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Published December 10th, 2016 by

What Is IT Asset Management Software and How It Benefits Business

What Is IT Asset Management Software and How It Benefits Business

Through the recent years, IT asset management has been already widely practiced in monitoring laptops, desktops, and printers. But the growing quantity of devices that are networked in a certain company, the enormity of duties and responsibilities in IT departments, the various devices shared by numerous people, not to mention the release of latest rules and regulations regarding the recycling of electronic products, which have likewise presented added challenges, the need for a better system in tracking and managing IT assets are deemed critical in business.

What is IT Asset Management (ITAM) Software and How Does it Work?

ITAM is operationally defined as a “set of business practices that join financial, contractual, and inventory functions to support lifecycle management and strategic decision making for the IT environment”. Management of assets effectively provides businesses the opportunity to gain maximum value from utilizing their IT assets, efficiently organize IT inventory, as well as have the capacity to boost inventory purchase decisions and strategies.

Also, ITAM is a great and vital tool in providing businesses with significant ways in achieving total clarity when it comes to their IT infrastructure inventory. This suggests that IT managers will be able to have a comprehensive knowledge about what systems and equipment exist, where components are located and how they are used, how much they cost, when they were included in the inventory, if they have an expiration date, and how they are contributing to the success of delivering your company’s services.

Being able to view the details regarding existing assets in the inventory facilitates companies in enhancing the efficiency and performance of an infrastructure. It likewise decreases expenses in operating businesses.

The use of ITAM in a lot of companies is not at all uncommon. Its intelligent implementation is rather vital as it greatly helps and contributes to achieving effectiveness and efficiency of IT operations, financial accountability of asset purchase, simpler auditing and compliance, and long-term asset manageability and maintenance.

The primary objective of ITAM is to be able to institute an integrated asset repository that accounts the existence and procurement of every hardware and software inventory. Below are the methodologies of ITAM that will help in realizing and successfully achieving the abovementioned goal:

  1. Asset discovery, data capture, and storage. This is the process of locating every hardware and software components of IT inventory within the IT infrastructure as well as securing their details like the type of asset, make, and specification. This is an important step where vital details and information are stored in the asset repository.
  2. Asset tracking.  This classifies and monitors changes in terms of the location of assets and effectively tracks if there is an increase or decrease in the number of assets and records assignment status and user information.
  3. Asset lifecycle management. This step helps captures the asset lifecycle data before requisition, procurement, and assignment until the expiry of an asset where they are then decommissioned.
  4. Asset reporting and alerting. This generates the reporting of asset inventory and receives alerts and warnings regarding asset warranty and lease expiration.

A streamlined ITAM process and asset repository help businesses to reinforce numerous information technology infrastructure library (ITIL), which is a framework that is designed to standardize the selection, planning, delivery, and support of IT services to a business. This includes incident management, which is the process of logging, recording, and resolving incidents and aims to restore services to customers as quickly as possible through a workaround or temporary fixes, instead of trying to find a permanent solution, and service level management, which monitors and manages the quality of services delivered.

Having looked at the importance of an asset repository, it is important to know that it is rather different from configuration management database (CMDB), which is an advanced asset repository that is an integral part of ITIL framework. It is a database, which is comprised of all related information regarding the essential elements of a business’ information system that are used in its IT services.

With ITAM, processes like hardware asset management are made easy. IT managers are given the capacity to track and manage physical elements of computers and computer networks, from the beginning of their procurement through their disposal. Hardware asset management aims to account every hardware asset that a business’ IT infrastructure have in order to give an extensive and transparent inventory as well as to facilitate vendor contract and lease management and create budget projections according to asset stocks and business prerequisites.

On the other hand, another process that is involved in ITAM is software asset management. This is similar to hardware asset management, but it is mainly centered on software assets to include licenses, versions, and installed endpoints. Software asset management aims to reduce IT costs and decrease legal security risks that are associated with the property and usage of computer software at the same time boosting IT responsiveness and end-user productivity.

Benefits of IT Asset Management

In light of the abovementioned processes, let us discuss further how important it is to have this tool in your business:

1. Gain Control Over IT Inventory. Executing an effective and efficient asset management practice would be able to provide you with benefits from its being able to offer profound visibility into your hardware and software assets. This suggests that IT admins and your support team shall attend further to exploring and managing the end-user system’s asset details.

With asset management, you are provided with the opportunity to conveniently look at the hardware and software components of a computer, server, or any other network infrastructure. This suggests that you will be able to trace assets all throughout your IT landscape giving you an improved IT administration control and accountability.

2. Asset Lifecycle Management. The IT asset lifecycle is the sequence of stages that an organization’s information technology asset goes through during the time span of its ownership.  With ITAM software, it lets you monitor when a certain hardware was acquired, the length of time that it was utilized, and if there is an existing component lease that is bound to

3. Strategic Inventory Planning & Procurement Forecast. ITAM software helps in determining the ideal number and timing of inventory so that you will be able to regulate it according to your business sales and production capacity. This suggests that you will be able to effectively plan in advance your future asset needs and fully take advantage of existing asset utilization as well get rid of unneeded expenditures.

4. Increased Accountability to Ensure Compliance. Being able to monitor and instantly update IT inventory with ITAM software, you will be able to keep track of hardware and software elements on your network computers and determine if unauthorized and potentially harmful software are installed. Managing your IT inventory will make sure that your company is being compliant with corporate security policies as well as desktop standards. With this, system administrators are capable of separating vulnerabilities like illegal or unauthorized and old software as well as games and illegal or malicious downloads, which effectively eliminates the chance of getting any risk and prevents experiencing any problems.

5. Automated Asset Discovery & Tracking. With ITAM software administrative tasks that are involved in performing asset inventory like manual and paper-intensive processes are effectively and efficiently automated. This in return results in saving more time and resources as well as avoiding having errors and discrepancies. Without ITAM software, IT staff usually use spreadsheets to manually record asset information and regularly have to change assets while they update.

Also, ITAM software does automated device discovery, which increases efficiency and maximizes productivity because you are getting clear visibility of your existing assets and at the same time promoting transparency within your company.

In conclusion, ITAM software encompasses IT operations through simplifying, enhancing the productivity of resources, supporting compliance, and acquisition planning. Not only is ITAM software ideal for large enterprises, but it can also greatly impact the operations of small and mid-sized enterprises. With an easy, integrated, and automated management, businesses will surely improve the efficiency of their general administration’s operations.

If you are in the process of looking out for effective and efficient IT Asset Management Software, check out CrowdReviews.com for recent client reviews in order for you to get an overview of how the best IT Asset Management Software contribute to the success of their businesses.

 

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