* The case for asset management
In a couple of recent articles, I’ve brought up the subject of IT asset management. I’ve been surprised at the readers who have contacted me to ask, “Do I really need asset management?” I guess I’ve been taking it for granted that it makes good sense to know what you have and where it is. What’s more, asset management is a fundamental enabler to providing better service to your internal clients. So the short answer to the question is, “Yes, you really need IT asset management.”
I contacted Karen Devine, senior product marketing manager at MRO Software, to help me build the case for IT asset management. “It’s a struggle to convince people to do it,” Devine says. “Asset management is a behind-the-scenes activity, and it’s rarely a high priority, especially when budgets are tight.”
Devine points out several common barriers to asset management, besides the obvious lack of funding. “Within a typical IT department, people are rewarded for keeping things up and running,” according to Devine. “Few people are rewarded for keeping track of what the company owns and how it is being used. To spend resources on tracking assets would be like admitting that the department is doing a poor job today. No one wants to acknowledge that.”
Another barrier is that, to be done properly, IT asset management needs to go beyond the IT department and bring in help from the Legal and Finance and/or Purchasing departments. This is because you will want to keep track of licenses, leases and contracts for your IT assets. It is at this level that you can begin to see a significant return on your investment in asset management.
Let’s look beyond the barriers and see what IT asset management is about. Devine says there are basically three levels of asset management: The ground level is just discovering and keeping track of what you have; the mid level is tying your inventory to your contracts; the third level allows you to think more proactively about your assets and take action that will improve service levels.
Knowing what you have is the first step. At the base level, you will need to use an auto-discovery tool to get a very good baseline inventory of what hardware and software is installed and what is used. Devine says it becomes worthwhile to automate this process if you have a few hundred or more PCs, or if your offices are geographically dispersed.
Once you’ve got an accurate picture of what you have, you need to keep the inventory up to date. “Some companies think they are done once they run the discovery tool one time,” Devine says. On the contrary, the information must be kept fresh to maintain its usefulness.
Moving to level two, you can match your asset information with contract information. For example, you can see how many licenses you own of a particular software package, and how this compares to what is actually in use at your company. This tells you if you are in compliance with the licensing agreement. You may even discover that you’ve purchased more licenses than you really need. Devine says the average company overbuys software licenses by 15% just to stay in compliance. If you know this and can identify it, that’s a 15% savings you can gain back.
At level two, you also can track warranties and maintenance agreements. If a user calls the help desk with a problem, you can see if his PC is still under warranty, and perhaps save money by getting the vendor to fix the problem.
Once you’ve married inventory information to contract data, you can think more proactively about your assets. This is the third level. For instance, you can use your detailed information about use patterns to negotiate more favorable pricing from a hardware or software vendor. You can plan and prepare for upgrades or new acquisitions, or implement shared services or chargebacks. You can control your IT assets, rather than being controlled by them.
Devine has written a white paper on the topic of IT asset management. In it, she explains what asset management is and what tools can help you achieve your goals. Find the white paper at https://www.mro.com/corporate/pdf/Asset_TrackerWhitePaper.pdf
Devine adds a few words of advice for getting started. “Pick the top projects that can generate immediate benefits for you. Don’t spend too much time in the planning phase. It’s OK to capture 75% of the information. Even partial data is better than nothing because it tells you more than you knew before.”
Linda Musthaler is vice president of Currid & Company. You can write to her at mailto:Linda.Musthaler@currid.com
