Is it time for your organization to automate asset management?
More organizations are electing to automate this process, but how do you know if it is right for your organization?
We have put this guide together to help you decide if it is time to take the plunge.
These are the 3 questions every organization should ask when deciding whether to automate asset management:
Do we have assets with warranties?
It is easy to stash warranties or paperwork into the filing cabinet when you first purchase an item, but 13 months down the line when a laptop won’t boot up or a dishwasher is leaking, how do we know if it is still under warranty?
Many organizations waste money paying for repairs when an item is actually still under warranty – simply because they don’t realize it. By storing all this information in an asset management system, you can easily see the stats for a specific item at a glance.
In addition to warranties, maintenance is another big place for savings. Who remembers how often all the various machines need to be serviced to keep them running smoothly? It is easy to overlook this sort of thing, but keeping track of maintenance with a good asset management solution can save a lot of money in the long run. Imagine if you forgot to change the oil in your car for 5 years. It’s a safe bet it would not be running well (and could develop a much more costly problem) than the car that had regular oil changes.
Without proper tracking, you could also be spending on maintenance agreements for equipment you are not even using.
This is another big cost savings area that many organizations are moving to take advantage of.
Could you benefit from a check in/out history for each asset?
If an asset goes missing or you discover it is broken, do you know who had it last? It can be helpful to have a clear log including history and dates for each time a computer, for example is checked out. In schools, for example, you would also want to know which faculty member and classroom an asset was distributed to and ensure it is returned in a timely manner. Clear tracking history helps with all of this.
A good solution will not only keep track of this history, but will also link tickets to assets to keep a robust history of everything related to that asset, any previous issues, and more.
Do you want to prevent overspending?
When you lack a good IT asset management solution, you could be duplicating equipment or overbuying when really you have plenty of equipment on hand – it just isn’t organized well enough to know that. The opportunity for cost savings is another good reason to automate asset management.
Conclusion
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, it is time to implement an asset management solution. A good solution will help your organization save time, money, and effort. It should integrate fully into the natural work environment to make it easy for users to adopt (we recommend running a solution in Microsoft Office 365, Teams, & SharePoint). It should also leverage all these points we have discussed above.
If you would like to save yourself some time, we recommend Crow Canyon’s IT Asset Management solution. It checks all the boxes and is competitively priced to help you get the most “bang” for your buck. It adapts well to many different types of assets and is widely used across many industries. In fact, it is even trusted to keep one of North Amercai’s largest nuclear power plants safe. Learn more about our asset management solution here.
