If you’ve heard about IT asset management (ITAM), you may wonder what its goals are and how it contributes to a company’s success. In this article, we’ll break down the goals of asset management strategy and how to develop a strategic asset management plan to achieve those main deliverables. Keep reading to get all the details.
What Are the Three Goals of Asset Management?
The three main goals of IT asset management are:
Help businesses get the most value out of their IT assets through asset lifecycle management.
Create an organized system that helps track and manage a company’s assets.
Prevent issues with equipment that can slow down business operations.
There’s a lot to break down with each of these goals, especially when you consider that there are both hardware assets and software assets. The next sections will cover each one in more detail.
How Software Asset Management and ITAM Helps Get the Most Value from Assets
The main purpose of asset management is to get the most value out of a company’s IT equipment. IT asset lifecycle management can achieve this in a few different ways, which are:
Selling old equipment for the highest possible value.
Purchasing new equipment that is the best fit at the most economical price to save money.
Putting maintenance procedures in place to prolong the life of assets.
Essentially, IT asset management manages the lifecycle of an asset from beginning to end. IT teams that put the right protocols in place can accurately track assets, maintain them, and properly negotiate with vendors to get high value from each piece of equipment. While a company’s internal IT asset management team could manage all of this on their own, it can be a time-consuming and forgotten task when other things become more critical to the business. At Multiply, our number one priority is ensuring you’re always getting the most out of your IT assets with comprehensive asset management.
How ITAM Helps Create a More Organized System
Another one of the main processes of IT asset management is setting up a complete inventory and tracking system for IT assets. The inventory system will help achieve the other goals of ITAM, like getting good value out of a company’s assets.
When you bring on a team to help with IT asset management, they will typically use discovery tools and other methods to find each of your business’s assets and set up an inventory of them. It can seem like a confusing process to do this on your own, so hiring a team of experts to do it for you will be the easiest way to achieve an accurate inventory.
Once assets have been accounted for, an entire system can be built to track and audit them throughout the asset lifecycle. Continuously tracking assets and their functionality helps ensure things within the business are still operating smoothly and find the best times to replace assets as needed.
How ITAM Helps Prevent Equipment Issues
We all know that computer equipment can be both the most useful and troublesome thing in a business. It’s great when it’s working and highly stressful when issues occur. IT asset management can help prevent or mitigate these difficulties by creating streamlined systems for success.
When equipment is maintained and updated regularly, it lowers the risk of having issues occur. This is great news for business owners who don’t want their daily operations slowed down by IT problems.
In addition, if issues do occur, IT asset management also puts processes in place to solve them as efficiently as possible. That means your business operations get back up and running as soon as possible. Asset management also prevents a lot of stress and panic that could otherwise happen. At Multiply, we have our own in-house repair team to increase our efficiency and limit the time a computer is away from your employee. We also store deployable loaner computers to keep that employee online while their computer is being fixed.
How to Develop a Strategic Asset Management Plan?
Seeing how all these deliverables of IT asset management benefit a company, you’re probably wondering how to set up a strategic asset management plan. There are a handful of steps you’ll want to take to develop effective asset management processes, including:
Hire a knowledgeable team of IT professionals. You won’t get very far without a great team who can consistently execute these asset management deliverables. If you’re looking for an excellent place to start, our team at Multiply can help integrate IT asset management successfully into your business to make this process a lot easier.
Define how you will track assets. Here you’ll want to think about what types of software or spreadsheets you’ll use to track all your company’s assets. This can include open-source ITAM software or free options like creating a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
Create defined roles. You’ll also want to designate roles within your business for who will manage what aspects of IT asset management. There are several aspects of ITAM, including reporting, maintenance, and negotiating with vendors. Everyone should know their role and how to best execute it.
Designate times to check in on the process. Once you have a process in place, you’ll want to check in on it regularly. You may find, especially early on, that some parts of the process need to be optimized. It’s important to work with your IT team to ensure everything is managed effectively and updated as needed.
Getting started with ITAM can feel like a confusing process, but it doesn’t have to be. If you want help to create a streamlined process for success, our team is ready to get started!
How Multiply Can Help with IT Asset Management Software
Multiply is a team of IT professionals that partner with businesses and help with IT assets and data management. Our goal at Multiply is to help you create a more streamlined asset management strategy and system for success within your company. When you work with us, we’ll help educate employees and ensure the process of ITAM is implemented successfully from beginning to end.
To find out more about how Multiply can help with asset management, contact us today!
