Managing Assets The Smart Device Way

By Author: Jennifer Lewis
Total Articles: 304
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Assets, as the name suggests, are items valuable to a business. This includes everything from an office chair to an office building. Technology purchases like hardware and software also assets. Since these things are valuable, it is important to track, monitor and manage them well. As enterprises grow in size and become geographically distributed, even inventorying its possessions is very challenging, much less managing them. This task requires a discipline of a well-defined Asset Management (AM) process, and an execution rigor in following the same.

AM process includes the cradle to grave lifecycle for all things important to you. This means planning / requesting, ordering, receiving / stocking, building / configuring, deploying, retiring, and disposal of assets are all in there. Financial management and contracts related to the object are also a part of this process. The biggest challenge of AM is that the people involved in it have very different perspectives about it. The requestor just wants an item, and must have it within a defined time. Procurement has the charter to find it at the cheapest price. Finance wants ...
... to allocate a budget for it, and ensure there is an entity responsible for the cost ownership. The deployment team is bothered about its quality, while the team managing it post-deployment wants to understand the contract and service levels / warranty on it. This makes execution and planning complex as it is. If you don’t have a well-documented process enforced, you are in for a chaos.

Even when the AM process is defined, documented and followed, sifting through thousands of records while chained to your desk becomes a challenge. That is where mobility comes into the picture. If you have an AM application on your smartphone or tablet, you can manage your chattels on the go, through an intuitive and helpful interface.

Advantages

More accurate information, available more quickly and efficiently ensures that decision-makers have the right asset information, to make the right decisions. Managing and creating work assets directly from and in the field ensures that assets are maintained without issues being “dropped” or delayed due to paperwork or verbal communication. Further, integration with back office asset management applications enables your company to extend much more than just asset information to the field. If RFID, or other smart tagging is deployed, scanning and managing assets becomes a breeze.

While not a part of it, scheduled as well as unplanned maintenance is very closely linked to the process. Mobility also is very helpful for the field services staff that is required to maintain and repair something. They can get relevant information like the location and ownership of the asset allowing them to quickly trace the item and the owner in the maze of office equipment. Organizations using third party hand and feet support for remote locations can pass the geo location information through a Google map interface to the field agents to help them locate their offices. Similarly, the service engineers can update the outcome of their visit in the work log of the asset, and it will be visible to all relevant personnel in case something else needs to be done to the same device in future. It is like maintaining your health and sickness records.

In order to maximize the availability and returns on assets while increasing the productivity of the teams involved in planning, procuring, or managing them, it is highly advisable that you invest in mobilizing the process of AM.

The author works for an enterprise app development companies offering healthcare mobile application development solutions to the clients. The mobility consultants firm with an expertise in multi platform application development.