Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Assets? What Assets? IT Asset Tracking as Business Tool

By Lael Fiskerson

The old way of tracking IT assets was a process that could take up to two months to complete. The pen and paper method of doing an audit is absolutely ridiculous these days with all of the technology that is available. Having an IT asset tracking system integrated into your business plan is a great way to jump start your company. By being able to track all IT assets through one central program, productivity and profitability are sure to increase.

Asset management and tracking can save a company thousands of dollars. You won't have to wait very long to see your costs recovered after implementing an IT asset tracking system. The ROI is visible when adding an asset tracking system to your business. There will be a firm grasp on what hardware and software is being used by the company and which ones are out of date and need to be renewed. It will help to see which items are necessary and which ones aren't. The system will help to continually make the data accurate so that you can immediately see the returns on your investment that you are getting.

There are two types of IT asset tracking that need to be taken into consideration. Inventory of hardware and inventory of software. The inventory of software actually has two sub-categories; installed software and software license compliance. Tracking these assets are very important to running a business smoothly.

Even with scanner, an individual is still required to physically locate the bar code for each server to keep track of the inventory.Servers, peripherals and laptops can all be tracked automatically. Anyone who has access to the server as a designated user can log on to an all inclusive system and see their IT assets throughout their business and in each facility.

IT asset tracking of all hardware and software can really increase business efficiency by placing all of the inventory information in the same place. Tracking software is able to give details on the dependability of one asset with another asset, user or business service. Another benefit of IT asset tracking software is that groups can be created to track all software inventory across a business organization. It can track every version of software, major and minor. Having the IT tracking software will help in optimizing the purchasing of software licenses. It shows which software has been purchased and which was previously installed. The software provides information on how many software installations are available on the network. Another benefit of having asset tracking software is that it will group the programs into barely used, occasionally used and frequently used.

This is a money saving technique that will help by making asset managers aware of which software they should renew licenses for and which ones should be eliminated.

About the Author:

0 comments: