Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, IT equipment is one of your biggest assets. That said, it makes perfect sense to implement a system that allows you to account for your IT assets at any time, check out their respective conditions, schedule maintenance, and make informed decisions on when to upgrade or retire them.
Hardware tracking software saves organizations time, money, and effort. Given its inherent benefits, it’s a no-brainer to invest in this kind of software. This can help you overcome the following challenges in managing assets:
Scheduling Maintenance
IT assets are company-owned hardware, software, and data used to operate a business. Each of them has an estimated life expectancy, which depends on their preventive maintenance and updates. However, as some organizations fail to keep up with the maintenance of assets, this results in the sluggish performance of the equipment – lowering productivity and disappointing employees and perhaps even the clients.
You may not know it but it’s easy to fall behind on maintenance. Even the most well intentioned IT administrators can forget about this. Manual asset tracking done through Excel spreadsheet can make one vulnerable to errors. A hardware tracking software can notify users for required maintenance so you won’t have to deal with missed schedules.
Ghost Assets
Hardware often changes locations frequently. Without a hardware tracking software, users won’t be able to determine where their IT assets are at any given time, what condition they are in, who has them, or when they need to be serviced.
They may also be unaware of their ghost assets or assets that have been lost but not reported, resulting in poor staff productivity. You would like to avoid having to pay thousands worth of insurance for ghost assets that aren’t in your inventory anymore.
Trouble Scaling Your Inventory
You may be content with your Excel spreadsheet as you only have a few things on your inventory. But what if your business expands to a point where it becomes impossible to track manually? Can your current method keep up with it? Using a cloud-based hardware tracking software can help you adjust your inventory records smoothly.
Time Wasted Updating Inventory Records
Your inventory changes all the time and relying on human memory or spreadsheets to track changes can be prone to mistakes. In addition, tracking your assets manually can eat up a lot of your time. Having a hardware tracking software can automate a large chunk of the inventory process, saving you time which could be otherwise spent for customer interactions and other important tasks.
Syncing Your Inventory with Your Other Software
Nothing’s stopping you from tracking your inventory manually. But just think about the difficulty of cross-checking your inventory records with your point of sale records, for instance. The more assets that move within your organization, the more time it takes you to update your inventory. Avoid this hassle by letting a dedicated software do this task for you.
Retrieving Data Important to Your Decision-Making Process
It is important that you have data analytics when making business strategies. If you have assets that aren’t helping you, you can replace them or get rid of them to save you money and storage space. How do you know what assets aren’t helping if you don’t have data to determine trends? Using hardware tracking software can monitor patterns and help decide the future of your company.
Meeting Regulatory Compliance
Organizations are typically handling a lot of equipment. Making sure that assets are complying with regulations can be a challenge. To guarantee that you are meeting the requirements, you must have an accurate database that shows clear asset ownership information. Using a hardware tracking software lets you maintain error-free data, which can be useful for performing audits. Having all the necessary records allows you to achieve compliance easily and efficiently.
Final Thoughts
A hardware tracking software can help your business avoid the potential pitfalls of asset management mentioned above. With this solution in place, your employees can keep your records current through automation.
ITarian’s asset tracking software will make it easy for you to keep your inventory records up to date. It collects real-time data regarding your assets, helping optimize your business performance.