4 Stages Of Asset Lifecycle And How To Manage Them

Each business asset has its lifecycle and limitations, and organizations that own these assets would naturally want them to become more accessible in providing services and maintaining steady revenue generation.

For that to happen, it is essential to manage an asset during its entire lifespan.  And the first step begins with knowing the four stages of an asset’s lifecycle, which are outlined below:

Planning

Before purchasing anything, companies often first identify the need for acquiring new assets.  During this phase, decision-makers consider the value an asset is expected to bring into their business.

If the case is replacing an existing asset, it will help if these organizations have access to comprehensive data regarding the asset throughout its lifespan.

The data that comes from tracking the asset since its acquisition up to its current state should give companies a good idea of how much they could and should be spending to replace the asset.  Only then will they be able to balance the need for performance and longevity against their available budget.

Managing this stage should not be disregarded. Otherwise, organizations won’t know how frequently an asset fails or simply determine the right time to replace it.  This often leads to unplanned expenses, especially if the asset is only replaced after a catastrophic failure.

Without a doubt, a tool is needed to avoid mismanaging this phase of an asset’s lifecycle.  Before considering replacing assets, organizations must base this purchase upon the collected data from their existing assets of the same type.  Without asset lifecycle management, they risk ruining their budget planning.  A smart asset vending system can solve that problem with its many features, which will be discussed further in this article.

Acquisition

Before the introduction of hardware asset tagging, most businesses would add newly purchased and deployed assets to a register, often in the form of an Excel sheet.  

During this stage, every detail about the asset is captured.  The information is then used to help organizations make more informed decisions, especially during the planning stage once the asset’s lifecycle has run its course.

The most commonly captured asset information are description, barcode or serial number, physical location, status, condition, date of purchase, cost, and so on.  The more details captured, the better.  

What makes a smart asset management system better at this phase is that it employs tracking solutions to link the equipment to the records in the register instead of merely having pages and pages of information on assets located somewhere in the warehouse.  With these technologies like RFID or QR labeling, organizations can go in-depth with gathering data around each asset that comes in.

Said data can then help asset managers plan preventive maintenance because they will be able to estimate the asset’s lifecycle and calculate its ROI over time, which then will help them better plan on a budget, and replacement.

Utilization And Maintenance

While the asset is being used, maintenance strategies are implemented to address possible critical failures.  This is done to minimize downtime as much as possible and extend the asset’s useful life for as long as it can.

Maintenance tasks include performing annual servicing to optimize equipment, regular checking of compliance, and fixing non-critical problems as they occur.  Without hardware asset management, this phase is more challenging to handle.  Maintenance windows are often missed leading to maintenance teams being forced to put out fires now and then.

An asset tracking solution can help enhance an organization’s reactive and planned maintenance strategies by ensuring that the right maintenance on the right equipment is carried out at the right time.

Additionally, the asset’s performance over time can also be tracked more effectively with the IT asset management system.  This allows organizations to detect patterns of concern, such as the frequency of breakdowns.  This gives them a clear picture of the costs to keep an asset running.  They’ll be able to make more informed decisions in the next and final phase of the asset lifecycle.

Disposal

At the end of its working life, the asset either gets disposed of or repurposed.  Without the aid of IT asset management solutions, an organization might have been managing its assets on a reactive basis up to this point.  There’s little to no data regarding the asset’s performance for its lifespan.

By then, it becomes difficult to accurately predict when it’s necessary to replace assets.  This poses a huge problem, especially when it involves equipment used to run a business.  The company risks replacing the equipment too soon or worse; they would replace the asset only after a complete failure, wasting money, time, and resources.

An IT asset tracking solution like Teqtivity solves this problem by having the correct data available all the time to inform asset managers on the best time for an asset replacement.  This is possible because of the comprehensive data gathered during the asset’s entire lifecycle.

With the help of dashboards, reports with graphs, and tables, an asset tracking system can give a clear visualization of a specific asset’s deterioration and the ongoing costs to keep them running.  With this data, it should be easier to decide whether or not to dispose of an asset at a certain period.

Conclusion

As illustrated in this article, smart enterprise asset management can drive an organization’s efficiency, and profitability mainly because it solves the problems of a reactive maintenance strategy which ultimately drains revenue because of the high risk of downtime.

Because of its seamless process, the right best IT asset management solutions empower entire organizations to work better towards a common goal.