.Find out how Asset Vue technology can help your business better manage any kind of asset. Get a free 30-minute demo of our software today.
