Enterprise Service Management
In the age of 'work from anywhere' the ability to have real-time visibility of all your hardware and software assets is more crucial than ever.
Whether it's simply to ensure your asset register is up to date so your investment in tools for staff is protected, or having the ability to reach in and update, fix, or otherwise adjust software applications remotely, IT Asset Management is an important part of keeping your data, staff, and reputation safe.
The very first step of ITAM is to get an accurate view of all your IT assets. It sounds simple, doesn’t it?
But the reality is that you have at least six different sources of truth. These include your finance system (procurement process), Windows tools (SCCM and Intune), cloud consoles (AWS and Azure), mobile device management tools (AirWatch, JAMF Pro), network discovery tools, monitoring tools (SCOM and SolarWinds), assets in stockrooms or storage (spreadsheets) and your ITSM tool (CMDB).
A certain level of intelligence is required to gather all this information in one place and normalise it. We call this capability Asset Intelligence, and it’s the first step of a robust IT asset management framework. Incorporating virtual assistants and smart advisors which use industry best practices to help you make sense of all the data you collate not only makes your job easier, it heightens the value of your protocols overall.
Gain full visibility and control over your assets, reduce risk, and improve accountability across all systems and departments.
Ensure the right software is delivered to the right devices—reducing waste, improving compliance, and avoiding unnecessary licensing costs.
Track all hardware in real time, across locations, storage, or users—so you always know where everything is and who’s responsible.
Implement industry best practices to maintain policy compliance, reduce risk, and keep your IT environment secure and well-governed.
Accurate asset data speeds up issue diagnosis and resolution, helping IT teams solve problems faster and minimise downtime.
If you don’t know what software and licenses you have, and who needs and uses what, then it’s easy to oversubscribe.
Buying full licenses for every staff member may seem like a simple, blanket approach to ensure your people have what they need to work. Over-licensing is also a side effect of software license audits. So many organisations fear audits that they’d rather budget for and over-purchase licenses year-on-year than quantifying what they need and use. This isn’t an economic or rational approach, especially in an era where everyone’s trying to do more with less.
However, you’ll be pleased to know that there are cost-effective ways to tackle these problems. Fusion5 can help you understand your software usage and make sense of the contracts you have with all your software vendors.
IT Asset Management software is relevant to all organisations regardless of which specific branch of IT is dominant. There are at least five factions of IT that ultimately depend on accurate asset information. In addition, compliance, governance, legislation, and audit requirements are a way of life when managing your IT assets.
If you think it's time to have a serious look at your ITAM maturity, we're here to help.
When Covid19 hit, our ESM team flew into action enabling our customers with the ITAM solutions they needed to realise their business continuity plans. But a global pandemic isn't the only reason these organisations are thriving with successful ITAM solutions. Read about their journeys for inspiration on how to enhance your ITAM protocols.
What are the business benefits of IT Asset Management software?
What ITIL is to ITSM, IAITAM is to ITAM.
IT Asset Management solutions come with pre-configured processes based on the International Association of IT Asset Managers (IAITAM) recommendations. There’s a different interface for every role in the organisation that needs an individual to view and interact with asset information and Unified IT.
What is the primary function of IT Asset Management (ITAM)?
There are two functions. The first is managing the assets themselves, preferably in real-time. You can’t manage what you can’t see, so you risk making inaccurate and often overly costly decisions.
Second is process governance. You need the ability to track and account for every single IT asset (no matter how small) from procurement to disposal — essential for auditing purposes.
What are the common business practices of Hardware Asset Management (HAM)?
It’s a common practice to have tools such as SCCM and Intune in every organisation, as those tools often come bundled into a commercial agreement.
However, it’s not best practice to rely solely on such tools for all asset management needs. These tools only provide a partial view of your assets and heavily focus on Microsoft devices. At an enterprise level, where asset management is very complex, organisations should consider a device-agnostic unified endpoint management solution.
What are the risks of unsecured software?
There are many risks! The most detrimental to your organisation are security and contract compliance risks as they have direct monetary penalties if an audit detects that you are non-compliant.
How does ITAM help reduce IT costs and overheads?
Put simply, if your IT support personnel need to log into several tools to establish the true state of an asset that one of your users is reporting an issue with, it takes time and money to sort out.
With a single reliable single source of truth at their fingertips, your IT support team can improve their services. With issues resolved more quickly, your users can return to their productive tasks sooner and continue to generate revenue.
What is the role of automation in IT Asset Management (ITAM)?
Some of the most labour intensive (and highly repetitive) asset-related requests are on- and off-boarding, patching, cloud provisioning and software distribution. Yet with the right technology, you can automate all these tasks to the extent where they are zero-touch. You reduce the opportunity for human error and free up your resources to work on more valuable business initiatives and projects.
