Request a demo for it asset managerThe holiday season is always a good time to slow down, meditate, and be grateful for family, friends, and the blessings you have in your life. And believe it or not, I think this is a good practice to do in IT as well.

You’re fighting the good fight day after day, extinguishing fires, battling resource and budget constraints, and dealing with more than enough on your Christmas dinner plate. Before you add any more sides to your already-full meal, take a step back, a deep breath, and take it all in. Think about what you have available to you, and how you can truly maximize and optimize what you have.

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And don’t worry, you don’t have to look at each of your assets and determine whether they spark joy or not. Ask yourself this instead: Can I improve the performance of my existing assets to get the most out of my asset investments and boost user productivity? However you answer that question, let’s examine five reasons why you should consider taking a closer look at your IT Asset Management (ITAM) practice.

1. Visibility – Know what you have

Close your eyes—inhale, exhale, and imagine where all your assets are. Do you have 100% visibility into all your software, hardware, and users in your organization? Don’t worry if you don’t have full visibility yet. That’s where an ITAM solution helps.

Instead of keeping up with endless spreadsheets manually, simply guessing what you have, or relying solely on Active Directory, ITAM will help you see what assets you have, where they are physically located, and how they are used, even down to the associated cost center or department level. This is a critical first step as many organizations underestimate what they have. When you first start out with ITAM, it’s not uncommon to find 20-30% more devices than you think you have. That’s 30% more of things you didn’t know you had, you didn’t secure, and you don’t know where or how it’s being used. Don’t give yourself holiday heartburn, let ITAM do the work for you.

Don’t rely on guessing games or spreadsheets; gain complete visibility to maximize the performance and value of your hardware and software assets.

2. Security – Protect what you have

Now that you‘ve achieved IT estate nirvana, you can now master taming your beast of an IT landscape, where unauthorized or unknown IT assets are introducing significant security risks to your environment. Having a clear picture of the hardware you have and what software is running on it is key to help you secure your IT systems and data against the most pervasive cyberattacks. And, the Center for Internet Security (CIS) thinks so, too.

When you fully understand what is connected to your network, you can put checks in place to verify that assets are compliant with your security policies. With ITAM, you can also be notified when an asset doesn’t report into your network for a period of time, allowing you to investigate missing assets that have been stolen or lost and are now posing a threat to your environment or data.

Ensure everything is accounted for; track your IT assets properly to lower the security risks from unknown, lost, or misconfigured hardware and software.

3. Lifecycle Management – Manage what you have

Seasons change, and so do your IT assets. You might have all the information about your assets when you first purchase them, but what happens to them within a month, a year, or even three years. Does your support organization have all the insights they need to properly service the user? Should a broken device be fixed or sent back for warranty repair?

With ITAM, you have a better understanding of the changes that occur throughout your asset lifecycles so you can make informed purchasing and replacement decisions. You can be notified when contracts are up for renewal, check their warranties, and decide  what hardware model to best standardize on. This way your assets are performing at their best, which let’s your users do their best.

Manage your IT assets and contracts proactively; get insights about when to purchase, update, and maintain your IT assets in order to get the most out of your IT investments

4 .Cost Optimization – Maximize what you have

Doing more with less or the same. We’ve all heard that before. That still doesn’t stop your users requesting new software and hardware or, even worse, circumventing IT processes and deploying software or hardware with no regard to security policies, compliance regulations, or budget constraints. Unused or redundant software applications are not only costly but also increase security risks if not updated or patched properly.

ITAM provides you with the insights you need to reclaim software licenses and renegotiate vendor contracts to help you only pay for what you’re actually using. With ITAM, you are better equipped to control your users’ software and hardware requests and purchases and ensure maximum value out of your IT asset investments.  

Avoid shelfware and redundant software purchases; get more value from your IT assets by only paying for what you use.

5. Shift left – Get even more out of what you have

Don’t stop there though, there is always room for improvement. Once you’ve reigned in your IT assets and have the insights to properly manage and optimize them on an ongoing basis, you can now provide the right insights to your service and support organization to better serve your users.

For instance, when you bring together your asset information with incident and problem management data, you can better assess why certain models of your devices regularly fail. This helps you proactively manage the overall risk versus trying to fix it as each device fails, and unifying those processes empowers you to avoid unnecessary costs and downtime overall.

Take advantage of automation and self-service; unify your ITSM and ITAM processes to improve IT service, enable users, and empower your business.

As you think about what to do differently in the coming year, get proactive about managing your IT assets. Take that first step and gain visibility into what you have. With clear insights into what assets you have, where they are, how much they’re costing you, and how they’re performing throughout their lifecycle from cradle to grave, you can get the most out of what you have and achieve significant efficiency and productivity gains.

Now go enjoy the holidays with your families, where you recharge and contemplate what you can do with the IT assets you have in your IT estate. And as a reminder for the new year and the new you with an effective ITAM practice, pin this infographic on your wall, mirror, or doorway. Happy holidays!