The 9-Point Checklist for IT Asset Management Success

With 12 years of experience in enterprise IT Asset Management, TechTrack Solutions has developed a simple, tiered framework that organizations can use to evaluate how complete their IT Asset Management program is. This 9-point framework will demonstrate simple and realistic ways that organizations can extend their ITAM efforts to drastically increase value, lower total costs, and enhance process-outcomes. Most importantly, they do not require expensive new technologies or costly consulting.

Following these 9 ITAM steps has demonstrably generated significant savings for some of the Fortune 1000 on down to mid-sized firms, and each action-item brings value to businesses of all sizes, as ITAM is a universal need in today's increasingly digital business environment.

Tier 1 - ITAM Beginners

The first 4 items on the ITAM Success Checklist specifically address core requirements for a robust system to track and manage IT assets.  These are the items that every business needs to consider as they put together a strategy to roll out ITAM within an organization, or perhaps revitalize an ineffective first shot at implementing a set of tracking processes.

1)       No Spreadsheets:  Spreadsheets are notoriously difficult to use effectively when managing IT Assets, as they are hard to update, don't scale to multiple users, and afford the user none of the features built into modern asset-management tools.  Now these repository tools can be expensive and overly complex, but there are solutions, such as TechTrack's AssetManager 5.2, which deliver all necessary modern features while remaining lightweight and economical.

2)      Choose the Right Fields:  With so many potential data-points to capture per-asset, it's hard for asset managers to know what information is going to be mission-critical and what is going to be extraneous and wasteful to collect.  5 data-categories that drive real world savings are: physical descriptors (serial, equipment type), financial (leasing info, purchase price), ownership (cost center), lifecycle status (RMA information, current usage), and assignment (End-User ID, Title).

3)        Put People 1^st:  An ITAM system is only as strong as the employees who use it day-in and day-out, and the managers that oversee it.  The most common mistake made in large organizations is to deploy an overly complex software solution without being able to support the project with trained and tech-capable end-users in the field.  ITAM software is unique in that it doesn't just operate out of the IT department like an ERP, but rather end-users with a range of roles and responsibilities use it on a daily basis.  It has to be simple or it simply won't be used properly.

4)      Process-Driven:  ITAM is highly process-driven, and the most successful systems are straight implementations of carefully modeled business-processes within an organization's IT asset lifecycle.  Look to see what information is collected, modified, or required at each catchpoint in an IT asset's lifecycle, and build your processes out of the outcomes of those interactions.  Examples of universal processes:  Receive-New, Deploy, Assign New User, Deploy, Move, etc.   A good ITAM software solution will help you to model and systematize these processes.

Tier 2 - ITAM Experts

Once an organization has implemented a successful ITAM strategy, and has moved beyond the spreadsheet to find an ITAM tool that works for them, it's important to keep refining the system to maximize the return on the initial investment.  The following 3 items demonstrate the common pitfalls for organizations that have functional systems in place, but are still struggling to find results:

5)      Keeping a History:  It's one thing to have a picture of what a given IT asset is doing and where it is, but organizations find additional value in seeing the entire history of the asset and all the processes that have been run on it (receives, deploys, RMAs, disposes).  This allows managers to keep an active chain of responsibility for each item in inventory, and also allows for enhanced tracing of missing items, process-optimization, and utilization analysis.

6)      Accuracy Audits:  Repositories tend to be inaccurate, and the longer they sit, the more inaccurate they become.  It is imperative for asset managers to update their repositories with fresh data on a regular basis, to make up for the latent mobility built into IT assets, and to uncover existing errors.  Whether through small-scale spot audits, or annual wall-to-wall inventories, the repository needs to be refreshed to be useful as a decision-making tool.  Some organizations find it beneficial to outsource the process to service vendors who specialize in physical inventories

7)      Executive Reporting:  One of the most powerful features of best-of-breed ITAM software platforms, such as AssetManager 5.2, is the ability to generate detailed, professionally presented reports utilizing the repository data.  These reports can be used to show inventory by location, by cost center, or by any other criteria that could benefit organizational decision making.  One common use for these reports, in practice, is to aggregate insurance and leasing information for the Finance department.  The extent to which repository-based reports could influence everything from procurement to dispensation to disposal is entirely up to the creativity of the managers and the data fields that are actively being collected. 

Tier 3 - ITAM Gurus

At the highest level, there exist organizations with thoroughly experienced asset managers who use ITAM software tools to drive revenue-generation in other parts of the business.  In high-tech software development firms, this means coordinating the huge range of physical assets needed by each developer, based on his current project, department, and needs.  In the datacenter, this means maximizing utilization of big-ticket assets while minimizing downtime and eliminating waste.

In every case, an organization that works to stay at the cutting edge of ITAM does so because they have discovered that ITAM success means saving big bucks for their business, and has helped them build competitive advantage. 

Here are 2 action-items for the upper echelon of ITAM systems-designers:

8)      Integration:  The most robust repositories supplement their data with inputs from external datasources.  These other sources could be internal to the organization, such as Active Directory (used to assign asset-users) or an ERP (used to generate item locations from its facilities management suite).   These datasources could also be external to the firm, like a bulk supplier.

9)      Multiple-Solution Overlap:  Once a certain threshold of asset coverage is reached within an ITAM system, it might be time to consider adding additional software tools to fill in any blind spots in the system.  For instance, once a repository is up and running, and is giving demonstrably accurate results, an integrated eDiscovery tool might bring in more assets that have been missed or inaccessible by physical inventory.  There are many specialty tools available for ITAM that purport to be the silver bullet, but the truth is no one solution will capture everything in an enterprise organization.  Integrated overlap allows you additional coverage without sacrificing the skills that end-users have developed on the original ITMA tool's interface.  Remember: always build out from a solid ITAM system foundation.

When TechTrack Solutions set out to convert it's years of IT Asset Management experience into a software tool which was both holistic and realistic for use in mid- to enterprise-sized businesses, we used the above 9 checkpoints as a blueprint to help us deliver the most flexible, useable, and outcome-oriented ITAM solution currently available:  AssetManager 5.2.

To learn more about how the AssetManager Platform, visit:

Techtrack.com/simplified