IT Asset Management can potentially save your organisation time, money and even help save the environment. Here are 10 tips on how ITAM can help you be a more effective IT department and make you the IT hero!
IT assets account for up to 50% of a company’s total assets and sometimes as much as 80 percent of capital expenditure. If you have an IT Asset Life-cycle management plan finance will thank you for protecting these assets and the savings you can find from properly managing those assets.
Gartner estimates that as much as 20 percent of software licensing and hardware maintenance charges are incurred for assets that are no longer in use [Gartner, "Don't Overlook Opportunities to Save Costs on ITAM," March 2008]. Integrated ITAM automation solutions will give you a total picture of your asset and service lifecycles and reduce the cost and complexity of managing those lifecycles.
With the right ITAM skills and tools resource-intensive tasks such as discovering, tracking, auditing and managing can massively cut costs and improve asset management practices.
Accounting for each of your IT assets is the first step to maximizing your investment in your current hardware and software. IT departments must know the location, configuration, and usage history of every single asset to optimize their IT estate. With this information in hand, they can then determine the true value of each asset and eliminate those that eat up costs without giving a lot back to the business.
Develop standard for your ITAM processes that are both measurable and consistent. If you do it right the new process will make your life easier while demonstrating measurable benefits. Clearly defined processes, which are automatically tracked and measured, will help ensure you have control over and can report on every IT asset within your network.
Expect to get a software audit of some kind at least every couple of years. There are hefty fines and penalties for overuse of software. Normally this is just oversight rather than companies exploiting licensing keys. Know what software is on each pc or server and be able to provide auditors with records of your software compliance levels.
Most computers are in use less than 20% of the time. Equally, most computers have extensive power management capabilities. Exploit these features to manage energy and CO2 footprints. Wasted energy is wasted money so even if your CEO doesn’t care about the environment he/she will on this occasion.
The WannaCry virus underlined the importance of patch management to a level we hadn’t seen before. Be proactive about your patch management. Easier said than done in many cases but there are many ITAM patch management solutions available that can automatically identify missing patches and critical fixes, and greatly reduce security risks and unplanned downtime.
As business needs change so does the technology needed to implement the business change. Organisations can reduce cost, risk, and labour typically associated with configuration changes by implementing a software solution that automatically distributes and installs application and operating system packages across the network.
Finding the right solution for your company’s ITAM needs can be complicated and costly. Each company is unique but almost every one could save time, money and energy with better ITAM practices.
Don’t invest in an expensive ITAM software solution until you know what you need and have the skills within your organisation to be able deliver a scalable cost-effective solution.
Visit the ITAMF IT Asset Management certification page. to learn how to implement better business strategies for cost control, risk reduction and improved business value in the IT asset lifecycle.
