The Beginner’s Guide to Asset Lifecycle Management: Simplifying the Process

IT Asset Lifecycle Management

What It Is

IT asset lifecycle management is the process of ensuring that a company’s information technologies are properly procured, tracked, deployed, maintained, upgraded, and disposed of. In other words, it entails the use of ITAM software to manage the tangible and intangible digitized assets of an organization throughout their usage duration. For example; data, software, and hardware.

Who Is It for – IT Manager/HR

Information technology asset lifecycle management is important to a company’s HR team or IT manager in several applications. For example; the human resources department has to carry out such a process partially or fully (but continuously or occasionally) to ensure the success of duties like onboarding and offboarding.

Onboarding involves all the stages that have to be undergone to successfully integrate a new hire into an organization for the sake of commencing productivity. On the other hand, offboarding is the opposite and it concerns the disengagement of a worker from their position in a company. Then there is remote onboarding and offboarding which are related to virtual or online employees.

In the job descriptions of IT managers, roles such as IT procurement and maintenance under the asset management lifecycle will be necessary. This is to make the maximization of asset utility certain for the entirety of their lifespans. It is worth noting that the computerized resources of businesses have limited lifespans.

Best Practices

Asset management lifecycle for remote workers will be difficult if IT managers and HR personnel do not make use of advanced technologies to streamline processes. They need a centralized dashboard for resource tracking and management after remote onboarding.

Additionally, IT asset management must cover every stage of the lifecycle of managed equipment from IT purchasing to disposal. Value could be lost at any stage if care is not taken. So the processes have to be well-defined, effectively communicated, and precisely executed.

One important approach to consider is the use of IT automation software for every aspect of ITAM. If not, how else can one efficiently handle the huge volume of assets that an organization may possess? IT inventory management will waste too much time, energy, and money if it is not automated. Your business needs real-time reports and data analysis to make equipment management successful. See more best practices to implement below:

• Prompt installation of monitoring software upon IT procurement
• Taking all the inventory into account from the onset
• Prioritizing assets based on importance
• Managing licenses appropriately
• Tagging and barcoding of resources
• Continual tracking
• Periodic analysis of assets tracking metrics
• Regular adaptation to new tech
• Outsourcing asset lifecycle management to a managed services provider as a more efficient and cost-effective option

Best Way to Manage

How to Make It Smooth

Lifecycle management can be challenging because of various factors like minimal physical communication. Still, the difficulties can be reduced through proactive measures to enhance engagement levels and productivity in the work setting. IT managers and HR teams can do the following in this regard:

• Formulate clear IT processes
• Determine tasks that can be automated
• Utilize automation solutions
• Receive information about new hires ASAP
• Review and send IT hardware requirements
• Install and configure the needed software with the aid of zero-touch tools
• Inform new employees about IT usage policies
• Check in with workers about the proper operation and use of hardware and software
• Conduct training programs based on asset security
• Create awareness about IT support channels

Manually

Manual IT asset lifecycle management involves updating spreadsheets (e.g. Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets) by hand with details about each unit of asset. But it poses demerits such as inaccuracy, labor intensiveness, wastage of resources, absence of continuous real-time reports, etc.

Software

Providers of asset lifecycle management software tools like Dots are eliminating the need for the traditional way of doing things in many establishments. They also offer solutions to each of the disadvantages of manual systems. This includes the improvement of equipment organization and the expected positive ROI where such tools even pay for themselves.

Final Thoughts

It is worth noting that HR and IT managers can create automated workflows, use APIs and integrations, and start robotic process automation (RPA) with service providers like Dots.