The Time to Implement Electronic Asset Tracking is Long Before You Need It

Some companies discover the benefits of electronic asset tracking only when a major mishap occurs – usually a mistake with their manual asset tracking procedures. Those kinds of mistakes can be costly, too. Perhaps you’ve got multiple employees assigned to the task of tracking your fixed assets through an Excel spreadsheet. It’s a rather one-dimensional approach. Employees can’t consolidate their records. You can’t really take a bird’s-eye view of your assets across the organization to consider what your needs are as a whole. The nature of asset data means that it’s almost always changing. So, as soon as an employee records a piece of data, it may already be outdated. The accuracy of your data is entirely dependent upon your employees, and even the most conscientious staff member is bound to make the occasional typo or inadvertent admission. And, because employees get busy with their day-to-day tasks, oversight and gaps in recordkeeping are common. The result: guesswork, frustration and wasted time as your staff tries to hunt down missing assets. You may even be paying insurance for ghost assets that aren’t in your inventory anymore. The bottom line is this: Electronic asset tracking is among the smartest investments you can make for your organization. And, while larger organizations with multiple offices definitely need a reliable electronic asset tracking system, smaller entities also can benefit from the efficiencies these platforms can deliver. Here are just a few examples:

• Let’s say you’ve got an invaluable piece of equipment on which you depend to run your business. To keep the equipment in good working order, you need to have it inspected and serviced at regular intervals. You’ve been recording its periodic maintenance in a binder on your desk. The problem is, you got busy and forgot to keep up with that maintenance. Unfortunately, the machine breaks down and needs repair. Consider what happens to your productivity in this scenario. Delays like this can have a ripple effect on other projects, as well. With an electronic asset tracking system, you can set up automatic notifications and reminders, so you never forget service schedules. Some asset tracking systems will even allow you to create work orders.
• Your accounting and compliance teams require that you report the depreciation of your fixed assets each year. Your employees resort to guesswork to calculate these values. Later on, you discover that the figures weren’t accurate, and you’re required to pay a fine.
• An employee checked out an asset several weeks ago. Another employee needs the item now, but thanks to poor recordkeeping, you don’t know who has the asset or when it’s due.
• It’s time to make plans for the upcoming year. You’re trying to figure out how much to allocate for IT assets. Will you need to order new laptops, for example? How many company smartphones will you need to order? You don’t have a means to examine all of your assets throughout the organization, so you resort to contacting individual departments to gather your numbers – a process that not only takes time but also may not give you accurate figures.

With Asset Panda’s electronic asset tracking system, you can outsource these tasks to an accurate, powerful and yet easy to use platform that gives you peace of mind. All you need to use Asset Panda is the smartphone or tablet you already carry – and you can add as many employees as you’d like at no extra charge. The entire lifecycle of each of your fixed assets is as near as your mobile device. Our free iOS and Android apps sync with the cloud, so your data is always in real time. No more guessing, costly errors, wasted time or money. Asset Panda’s completely customizable, easy to use electronic asset tracking system lets you track your assets any way you want – and it’s flexible enough to incorporate new technologies as they become available in the future.

Here's a look at how Asset Panda helped the Texas International Wine Competition better track and manage its large and varied list of entrants, a process the organization previously tracked on a manual basis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRE6OusD4vw

 

To learn more about Asset Panda, or to start your free 14-day trial, go to assetpanda.com