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Growth is exciting, until IT starts drowning in tickets. It brings new opportunities, new people, and new devices. But managing that expanding hardware fleet isn’t always simple.
You might notice things like a new hire arriving without a laptop, or an ex-employee walking off with their untracked company-owned device. Finance asks for an up-to-date inventory report and all you have is an outdated spreadsheet.
These issues aren’t random glitches.
They signal that your current asset management approach isn’t keeping pace with your organization’s growth. As teams grow and offices multiply, tracking hardware manually becomes inefficient and error-prone. Visibility fades, costs rise, and compliance becomes harder to maintain.
Let’s explore why hardware asset management becomes a bottleneck as companies scale and how you can recognize the signs before they impact your IT operations.
Startup Stacks Fail at Scale
The primary drivers behind increases in IT budgets are upgrades to IT infrastructure, accounting for 57% of these upticks, followed by security concerns at 38%, and employee growth at 32%.
Startups are built to be agile and move fast, and early IT systems often reflect that. A shared spreadsheet, a few shipping labels, and tribal knowledge can go surprisingly far when you are managing hardware for a small, tight-knit team.
But growth changes everything.
New locations, hybrid work, and expanding departments all increase the volume and complexity of your hardware fleet. Suddenly, IT is responsible for tracking hundreds of devices across regions, roles, and remote employees. What once took a few minutes now eats up hours, or worse, slips through the cracks entirely.
Without scalable systems in place, early-stage systems that once worked becomes a source of friction. Devices get misplaced, shipments get delayed, and IT becomes the bottleneck in every employee lifecycle moment.
Global spending on information technology (IT) is projected to reach approximately $5.6 trillion in 2025, representing an increase of about four percent from 2024. Contributing to this overall growth, global spending on devices is expected to reach approximately $805.7 billion in 2025, marking a 9.5% increase compared to $735.8 billion spent in 2024.
Manual Systems Can’t Keep Up
When companies rely on spreadsheets to manage hardware, things fall apart fast. Columns get added, formats break, updates are missed, and before long, no one’s sure which device belongs to whom, where it is, or what condition it’s in.
This only gets worse with remote employees and distributed offices. Without a centralized view of inventory, IT teams are stuck guessing or chasing information across inboxes and Slack threads.
Ownership history, warranty status, and device condition become impossible to track accurately. That’s not just inefficient, it’s a risk. Without clear data, decisions get delayed, costs increase, and support becomes reactive instead of proactive.
Onboarding and Offboarding Break Down
High-growth companies experience rapid employee turnover and role transitions. Each of these changes introduces a new logistical challenge for IT: provisioning and deprovisioning hardware quickly, securely, and with full accountability.
When asset management lacks structure, onboarding delays become common. Employees start without the tools they need. Just as critical onboarding becomes a blind spot. Devices may not be returned, remain unaccounted for, or worse, stay active and vulnerable to security threats.
It’s not just hardware handoffs. Without a centralized system that links assets to user identities and roles, IT can’t confidently verify:
- Who a device is assigned to
- Where it’s located
- What condition it is in
- When it was last updated, used, or returned
- Whether it’s been properly wiped or reassigned
Hardware Loss Hits The Bottom Line
As headcount rises, so does the number of laptops, monitors, accessories, and peripherals floating around the organization. Without a solid system to track these assets, devices inevitably get lost and the cost adds up fast.
Whether it’s a forgotten laptop after offboarding or unused hardware collecting dust in storage, poor asset tracking directly impacts the budget.
- Unreclaimed devices during offboarding result in unnecessary hardware purchases
- Underutilized assets sit idle instead of being reassigned
- Lost or stolen equipment go unnoticed until it’s too late
- Finance teams lack accurate data for depreciation, forecasting, and insurance claims
Hardware mismanagement leads to overspending, wasted resources, and a shaky foundation for strategic planning. As your company grows, small losses compound into major financial inefficiencies.
Compliance Becomes a Moving Target
Increasing device count and user complexity in a growing organization aggravates compliance maintenance. Without visibility and audit-ready records, IT teams struggle to prove who has access to what and when.
With regulations like SOC 2 and ISO 27001, the bar is high. Every asset must be accounted for, secure, and properly decommissioned.
Compliance challenges growing IT teams face include:
- No clean audit trail for asset history, such as assignment, transfer, or disposal
- Scattered records across spreadsheets, ticketing tools, and emails
- Manual reporting that eats up time and increases the risk of errors
- Lack of exportable reports to support compliance audits
These challenges not only risk fines, but also block deals, damage trust, and stall business momentum.
When Assets Go Untracked, Budgets Take The Hit
Rapid growth often outpaces the systems needed to manage IT hardware effectively. When device inventories aren’t maintained with precision, budgets suffer. Devices get lost in the shuffle between departments, locations, and offboardings. The result is over-purchasing, underutilization, and unexpected security risk.
Even more critically, finance teams struggle to track depreciation, forecast spend, or prepare for audits when there’s no reliable asset data.
Key cost-related pitfalls are:
- Overordering: Without visibility, IT teams purchase new hardware instead of reallocating what’s already in inventory.
- Idle or lost assets: Devices go unreturned or remain untracked after offboarding, draining budget and increasing vulnerabilities.
- Inaccurate financial reporting: Incomplete records make it harder to calculate depreciation, justify capital expenditures, or stay audit-ready.
- Unplanned replacements: Devices fail unexpectedly due to lack of maintenance tracking, forcing last-minute purchases at higher costs.
Find An Asset Management System That Grows With You
Growth should feel like momentum, not chaos. But when headcount, hardware, and hybrid work grow faster than your systems can handle, IT can get stuck playing catch-up. However, this complexity is not a failure. It’s a signal that your business is evolving and your tooling needs to evolve with it.
With modern asset management, you don’t just keep up, you stay ahead.
Centralized visibility, automated tracking, smarter workflows allow IT to handle more with less, avoid costly surprises, and maintain control without piling on new tools and headcount.
If your asset management strategy is starting to show its seams, it’s time to see what streamlined really looks like. Discover how JumpCloud’s unified identity, access, device, SaaS, and asset management solutions can help your organization stay future-proof from a single pane of glass.
Start your free JumpCloud trial to experience a simplified IT management experience.
