In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world, physical assets are critical to the success of any organization. Assets, like computers, phones, or tablets, allow employees to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. These assets enable organizations to get more value out of their employees and achieve their business goals.
When it comes to managing and tracking these assets, it is vital to develop and implement a winning strategy. An effective plan can help your organization save time, money, and improve business processes and workflows.
Asset management can sometimes seem like a difficult, time-consuming, and overwhelming part of IT professional’s job. It doesn’t have to be that way, however.
Here is a step by step guide on how you can take control of your organization’s assets, reducing stress and making your life much easier.
Catalog Current Assets
It is essential to start with a list of all of your current assets. Commonly, this comes in the form of a spreadsheet.
During this step, you’ll want to ensure you find and document every asset in your organization. Don’t worry about all of the asset’s details yet, as we will get all of that once we have a completed list.
A couple of tricks to help with this step is to reach out to senior management and allow them to trickle your message down to the entire organization. Ask them for details regarding all company property they have assigned to them and their staff, then ask them to send all asset details via email.
Another place to start could be with the accounting department as they should have receipts and running tallies of all purchases. They keep these records for tax purposes, but they will most likely be able to provide you with nearly everything that you need to compile your list.
Gather Asset Information
Once you have your list compiled, you will then want to gather as much information about each individual asset as possible. Here are some examples of things that your organization might want to track:
- Receipts
- Service records
- Device information like serial numbers, MAC addresses, etc.
- Device specs
- Warranty information
- Make, model, and color of each asset
- Pictures
- Who the asset is assigned to
- Who is responsible for the asset if an employee leaves the organization
- Where the assets are located
- The barcode of each asset
- Anything else that is important for your organization to track
Organize Assets
Now that you have all of your assets listed and all of the information about your assets, you will want to organize your assets as best as possible. This will help you get everything ready for the next step.
Most organizations group their assets by asset type, asset location, asset assignment, department, etc. Here are a few examples:
Asset Type
- Windows laptop
- Apple laptop
- Windows desktop
- Apple desktop
- Android cell phone
- Apple cell phone
- External monitor
- VoIP desk phone
- Printer
- Scaner
- Fax machine
- Projector
- Computer peripherals like keyboards, mice, web cams, etc.
Asset Location
- New York South Office
- New York North Office
- New Jersey Office
- Philadelphia Office
- Washington DC Office
Asset Department
- Sales Department
- Customer Support Department
- R&D Department
- Engineering Department
- IT Department
- Accounting Department
- HR Department
Once you have all of your assets identified, organized, classified, and grouped, you are ready for step number 4, tracking them with an Asset Management software solution.
Use Asset Management Software
By investing in an asset or inventory management software, organizations can automate complicated, unorganized, unscalable, and often time-consuming tasks. This will save the team hundreds of hours per year, and allow them to focus on higher pay off activities.
There are different levels of inventory management or types of inventory management solutions that you could leverage. Deciding on which one works for you and your organization might take some time to figure out. Each one is unique, tackles the problem differently, and offers various levels of features. The best asset management software or the best inventory management software will be the one that does exactly what you need.
Here are three examples that you could use:
- Lansweeper – Lansweeper is an advanced inventory and asset management solution that can scan any network setup. It scans to find assets connected to your network and then provides you with detailed information regarding each item. You can get a complete inventory of all workstations, servers, routers, switches, monitors, printers, VoIP phones, and other network devices.
- Sortly – Sortly is a simple inventory and asset tracking system to visually track your IT assets and any asset details, including location, price, condition, etc.
- SeamlessDesk – SeamlessDesk is a cloud-based IT Service Desk software solution. One available service desk tools provided by SeamlessDesk is a smart inventory and asset management tool, allowing for fixed assets inventory and management. Additionally, if associating your help desk tickets to fixed assets is essential to you and your organization, no one can do that better than SeamlessDesk. SeamlessDesk’s IT Service Desk software allows organizations to track and manage assets with unlimited custom fields, images, advanced user assignments, purchasing details, associated tickets, folders with hierarchies, and much more. SeamlessDesk’s Asset Manager is a powerful, yet simple tool, purpose-built to make managing assets easier and more efficient.
Develop a Winning Process and Follow it
Now that you have put in the time and effort, hopefully, you have successfully implemented your asset or inventory management solution. Managing your assets or managing your inventory is not an event; it is a process. The key to long-term success is consistency. If you or your team fail to add new assets or inventory into your asset or inventory management system, as tractions actions occur, you can quickly find yourself once again in a stressful, unorganized situation. Implement new policies and procedures at your organization, so that positive and productive habits are developed and followed.
By following the steps outlined here, you can avoid the words “stress,” “unorganized,” and “headache,” which are routinely used as adjectives, when describing the task of managing and tracking your assets and inventory.
To learn more about how SeamlessDesk’s Asset Management can help your organization better track your assets and stay organized, please call (888) 316-0606 or request a demo. Or, if you are ready to give SeamlessDesk a try now, you can sign up for a risk-free 30-day trial (no credit card required).
