IT asset management consulting this year occupies a leading position among other IT services. This direction has become extremely important with the advent of business automation in everyday life. In general, the IT asset management services industry requires a well thought out approach. Not controlling your assets is the same as not keeping records. A thoughtless attitude to software products and hardware will lead to the failure of business processes. Also, you will definitely be unwisely spending your budget. To prevent this from happening, it is better to trust specialized IT asset management companies.
IT consulting asset management
There are observations that companies use processes and a number of procedures for managing IT assets not as a regular routine activity, but as project work to solve a specific problem. And when it is resolved, the process is suspended until the next problem occurs. It turns out such a constantly repeated project, every time from scratch.
Benefits of IT asset management processes
If you ask IT asset managers why their company is investing in this area, they will most likely tell you about a specific event, as a result of which management drew attention to the need to implement such practices. This could be, for example, an unsuccessful check that ended with a fine for an expired license. Sometimes system administrators use unlicensed versions of software without coordination with the management, which can lead to infecting computers with viruses.
In some cases, the firm’s work simply stops. For example, there was an urgent need to make adjustments to systems to ensure uninterrupted service of credit cards. Or perhaps they just realized the need to ensure their own information security. In general, you will be given a lot of different reasons, but you rarely hear that a company began to invest in IT asset management, because it is reasonable and expedient to maintain and manage these assets for business development.
Track the complete life cycle of assets
The implementation process takes a lot of time and effort. At the initial stage, you need to pay maximum attention to planning:
• You will need a lobby in the company management. Otherwise, many IT asset management initiatives will remain unfulfilled, as priorities will always shift not in your favor, and budgets will be cut. Your advocate in the guide will help explain the value of the process, and raise funds. Any project must be beneficial, and this benefit must be evident to the management of the company.
• Pay special attention to the selection of the team that will implement ITAM. Make sure they understand the importance of their task. When people are assigned a project, they can blindly execute it. But if employees are truly involved, they can move mountains.
• Do not try to embrace the immensity. Select a specific area of work to begin with.
• Determine the criteria for critical resources, it can be both software and hardware. Organize your resource lists. Identify those that require special attention. A clear classification of resources will greatly simplify your task.
• The asset lifecycle approach to IT asset management has been tried and tested over and over again, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Asset management begins at the moment when an order for its purchase is formed. And ends when this asset expires.
• Automate whatever processes you can. Every time you do an operation manually, ask yourself the question, can this be automated?
• Determine who will manage all the collected data, this should be the one who gets the most out of it. Very often this is a support service. Integration of their information helps them solve problems on their own and establish self-service. Thus, both business and IT are satisfied. Asset information also helps to avoid unexpected problems during the implementation of changes.
