The Right Platform Makes IT Asset Tracking Easier

The job of IT asset tracking for any large organization can seem like a Herculean task. Keeping up with the whereabouts and condition of IT assets, as well as critical software and server updates, is challenging enough. But you also have the responsibilities of depreciation tracking, warranties and insurance policies, equipment refresh schedules, and ensuring that your help desk is providing employees with the support they need to do their jobs effectively. Any organization that relies on manual IT asset tracking procedures is almost certainly making life harder for its IT staff and employees in general.

The Problem(s) With Manual Tracking

Why? Tracking using Excel spreadsheets leaves the door wide open for omissions and frustrating errors. IT assets are among the most common targets for theft, and without a reliable means of asset tracking, the odds of locating those items are likely slim. In the worst-case scenario, a company may discover months down the line that it’s been paying insurance for ghost assets, or IT assets that aren’t even in its inventory anymore but haven’t been reported missing or stolen. Updating an Excel spreadsheet is cumbersome, and the information that appears on those spreadsheets is likely to be outdated. Therefore, IT managers aren’t able to make decisions based on real-time data.

An Excel spreadsheet also doesn’t give IT managers the ability to examine asset use at a companywide level. Excel doesn’t indicate for managers where assets are needed and where they might be available. Managers need the ability to consider IT asset use across the board, find assets that might be sitting idle and transfer them to departments in need. Without this information, managers either have to get on the phone and hunt down assets, or they end up ordering additional assets they don’t necessarily need. When it comes time to create equipment refresh schedules and make budgetary decisions, guesswork is their only recourse without a reliable means of IT asset tracking.

An IT tracking platform can help track down any IT asset and follows it throughout its useful life, cataloging its complete maintenance history, computing its depreciation and storing for easy access such details as its warranty and expiration, insurance policy, lease/purchase information, check-in/check-out status, and much more.

Helping the Help Desk

Life on the help desk can become considerably easier with a good IT asset tracking solution. With the addition of an enterprise service desk configuration, your IT staff have the ability to use your IT asset tracking platform to streamline the process of help tickets and work order generation. Ultimately, the enterprise service desk can reduce the number of service calls your IT staff receives. That’s invaluable considering that the job of an IT manager is changing.

The Changing Job of the IT Manager

According to blogger Nicolas Poggi, the job of an IT manager is changing. Instead of putting out fires, they’ll transition into more of an advisory role. “IT managers will [spend] less time installing data security software and servers, and more time driving business insights, as they will be much more focused on service management and integration,” Poggi says.

An IT asset tracking platform can help them do just that. By automating this vital function, managers and help desk employees save time and eliminate the frustration that comes from hunting down lost assets. They can access within seconds an item’s exact location, condition and complete maintenance history, and they can set up customized notifications so they never miss preventive maintenance and updates. Ultimately, IT tracking platforms save companies money by maximizing the lifespan of these assets and promoting a culture of transparency and accountability across the organizations they serve.

Asset Panda’s best-in-class mobile IT asset tracking platform is powerful, yet intuitive and totally customizable. Our enterprise service desk configuration can serve as your help desk and free your staff to focus on other priorities.