What is Asset Management and Why is it Important?
The present global economic decline is opening the eyes of many businesses to one crucial fact: asset management can make or break a company. And contrary to popular belief, it is more than just counting inventory and typing it in a spreadsheet.
This essential cog in the system not only helps companies keep afloat even in the most trying times, but it also gives them an edge against the competition. By implementing a smart asset management system, companies can focus their attention on other areas to grow their business (i.e., sales, customer services, marketing, product/service improvement.)
So what exactly is asset management, and how does it have such a profound impact on every business?
Definition
To put it simply, asset management is the process of managing every asset owned by a business, both tangible and intangible. Typical assets include monetary resources, buildings, employees, and because of the rising importance of IT, hardware, and software equipment.
“Management” involves controlling every aspect that correlates to properly handling said assets. By knowing its basic definition, we can now start to understand the necessity for asset management and what it can do to improve a business.
How it All Works
For the system to work, the lifecycle of every resource needs to be tracked and scrutinized. Asset lifecycle management follows the basic stages of planning, procurement, implementation, usage, repair or maintenance, and disposal. Even though a manually managed asset tracking system is an option, businesses, especially growing and established ones will significantly benefit from relevant software.
Tools like Teqtivity streamline the management process by automating the collection and analysis of data. Using software can also reduce the effects of human error and provide more accurate data. By monitoring the inner workings of every asset, companies can make smarter decisions to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
The Advantages of Using Effective Asset Management
Smart asset and inventory management can only work if every resource within a company is monitored and maintained. Most successful systems use a centralized approach that aims to connect business departments, facilities, and locations, along with their assets.
By creating a universal source of data where the workforce can quickly get what they need, businesses can reduce every asset-related operating expenditure and capital expenditure. It also promotes collaborative working across every team within the company.
Through a streamlined and centralized asset management system, businesses can easily:
- Keep track of every asset
- Manage resources across different locations used by different people
- Track the performance of each asset
- Monitor and measure lifecycle costs
- Organize their asset portfolio
- Remove any ghost or zombie assets
- Prevent or combat any operational, legal, and financial risk
- Define their service levels
- Identify risks and produce a plan to manage them effectively
- Promote growth and economic stability
Asset Management Software is the Future
Smart asset management software provides a straightforward solution to tracking a company’s growing list of assets. Before implementing a specific tool, you need to ensure that it has the data gathering and analysis capabilities that can improve your current system.
To give you an idea of what to look for, capable software standardizes and automates the asset tracking process, provides a customizable dashboard and in-depth reporting, integrates easily with other software tools, and tracks assets in real-time. These features can:
- Reduce costs
- Accurately measure operational efficiency
- Provide a faster ROI
- Improve risk management
- Promote better compliance
- Alleviate administrative burdens
Since data is a crucial aspect of any asset tracking system, the tools you choose need to simplify the majority of the monitoring process. As mentioned before, streamlining the asset acquisition, tracking, maintenance, and replacement, allows your management workforce to pursue other essential tasks.
Conclusion
Utilizing spreadsheets to oversee a company’s assets is now a thing of the past. This manual process not only results in inaccurate and unstable data, but it can also be more time-consuming. Businesses will eventually realize that this outdated approach will not be viable in the long-run.
Through an asset tracking solution, enterprises are given the ability to track and monitor all of their assets in one central system, which can eliminate spreadsheet use. Implementing these tools can be well worth the cost and effort for the potential benefits, especially in trying times where every decision needs to be backed up by accurate and trustworthy information.