It Asset Management Best Practices

By Author: Martin Lobo
Total Articles: 355
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Wikipedia defines IT asset management as “the set of business practices that join financial, contractual and inventory functions to support life cycle management and strategic decision making for the IT environment. Assets include all elements of software and hardware that are found in the business environment.” Today the business environment is becoming increasingly complex thanks to the influx of different devices and applications that has accelerated the need to maintain control over the IT assets. The objective of IT asset management is the effective management of IT assets (which involves rehabilitation, repair, and replacement of an asset) so that it can meet the current and future demands of the business at the lowest life cycle cost.

Goals and Objectives of IT Asset Management

The following are the five main objectives of IT asset management.

* Reduce costs through process improvement and by providing support for strategic decision-making
* Ensure compliance through increased accountability
* Enhance performance through ...
... lifecycle management of information technology assets
* Gain control of the inventory
* Improve availability time of the Business/Applications/Processes

IT Asset Management Best Practices

Effective asset management is possible only by performing regularly the following best practices.

* New Assets
Assess the new assets be it computers or software added in the inventory.

* Missing Assets
Locate assets that are not reporting frequently and determine whether they are lost or still in use. In addition, if the assets are not properly utilized, indicate the reason for it and see if they can be reallocated or to be considered obsolete.

* Assets that are on Repair
Discover assets that are not actively used and indicate their status i.e., whether they are being repaired or undergoing periodic maintenance and so on. Also, estimate the time required for the assets to be operational.

* Relocated Assets
Track down assets moved to a new location and update its new location and its current user.

* Duplicate Assets
Locate the reinstalled computers and mark the old entry as duplicate in the inventory.

* Disposed Assets
Check old assets to locate those assets that need to be disposed of or replaced. Mark these old assets as disposed in the inventory and remove those entries from the inventory

* Risks and License Compliance
Analyze and evaluate new risks as well as the old risks that have not been resolved so far. Remind users of the need to take adequate action to resolve these risks. Assess the company’s license compliance status and see whether the current inventory changes affect the license compliance status.

* New Contracts and Licenses
Review new contracts and software license agreements or any amendments to existing ones and update it if necessary with important documents such as packing slips and invoices. This helps the company management to submit proper and accurate records in the event of an IT audit.

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