IT Asset Management
Reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction or be more adaptable to change… Now a strategy issue, asset management allows a company to make the most of its investment in assets directly linked to its professional goals – in both financial and operational terms.
In order to really reach strategic level, asset management must go beyond the traditional confines of administrative, accounting, regulatory or operational tracking (in most cases connected with maintenance). Firstly, the assets must no longer be considered as individual objects, but as a set of interdependent objects that have to be prioritised according to their impact on customer satisfaction or their potential to increase turnover and benefits to the company.
Management of an asset that has little strategic value – the completion of a routine maintenance task, for example – should not conflict with management of an asset that has greater strategic value, such as the repair of a production machine. In addition, these objects can no longer be managed with only one goal in mind – such as accounts management or improving maintenance procedures – but must be approached from a comprehensive viewpoint, which means making sure the whole company is involved, from the general management team to factories and warehouses. This extensive consolidation work also requires that two types of assets be distinguished (transverse and production assets) and that different forms of management be integrated (accounts and operational management).
This means that a request for a budget increase to buy equipment, a decision to purchase spares or a commitment to maintenance costs must be weighed up against the strategic value of the asset concerned. Also, procedures must be synchronised at every level of the company. In broadcasting, for example, news cameras are classed as strategic assets, while the reporters’ cars could mistakenly be classed as non-strategic. In practice, however, for a report to be made, the cameras must be in working order and the cars must be provided at the correct time by the departments concerned… The tactical objectives related to traditional asset management continue to stand, therefore, but are part of a wider system.
Any Asset Management application consistent with this wider view must, therefore, differentiate types of assets, formally recognise the interdependence of these assets and provide, at all levels of the company, information allowing the general management team, service departments and certain categories of employee to play an active and strategic role in the management of the company’s assets.
Functional scope of Asset Management
The more strategic asset management becomes, the greater its scope. The number of tasks to be performed increases: inventory control, management of entries and depreciation, allocation, agreement management, maintenance, budgetary control and internal invoicing. The solution adopted must cover all of these aspects, but must also be able to manage interaction between them and, if they conflict, provide the relevant information for decision-makers.
Collecting and organising information
The first stage, collecting and organising information, involves listing the company’s assets along with all the information required to manage these assets. This generally begins with an initial inventory. This work is easier if the asset management product includes a catalogue of generic objects and a directory of suppliers. Then, each asset can be assigned the appropriate category, type, make, model, entry date, serial number, location and technical features. Further inventories are required to check the initial findings.
Assets may be interdependent, and they must be represented in the database as such. These assets are managed as a group, as sets made up of a number of assets. To take an example from broadcasting, a news camera is made up of casing, a lens, a battery, a stand, a cover, and cables. This virtual piece of equipment would be managed as one item for the purposes of orders, fixed assets and allocation. Another method involves describing links between assets, which remain independent. For network equipment, for example, the ports to which PCs, servers or peripherals are connected would be specified.
Assigning a strategic weighting to each asset
In strategic management, each asset is assigned a weighting indicative of its impact on the company’s business activities (or its unavailability). This impact is either assessed by the user according to subjective criteria (concept of severity) or more objectively (concept of priority). For example, if a server is down, this prevents ten people from working, but a broken PC only affects one person. Similarly, unavailability of editing equipment is more serious than unavailability of a camera, while a medical probe is less critical than a system that manages a set of probes.
Managing allocation
Of all the types of information related to assets, allocation of some of these assets to users – especially if this allocation is temporary – is one that requires a specific kind of management. First, the users have to be listed as part of the description of the hierarchical organisation. This list can be based on an existing directory. The allocation process uses the list as a basis, with a schedule in which "agreements" are concluded with users. These agreements must take into account internal invoicing. Management of this schedule must include management of late returns and failure to return items, as well as of priorities for reallocation. Allocation must also follow certain rules, such as a requirement for approval in relation to budgetary restrictions or technical requirements, which may or may not be performed systematically, depending on the users or periods concerned. Finally, it should be possible to trace the allocation history of each asset.
Managing asset entry/removal
All the processes involved in managing the life cycle of assets are represented by the abbreviation IMAC (installation, movement, additions, changes). In concrete terms, this entails registering every asset entry, removal, movement and change, and giving details of the cause – purchase, breakdown, relocation or obsolescence.
Managing external agreements
All agreements related to assets must be carefully listed. This applies to rental, insurance, guarantee, maintenance, licensing and financing agreements. For each of these, the cost, date of entry into force, scope, term and conditions must be specified. This also applies to service agreements concluded with third-party service providers, particularly when certain business activities are outsourced. The descriptions of the agreements may be linked to digitised versions of the originals.
Managing internal agreements and invoicing
Service agreements concluded with service departments may, for example, specify maximum response times to incidents or requests for new services. The terms of these agreements are adapted to the strategic importance of the asset. Managing assets and all the associated agreements also makes it possible to implement internal invoicing procedures in order to bill back other departments in the company.
Preventive and curative maintenance
This type of management involves scheduling servicing and other checks (preventive maintenance) or managing procedures, possibly on user request, to repair faulty equipment (curative maintenance). It is based on the management of maintenance and guarantee agreements, in particular.
Managing requests and incidents
The starting point of many projects, management of requests and incidents (linked to curative maintenance) belongs to the help desk category. It involves opening then managing a “ticket” when a user makes a request for equipment or informs the help desk that there is a problem. It may be possible to resolve the problem immediately with reference to the knowledge base. If not, the necessary steps are taken on the basis of an escalation procedure that can even see suppliers and service providers becoming involved.
The ticket is only closed when the user is satisfied that the issue has been resolved, which should be within the timeframe specified in the service agreement. Users may be able to track the progress of their requests. It is for this reason that help desks increasingly have a Web interface.
Managing the procurement circuit
The procurement circuit begins when a need is expressed. This stage is itself based on a catalogue, and results in a purchase request being approved by the members of staff responsible for the budget, then those responsible for technical matters. This process is therefore managed by a workflow. Ideally, the priority level to be used to manage the request should depend on the type of asset concerned and, more precisely, on its strategic weighting. Once the request has been accepted the procurement circuit continues, with destocking or an order (and possibly grouping of several orders), a quote and reception. Finally, the asset becomes part of the stock or company assets, and is linked with fixed assets, internal invoicing and the budget.
Budgetary control
Whether they are responding to a purchase request or performing simulations, the members of staff responsible for the budget must evaluate the impact that purchasing the assets will have on the overall budget and that of the department concerned, or possibly on a project or a given phase of a project.
Stock management
Stock management involves listing the exact location of each asset. This is especially important if this stock is distributed over a number of sites. It also entails managing restocking, which may be automated on the basis of minimum quantities.
Just as requests have priority levels based on strategic weighting, the lowest acceptable stock level is dependent on the strategic weighting of the asset.
A decision-support tool
Once it has been properly filled, the asset management application database is a real mine of information. It includes a description and history for each asset, detailing allocation, location, and incidents. This means that by analysing the database, it is possible to identify trends or recurring problems, and take the appropriate action.
Specific features of technological assets
It is possible to facilitate the management of certain technological assets. For software, dedicated applications can automate inventory operations. In addition, administration of computer systems can be performed via the network, and linked with IT asset management. This also applies to many items of industrial and medical equipment, for example. Asset management solutions allows this equipment to be seen either directly (which is even easier when it is controlled by industrial PCs), or via monitoring platforms such as HP Openview.
