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As your organization grows over time, keeping track of software, equipment, and data gets increasingly difficult. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of assets to manage — in fact, 73% of SME IT professionals use five or more tools just to manage their employees’ lifecycles and resources. That’s not to mention all the other tools in their IT infrastructure, from servers to employee devices to SaaS licenses. The way your organization manages its many assets can have a dramatic impact on its overall efficiency and productivity.
Importance of Asset Management
IT asset management (ITAM) is a structured, repeatable process for provisioning, maintaining, and disposing of assets in ways that meet the organization’s strategic goals. ITAM solutions promise efficiency and accuracy when keeping track of technologies, hardware, and data in an enterprise context.
ITAM allows the organization to streamline processes that empower IT teams to generate value. It standardizes the incorporation of IT assets into business processes. This reduces risk, improves compliance, and helps the organization run more efficiently.
Define Your ITAM Approach and Standards
Best-in-class ITAM implementations rely on repeatable, standardized processes. Every organization that wants to optimize asset tracking and lifecycle management must first identify standards to hold themselves accountable to. Only then can the organization scope out the specific steps it needs to take to achieve that goal.
It’s important to recognize the objective you wish to achieve through ITAM. For some organizations, it might be demonstrating compliance with the ISO 19770 family of ITAM standards. For others, there may be immediate cybersecurity concerns to address. For some, it may simply be an exercise in reducing waste or planning to scale.
Identifying the standards you want to achieve early on will simplify many downstream decisions. This will help you answer questions like:
- Which IT assets have the highest priority when it comes to obtaining visibility?
- How should ITAM impact the employee onboarding and offboarding process?
- What metrics will you collect to measure the success of your ITAM implementation?
- How does ITAM align to the company’s broader strategic goals?
The sooner you know the answer to these questions, the easier ITAM implementation will be. Keep these in mind when learning how to implement ITAM best practices below.
Implementing ITAM Best Practices
ITAM helps IT leaders understand how hardware and software applications translate to business value. Adhering to ITAM best practices will give you maximum visibility into your IT environment and let you address its inefficiencies more easily.
Thoroughly Identify and Catalog Assets
Building your inventory is the first practical step to hardware and software asset management. There are multiple ways to conduct asset discovery. The way you approach this step will have a major impact on your ability to leverage asset data constructively throughout the process.
Effective Asset Tagging Techniques
There is no need to stick to a single asset tagging technique when conducting asset discovery. Most tracking technologies are designed for specific types of assets. Choosing the right technique can make a significant difference in your ability to track assets efficiently.
Barcodes and QR Codes
Barcodes and QR codes are among the most popular asset tagging technologies in use today. They both offer an easy way to track and manage hardware assets. However, they differ in important ways:
Barcodes
- Barcodes can store 20-25 characters in an accessible format.
- Barcode technology is more than half a century old, making it affordable and easy to implement in a variety of contexts.
- Since barcodes are an older technology, they don’t support advanced features like encryption.
- Barcodes are ideal for tracking small bits of information in large, complex environments — like prices and product SKUs.
QR Codes
- QR codes can store more than 1,500 alphanumeric characters.
- QR codes rely on digital technology that supports encryption, automation, and other advanced features.
- Implementing QR codes is generally more expensive than using bar codes. This is especially true when advanced features are involved.
- QR codes are more resistant to accidental damage.
RFID Tags
RFID tracking is ideal for tracking a large number of items automatically. There is no need for line-of-sight between the scanner and the object being scanned. However, RFID systems can be expensive to install. There are two types of RFID ITAM solutions for hardware asset management:
Passive RFID
- Passive RFID tags don’t require batteries, but they must be scanned manually.
- Passive tags are smaller and more durable than active tags.
- Since they don’t have an internal power source, passive tags can only be read at a close distance to the scanner.
Active RFID
- Active RFID tags have an internal battery. This makes them larger and less durable, but they can scan large numbers of items at once.
- RFID scanners can detect active RFID chips at a much greater distance than passive ones.
- Active tags have read/write ability. This means the data they carry can be modified with each scan.
NFC Tags
NFC technology enables peer-to-peer communication between devices. NFC-enabled devices act as both reader and tag, allowing two devices to share information by simply touching one another. While similar to RFID in many ways, NFC has some unique characteristics:
- NFC tags have much shorter range than RFID, and no support for scanning large numbers of items.
- NFC tags support two-way communication and up to 4KB of data storage.
- Most modern smartphones have built-in NFC support, making the technology easy to deploy.
Serial Numbers
Serial numbers are easily the oldest technology on this list. Modern organizations can still use them to easily identify and track assets through a centralized database. Anyone can quickly create and manage a serial number database with open source software—but the process can be time-consuming and prone to human error.
- Serial numbers are useful for tracking assets with no additional hardware requirements.
- You must create and maintain a database linking serial numbers to individual assets.
- Manual data entry processes are required for many database operations. Software automation is possible, but hardware scanning is not.
GPS Tracking
GPS technology provides real-time geolocation and time data to devices across the planet. A large number of devices use GPS technology for tracking, navigation, and mapping applications. GPS can also be used for IT asset management purposes, but is generally reserved for high-value items that need constant monitoring.
- GPS tracking uses advanced inventory tags that offer in-depth information about asset location and status in real time.
- GPS technology uses satellites to track assets anywhere in the world.
- Active real-time GPS tracking is precise, but too expensive for most use cases.
Integrated Tagging Solutions
Each of the hardware asset management tools mentioned above serves a particular use case. Your organization can unlock significant value using specific technologies for certain assets. However, you’ll need to use integrated asset management software to keep track of multiple types of asset tagging technologies.
This allows you to categorize assets according to their characteristics. If you have specific rules and policies for critical assets, you can manage them separately from lower-impact assets. This lets you match the appropriate tagging technology to each asset based on real-world business needs.
Tracking Tools and Software
IT asset management isn’t limited to hardware assets. Your ITAM platform should also be able to track and manage software assets. Software licenses and intellectual properties are two examples of non-physical assets that you may wish to manage alongside your company’s hardware.
Some of the tracking technologies mentioned above can also work with non-physical assets. Many organizations use bar codes, QR codes, and serial numbers to track software licenses, documents, and other digital items with business value.
Monitor Asset Lifecycles
ITAM should cover the entirety of the asset lifecycle. Neglecting to monitor every step of that cycle can create blind spots and an incomplete understanding of your IT infrastructure as a whole. Capturing the full value of the ITAM process means monitoring assets as they move through every stage.
However, manually monitoring assets is difficult and time-consuming. The sheer volume of data involved demands an automated solution. Automation helps IT leaders integrate lifecycle management into ITAM solutions, granting visibility into every stage of the cycle. When inefficiencies creep in, the IT team is prepared to address them quickly.
Integrate ITAM with ITSM
IT service management (ITSM) is a structured process for delivering value to the users of IT assets. It provides a standard framework for submitting tickets to the IT team and laying down a repeatable workflow for resolving the ticket. Instead of being limited to support, this process applies to all IT-related requests.
For example, a user may request a new laptop to replace a stolen one. ITSM integration ensures your ITAM solution will recognize that the original laptop was stolen. It also streamlines the process of assigning a new laptop to the user and resolving the ticket with priority.
Ongoing Maintenance and Audits
Your ITAM solution should make it easier for the IT team to conduct proactive maintenance. Instead of relying on a reactive break/fix system, you can analyze patterns and conduct maintenance operations before assets stop working. This reduces downtime and dramatically improves business efficiency.
It also makes planning for IT audits easier. If you have visibility into the durability of your assets, you can make predictions about their performance in audit scenarios. That means less stress and uncertainty when putting systems under strain to demonstrate compliance.
Overcoming ITAM Challenges
Implementing ITAM can be a complex undertaking. The larger and more complex your organization is, the more difficulty you are likely to encounter. However, this also means that larger enterprises have much more to gain by adhering to ITAM best practices successfully.
Common Challenges in ITAM Implementation
Organizations often face issues when implementing ITAM processes and technology in a multi-site format. Most modern organizations no longer operate in a traditional single-site brick-and-mortar format. Adapting ITAM processes to work over large distances can create issues that IT leaders will have to proactively identify and address.
Data Accuracy and Completeness
Challenge: Ensuring the tracking and management of the asset lifecycle through a consolidated platform without inaccuracy or missing coverage.
Solution: IT leaders should stagger their implementations over a longer period of time and bring new departments into the ITAM system on a regular basis. This gives each department time to test their ITAM implementation and address problems before moving onto the next phase.
If there are problems integrating a particular business unit, the IT team can focus on those issues without disrupting other initiatives. The next phase of the implementation should only be pursued when that business unit is properly integrated.
Integration with Existing Systems
Challenge: Integrating ITAM across diverse IT infrastructure while maintaining standard processes.
Solution: Establishing a centralized ITAM solution is vital in diverse infrastructure environments. Having a single, unified interface for control and visibility lets organizations standardize processes across different platforms and environments.
Modern, unified ITAM solutions typically use cloud technology to enable efficient management across environments. Accessing software, hardware, and configuration items through cloud-connected applications makes it much easier to ensure uniform results. Asset tracking processes can be deployed in a standardized way regardless of the physical location of individual assets, or the infrastructure they rely on.
Dynamic IT Environment
Challenge: Enterprise IT environments are constantly changing, making it difficult for ITAM solutions to keep up.
Solution: Automation is key to successfully managing IT asset management in an enterprise environment. The larger an organization is, the more likely it is to undergo significant asset churn on a constant basis. Manual operations are not enough to deliver consistent results with ITAM processes.
Choosing the right asset tracking technology for each asset can enhance automation capabilities. IT leaders should prioritize tracking technologies with automation features for high-value assets. High-turnover assets must be supported by robust policies that ensure inventory management tasks are processed quickly.
Compliance and Licensing
Challenge: Conducting compliance audits gets increasingly difficult as the size and scope of the organization’s IT asset inventory grows.
Solution: Capturing the right performance metrics can radically transform compliance processes. If your ITAM solution already gathers the appropriate data, meeting compliance requirements can be as simple as generating a visual dashboard.
This is why identifying your organization’s IT asset management needs early on is so important. If you focus on these metrics when implementing your ITAM solution, you can reduce the amount of time and effort that goes into demonstrating compliance.
Security
Challenge: Ensuring the security of distributed IT assets without impacting the usability of those assets.
Solution: Visibility is the key to improving security without compromising usability. When your security team can observe and control IT assets through a centralized ITAM solution, addressing threats and vulnerabilities in real time is much easier.
Ideally, your organization would develop stringent access controls along with its ITAM implementation. These controls would specify who has permission to use, modify, and manage IT assets. Automating your response to the most common misconfigurations will save your IT team when investigating security events on assets.
Cost Management
Challenge: Budget limitations can become serious obstacles to ensuring each asset is tracked and managed appropriately.
Solution: IT leaders have to obtain buy-in from executives and board members before embarking on ITAM implementation. This implementation can involve substantial up-front costs, yet it generates significant cost savings over time. If leadership doesn’t believe in the implementation’s benefits, it will be much harder to achieve results.
Many people underestimate the value of ITAM when deployed on an enterprise scale. Consider calculating the opportunity cost of not implementing ITAM, or forfeiting advanced features like automation, and communicate them to leadership when you make your case for an ITAM solution. These costs will only grow as the organization grows, leading to increased need for cost-effective solutions to be in place.
Scalability
Challenge: ITAM implementation can be an ongoing challenge when the organization is growing in size and complexity.
Solution: Growing organizations must regularly revisit their IT asset management strategy to ensure it continues to meet the organization’s needs. This is especially true for enterprises that grow primarily through acquisitions: adding a large influx of new assets can strain the system if it is not properly configured.
Cloud-based ITAM solutions are better-suited to growing organizations that prioritize scalability. However, the solution itself must also be equipped with the appropriate features — like automation — to accommodate growth.
Internal Friction and User Adoption
Challenge: Implementing ITAM means changing employee workflows. There may be pushback against these changes.
Solution: Buy-in is not just for executives and stakeholders. End-user employees should also understand the value of the new technology. This only happens when IT leaders take time to communicate that value to their internal teams. This should happen well before the actual implementation takes place.
Ideally, employees should be involved in the implementation process directly. Encourage their feedback and address their concerns. Provide training and support so they can adapt to changing workflows. Successful communication ensures ITAM solutions avoid becoming a source of insecurity or disruption.
Choosing the Right IT Asset Management Platform
IT asset management provides organizations with comprehensive insight into the software and devices they rely on to generate value. The ability to track and monitor assets in real time can transform productivity and enhance efficiency across the board.
Making the most of your implementation means investing in powerful features like automation, on-demand compliance, and cloud scalability. JumpCloud provides organizations with next-generation IT asset management capabilities with built-in security and frictionless access. Sign up for a free trial to find out more about our product.
