Finding the Best Asset Management Software for Your Needs
If you’ve ever walked a few blocks in shoes a size too small, you know just how important the right fit can be. That’s why you’ll only buy a pair that fits well. It’s important to take the same approach with business tools. The organization’s performance depends on them, so they need to be the right fit. This is especially true when it comes to choosing and implementing an IT asset management solution, as technology is imperative to the success to the modern organization.
IT asset management (ITAM) is the process of cataloging, tracking, and maintaining an organization’s assets. A mature IT asset management strategy accounts for every computer, hardware and software, mobile device, network device, and any other piece of technology in the organization.
For asset management to be successful, you need the right software – you need the ideal fit. Unfortunately, finding the perfect IT asset management software (ITAM software) to suit your company’s specific needs can be challenging. To be sure you're selecting the right solution for your organization, make sure you keep the following things in mind when reviewing your options.
Clarity on Expected Usage of Your Asset Management Software
First, it’s important to understand what your organizational assets are and how they’re used. Getting clarity on the expected usage of your asset management software will enable you to narrow the field of potential platforms and services to only those that are a good fit for what you have, and how you use it.
The Importance of Integration With Your Service Desk Solution
A service desk solution that integrates IT asset management allows you to streamline ticket resolution, while it aligns incidents to impacted assets and automatically captures asset incident history. ITAM benefits greatly from being as automated as possible, or at least when it is most consistently and correctly managed. Asset management isn’t simply a function of tracking assets and the state they are in.
Robust asset management that is integrated into your help desk allows you to turn on the true power of ITAM – using the information you get from tracking assets and incidents to help drive forecasting and strategy.
ITAM Software Usability and Functionality
You’ll want software that you and your users will feel comfortable using. ITAM can get very complex, so an ITAM solution that offers a clean, easy-to-use interface can be key. If, like many companies, you are tracking your assets and their status utilizing an outdated solution, or using a standalone ITAM solution that doesn’t integrate service history into your asset tracking, then you are likely only gaining a portion of the value of asset management.
Identifying and understanding your requirements and aligning them with the functionalities present in the asset management software you are considering is crucial to ensuring a good fit.
Making the Business Case for IT Asset Management
There are inevitably trade-offs that are involved with any choice you make. Weighing cost against features, functionality, usability, and scalability is important. If you clearly outline your IT asset management needs for your organization, you can better evaluate these components and find the solution that can solve for your most essential needs while fitting within your budget.
Plus, a robust IT asset management solution can pay dividends in the long run, from helping you identify devices you may not have known you even had, to helping you track warranties and updates to better forecast future technology budget needs.
We probably had about 3,000 computers at that time, but we couldn’t have told you where they were. We had no clue if computers were missing. We were just paying the bills, with very little insight into what we should owe." –Margarethe Pfeffer, IT Transformation and Service Management Manager, DPR Construction
There are a number of ways that you can make the business case for
investing in an ITAM solution, including mapping out the following:
- The various costs involved with an IT asset management implementation project
- Key areas where IT asset management solutions can deliver the greatest impact to bottom line results
- How to present this data to leadership and win their support (and funding) for your ITAM project
