The majority of businesses don’t know where over 25% of their IT assets are
The majority of businesses don’t know where over 25% of their IT assets are
Specialist hardware asset management firm Capital take a look at some of the main reasons behind this worrying statistic
Published on 28th July 2021
With so many different balls for a business to juggle, asset management can often find itself falling to the bottom of the priority list. Not only it is often seen as low priority, but for many without the correct software and action plan in place, it can become too time consuming to manage through Excel spreadsheets alone.
Inadequate asset management can have long term consequences for a business and yet despite this impact, statistics show that the majority of businesses don’t know where around 25% of their IT assets actually are.
The Difficulties Of Tracking Company Assets
Regardless of the industry your company lies within, there are numerous difficulties when it comes to keeping track of company assets yourself. These can be for a number of reasons, some of which we’ve listed below…
Using Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets can be great. There’s no doubt about it. Unfortunately, they can become outdated pretty quickly, and inaccurate as soon as an asset moves location, becomes damaged or even gets taken by a different user. Due to the nature of IT equipment, often being moved around more than most realise, it simply isn’t practical to keep track of assets via a spreadsheet.
Relying On One Person
If you’re relying on one person alone to keep track of your assets, they’re going to struggle to continually check up on each and every person within the company and what they’re currently using. While it’s easy to suggest that each and every person updates their own equipment, scans them, checks them in and out, it just isn’t practical for the simple fact that you’ll need to give everyone permissions and to a certain extent, control over your asset register.
Untagged Assets
From QR codes to RFID asset tags, these can all help identify an asset. With untagged assets however, you have no way of uniquely identifying your company’s asset, nor distinguish from one MacBook Air to another. Things become complicated and even harder to track.
Purchased Duplicates
When you get to a point where you simply aren’t sure where your assets are, or who has them, it’s all too easy to start purchasing duplicates. Many companies simply do not know the full extent of their asset estate and all too often assume loss and thus purchase more. Not only is this hugely costly but it’s unnecessary too, especially when you can keep on top of it all, much easier than most realise.
