How to Track Assets in a Digital World?

Innovations and new emerging needs require businesses to look for solutions. If not monitored properly, an overwhelming number of procurements conducted result in more complex enterprise architecture and bloated inventories, in time. So, keeping track of the software applications, hardware, licenses and everything related to the IT structure of a company is crucial. A fluent operation can only be realized if the IT landscape of a company is result-oriented and carefully planned, coordinated, and monitored.

As companies have the tendency to prefer SaaS (Software as a Service) today thanks to Digital Transformation, keeping track of completely digital procurement processes is both hard and easy, depending on the situation. It’s hard because it’s quite common to simply buy a new SaaS solution to save the day. Shadow IT, it’s generally called. Yet, it’s also easy as the paper trail is way little digitally. Considering this bilateral need, there should be a comprehensive methodology that deals with the procurements in order not to cause complexity in the IT landscape, putting business operations at risk. A bulky inventory and a complex enterprise architecture could seriously harm a business. Feel free to learn about 6 Consequences of Not Having IT Inventory Management.

What is Asset Tracking?

Asset tracking is a periodic monitoring process to determine what assets a business owns. Every business wants to use their budgets in the most efficient way to achieve their goals. Among the biggest cost items of a business are the assets they own. The costs of these assets are not limited to the purchase. Each asset creates additional costs for the company. Maintenance costs, license renewal fees, consulting services and more are costs incurred after purchase. Asset tracking type differs from company to company. While some companies keep track of the assets in their production facilities, some companies keep track of the IT components.

What is IT Asset Management?

IT asset management is the whole of business processes carried out so that businesses can monitor and manage their IT assets. ITAM increases visibility by making the IT environment of enterprises transparent and thus simplifies the enterprise architecture. IT Asset Management provides answers to the following questions:

What IT assets do I have?
How much do these assets cost?
Who uses these assets in the company?
What is the efficiency and IT value of these assets?
Which IT assets are not used?
When are the maintenance and license renewal dates for these assets?
What IT investments should we make?

So, IT Asset Management should be adapted to today’s digital environment. While it was understandable to use pen and pencil or spreadsheets for tracking assets back in the day, the buying process is completely digital today, requiring new alternatives that stemmed from innovations. This calls for a modernized IT Asset Management approach.

Why It’s Hard to Track Assets?

As businesses require different solutions for various needs, it’s only natural that every department in a company act with different agendas. Of course, the IT department should set up standards for procuring but this is not always the case as Shadow IT is a problem that should not be neglected.

There are several reasons why companies cannot keep up with their growing inventories:

Shadow IT: Some departments may act and procure software without the consent of the IT department. When Shadow IT happens, the newly purchased asset may pose threat to the overall integrity of the company because of security reasons. It could also be a double-purchase, meaning that the same license had already been bought or there is already similar software in the portfolio.
Time and effort issues: IT is the backbone of a company. So, the IT departments have their agendas with more important and urgent tasks than monitoring the purchases. So, they might have a hard time allocating personnel to keep track of the purchases.
Dispersed enterprise architecture: Almost all companies at least try to keep track of their assets. But if not standardized, this process might lead to the data getting stored in different places as bits and pieces. This makes it almost impossible to create a single source of truth and it’s quite hard to efficiently keep track of the assets after.
Too many providers and different types of assets: The components of an IT structure are quite a lot and require different processes for monitoring. Licenses, warranties, check-up & maintenance documents, software, hardware, costs… the list goes on and on.

But if there are problems, there certainly are solutions.