Global IT Asset Tracking for Professional Services

Passive RAIN RFID tag system saved this firm hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours of work

Professional_services_asset_tracking

The Challenge

A major international professional services and management consulting company was struggling with what, on its face, might seem like a simple IT asset management challenge: tracking laptops and other consumer IT assets owed by the company. Employees would check laptops and other assets out at each of the firm’s global location, and after an asset was checked out, the firm had no visibility into that assets location until it was manually checked back in.

IT managers felt, but couldn’t prove, these assets were not being tracked effectively. They were sure, however, that asset location information across the company was inconsistent; how IT assets were tracked and managed at each location varied slightly, so there was no corporate level consistent reporting.

Furthermore, like most large organizations, IT managers knew old equipment was being replaced, but not formally decommissioned and removed from circulation. In addition, they were aware of equipment being checked out by a department and either not returned at all, returned but not manually checked back in, or returned to the wrong location. This was increasing costs across the board.

The Plan

This client needed a consistent roll out of proven IT asset management tools, systems, and best practices at multiple locations around the globe. Asset Vue’s onsite deployment teams managed the process, working closely with internal IT teams, and were able to get the Asset Vue Inventory up and running in weeks, not months.

Assets were tagged with passive RAIN RFID tags that logged not just location, but also warranty status, last service date, and more information on the asset itself. This information was accessible anywhere, globally, by any IT team member through our user-friendly, web-based application.

Fixed-position tag readers installed in each company building automatically scanned the tags whenever the assets were removed from their home location in one room, moved to a different floor or department, or removed from the building entirely. With dates and times logged automatically, it was simple for IT managers to check records and find the last known location or any asset in the system.

Professional Services Asset Management2
Professional Services Asset Management

The Results

Finally, this global corporation had a reliable, consistent system for managing IT asset lifecycle statuses and tracking asset locations. Over the next few months, the teams were able to realize hundreds of dollars in savings from decommission and removing retired assets and by correctly tracking assets back to the correct department.