You don’t have to keep an asset register and enter and maintain data manually in this technological era. You have technologies like IT asset management software to help you track your business assets, manage them efficiently, and prepare records to save time on these repetitive tasks. As a result, you can focus on more important activities to reach one step closer to your goals. The software is beneficial for regulatory compliance and resource planning. It also saves you from hiring an asset manager or spending a fortune on them. But before we get into the details, let’s find out some key details on asset management.
What is IT Asset Management?
IT asset management refers to the system of managing all the IT assets belonging to an organization, such as software licenses, real estate, copyrights, shares, bonds, to name a few. Software that can help you manage your organizational assets is IT asset management software. A business dealing with assets can leverage this solution as they play a significant role in helping them manage their assets efficiently without hassles and achieve progress by removing silos. Nowadays, assets are available digitally; hence, you can utilize an IT asset management system to take ownership of your digital properties, transfer digital assets, manage software inventory, and much more. IT asset management software can have these features:
Simplifying asset inventory with an agent-push utility, scanning specific devices on-demand for inventory information, customized process, and automatic product updates Offering visibility into software usage with reports and tracking app runtimes Identifying assets automatically with features like automatic device and product recognition, auto-discovery, software suite recognition, and adding products with speed and convenience Reporting compliance and usage with features like integrated reporting on configuration management products, trend analysis, asset history, detailed web reporting, custom reports, alerts, etc. Managing IT contracts with tools like an integrated IT contract management system that manages contracts and their warranties, leases and maintenance, automatic monitoring, alerting, defining lease-related schedules, uploading and attaching documents, and more. Managing licenses and reconciliation.
How Does IT Asset Management Software Work?
First, asset management software starts accounting for all IT assets belonging to an organization, from hardware and software to machine equipment and furniture. The software helps accelerate IT process management. You can use it to track your assets by scheduling and recording replacements. It also shows the priority of assets as most valuable and least valuable to emphasize them accordingly. The software can calculate depreciation and remind when an asset needs repair or replacement. Apart from tangible assets, an asset management system tracks all your intangible assets like software, licenses, digital documents, copyrights, patents, business policies, etc. It also records information about renewals and maintenance for systems or equipment used.
What are the Benefits of Asset Management Software? 👍
Privacy
Your assets are your private property, and essentially, confidential to you. Hiring someone or an agency to manage your assets for you can be risky as they will know about your assets and might expose them. Using an asset management system saves you from this risk. You don’t need to hire someone else and trust them with your assets. Instead, use the best asset management system to track all your assets and gain full visibility on them.
Affordable
Apart from privacy issues, hiring a person or agency for asset management comes with significant cost investment. On the other hand, asset management software would be far more affordable to you, costing a few dollars per month. Moreover, you won’t feel that you are compromising your asset management efficiency by using the software. Just try it once to understand its efficacy. And the best thing is that many service providers offer asset management software for a free trial so you can test it without paying a dime.
Clear tracking and goals
Asset tracking software will track your entire assets to give a 360-degree view of them and offer better control. With the help of alerts, you will get reminders about any asset’s renewal date or maintenance period. It will also show clear goals that you need to achieve for managing assets in a clean dashboard and periodic reports.
Keeps you organized
Asset management software keeps you organized so you can focus on areas that need your attention. It prioritizes your assets so that you can manage them better. Everything is arranged the way it is supposed to help improve your work environment, pump up your energy, and increase efficiency. So, are you ready to avail all these benefits? If yes, look at some of the best IT asset management software I’m going to mention next.
Freshservice
Improve your asset utilization, gain visibility, drive down the costs, and empower effective IT management with Freshservice. It allows evaluating and tracking all the IT assets such as software licenses, hardware assets, virtual assets, contracts, and many more configuration items in use and stock. It also helps you stitch asset information with the IT service desk workflows seamlessly. Identify your IT assets automatically in the organization, scan for the new software and hardware, and schedule periodic scans to update your asset information with the Discovery Probe. Additionally, you can identify the location of the IT assets, the user of that asset, and other information like version, refresh status, IP address, etc. Record and track the configuration items like hardware, software, services, etc., and their relations on a UI. Get accurate data on CMDB for root cause and impact analysis to improve managing problems and change decisions accordingly. Track and manage all the assets on a single, clean window from anywhere. Save your time on repetitive processes like asset assignment, offboarding and onboarding assets, and others by using pre-defined asset workflows. You can also take a 360-degree view of the SaaS applications to optimizing the usage with insight-driven actions. Start managing your IT assets at just $19/month/agent and get a 21-day free trial with all the features. Plan when to buy licenses and identify contract infringements using timely notifications. You can also accelerate contract renewals with the automatic approval of workflows with ease.
Asset Panda
Asset Panda is an asset tracking and management software that never allows you to lose any records or tracks by adapting to your work. It can track anything from your laptop and configure itself in the way you manage your equipment currently. With better tracking of assets, you can have better business performance, more savings, and fewer asset losses. Asset Panda’s consolidated asset tracking software can display warranty information, action histories, photos, and user manuals everything in one place. You can also share the data with your team in your organization’s board room or stockroom to bring them on the same page. Allow executives to view reports, managers to see asset history, and front-line workers to manage assets. You can download the mobile app on Android or iOS devices to use it conveniently at any place. Increase your workflows with custom actions for easier and faster asset management and updates. Create the custom fields to put the data in your language to make it easier for everyone to show what is necessary and get on board. In addition, complete audit trails enable enhanced forecasting and accountability for each asset. Everyone concerned will get information on improved planning and efficiency automatically. Get simple onboarding and enhanced data security for each job function in the organization. Moreover, you will get easier access to vital data, better self-service of employees, and faster asset identification. You can use the built-in barcode scanner, compatible with many devices to avoid bulky and expensive scanning equipment. See how Asset Panda helps you in your business by taking a free demo. The price starts from $125/month for up to 500 assets.
SysAid ITSM
Allow mature IT departments and mid-size teams to manage assets, meet unreasonable demands, and handle the service desk with SysAid ITSM. It offers you perfect tools to be on the top and more automation so that you can focus on the important stuff with a human touch. Start configuring SysAid to meet your specific requirements. It facilitates less repetition and frees room for more automation to help boost your productivity. Improve employee and agent experience by offering higher support levels and tools to allow them to solve their requests and issues by themselves. You will find many templates that will help you get up and run instantly. SysAid’s change, problem, and request management capabilities deliver better service management across the organization. The Workflow Designer gives you the easiest way to configure, create, or share common workflows across the organization and department, allowing all the systems and apps together inside a single roof. Integrate with your favorite apps to add value to the service desk at minimal or no extra cost. With the unlimited templates, forms, and custom fields, you can customize the SysAid according to the organization’s needs. Book a demo or take a free trial to know if you are getting the service you expect.
Snipe-IT
Avoid spreadsheets and start using user-friendly asset management software – Snipe-IT. It has powerful features like robust JSON REST API to build custom automation and integrations quickly. You will get enterprise standard security services like bcrypt with brute-force prevention, HTTPS only cookies, 2FA, password security, and a lot more. It is an open-source software where security, oversight, and transparency are maintained all the time. The cloud platform of Snipe-IT offers a 99.99% guarantee on SLA uptime for speed and reliability. They have powerful servers in several data centers worldwide to offer a low latency network and faster connection wherever you are. Your data is always safe with the data center that you choose during sign-up. You can also host it by yourself and start using Snipe-IT for free or take any affordable plans according to your requirement.
TOPdesk
Knowledge is power and key to efficiency, which is why TOPdesk’s CMDB and IT asset management software allows you to register and keep track of the assets in a single overview. It helps you see your organization’s objects, users, how they are related, and when to replace them. TOPdesk will save you time to focus on the potential problems that might knock on your door at any time. The software is highly flexible for many reasons; it enables you to design every asset card from the templates to capture the information you need. You can also add different functionalities that are best fitted for the processes. In addition, create fields that are relevant to the specific assets. Not to mention, REST API allows you to integrate the software with other tools to manage and work efficiently with the assets. See the graphical summary of your assets where complex configurations seem like a piece of cake. In addition, you can also use visual representation for impact analysis. Furthermore, view the impacted assets and involved assets to target a disruption’s root cause quickly.
Atlassian
Empower business teams, IT Ops, and Dev to collaborate at a high velocity with Jira Service Management. Deliver better service experiences without the complexity of the traditional ITSM solutions. Also, allow every team, such as IT, HR, legal, etc., to quickly set up the service desk and adapt at scale continuously. Track the work through a collaborative and open platform across your organization. You can further link the issues across ingest data and Jira from other development tools. As a result, your IT operations and support teams have the required information to quickly respond to incidents, changes, and requests. Conducting a complete audit trail using the tool helps you eliminate toil, accelerate critical development work, and deploy changes. Jira also comes up with many features to help you get everything your teams need to add value faster. You can manage requests, incidents, problems, changes, assets, configurations, etc., without any hassles. In addition, integrate it with the tools you are interested in to make your work easier. You can also build some custom add-ons with the REST API to supercharge the service desk. Use the software for free, applicable for only three agents, or choose a plan based on your needs, starting at $60/month.
Reftab
Reftab is an IT Asset Management Software specially designed for simplicity. Every size of the organization can leverage it to assign items or deploy assets across the globe. Sometimes, using a spreadsheet can be frustrating and a waste of time; Reftab makes it very simple and easy for you by providing alerts on maintenance and warranties, depreciation, ownership verification, and more. Reftab’s drag and drop designer also gives you access to track everything. The tool constantly helps improve the way you work by skipping the layer of complexities. You will get an in-built barcode scanner to assign devices to users quickly, fill the custom work orders, etc. This simple platform allows you to track the equipment to know the item’s location, user, and time you are running low on. It has many features such as customizable fields and categories, track items to users, record loan history and all assets edits, email notification, status labels, and asset depreciation. The price for small teams who need essential assets and email alerts is $30/month.
👉 Bonus Points: How to choose an IT asset management software
Every organization is different, each with unique requirements and goals. This is why you need to choose a solution that can satisfy your needs, align with your goals, and not go heavy on financial aspects, especially if you’re a small business. Here’s how you can choose an IT management software:
Research different asset management software providers and read the ratings and reviews that customers have left to set your expectations. Determine the asset lifecycle and go for a solution that provides real-time access to the different departments responsible for monitoring the assets. Have a clear understanding of your asset management needs. You can talk to your staff or technicians to learn about it and prepare the goals before choosing the software. With plenty of service providers out there with different pricing plans and add-on features, shortlist the ones your organization can afford. Next, compare them based on various parameters such as features they offer, add-ons, pricing, free trial or not, discounts, renewals rates, etc. Check whether the software is compatible with your existing technology. For this, find the software’s supported operating system, hardware up-gradation, supported formats like disks, tapes, etc., and language it’s written in. Find out how secure the software is. Go for the software that helps you control data access for users, restrict website locations, configure a data administration solution, enable reports, and other capabilities.
Conclusion 👨🏫
Keeping a precise track of your organizational assets and managing them efficiently helps you drive your business towards success. Thus, use IT asset management software to manage all your assets and track and manage them like a pro. It gives you more efficiency and productivity, better asset controls, full visibility, and many useful features at an affordable price.