SIDEBAR: Get a Grip:
Four Quick-Win Strategies to Improve Asset Management by Bob Mather
If you don't know what you have and how it's being used, you can't manage it.
That statement of the obvious underscores the importance of asset management. Well-defined practices and processes governing the acquisition, maintenance, and implementation of IT products and services form an essential foundation of an effective long-term business and IT performance improvement strategy. Put differently, IT organisations that ignore the fundamentals of asset management have little chance of addressing loftier goals such as maximising ROI of IT investment and ensuring IT-business alignment.
While clearly important, undertaking an asset management initiative can be like deciding to clean out an overly cluttered garage; namely, where to begin?
Based on analyses of large IT organisations, Compass has identified four "quick win" strategies comprised of specific steps, policies, and processes designed to produce immediate and measurable gains in asset management capabilities. In addition to delivering immediate and visible results, these strategies can establish a foundation for longer-term benefits such as better information for planning, and greater access to information for first- and second-level support personnel. These improvements, in turn, enhance productivity and efficiency of problem diagnosis, and enable effective chargeback programs.
Quick Win #1:
Conduct a sample inventory audit to assess the true accuracy and validity of asset management records.
While tracking the number of devices and their location is relatively common, many organisations do not track information on hardware make, model, year, software installed, or components attached. These details provide support personnel and planners knowledge about the environment that's needed to address basic asset management objectives.
The sample audit process is straightforward: a number of workstations, selected at random from throughout the organisation, are examined. Detailed data on type of device, hardware and software configuration, and location is collected and compared against information residing in the existing asset management database. Through this comparison, discrepancies are revealed, root cause analysis performed, and corrective actions taken. Rather than merely fixing errors, the analysis should identify the process breakdowns that allow inaccuracies to creep in over time. Ongoing evaluation and redesign of support processes relating to asset management ensures alignment between asset management systems and what's really in place. Without such processes, the accuracy of asset management systems can deteriorate quickly as assets change hands, are moved, software and hardware is added or upgraded, or assets are lost or stolen.
Immediate benefits of a sample audit include identifying redundancies in hardware devices and software licences - this can aid in efforts to reduce the number of suppliers, increase purchasing leverage with those suppliers, and lower costs over time. The initial sampling also quantifies the accuracy of existing asset measures (or lack thereof), and provides a baseline against which the success of other initiatives can be gauged. Finally, the sample audit can focus the business and suppliers on the various issues surrounding the accuracy of asset reporting.
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