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For most businesses, the efficient tracking of their installed base or in-service equipment, and also the management of their spare parts inventories are important aspects in determining the prospects for internal productivity and customer service profitability. On the flip side, many organizations do not yet utilize a comprehensive asset tracking and management process to guarantee the supply of quality data that can be used to generate the business intelligence that will ultimately save them money and improve efficiency. This really is unfortunate, since the tools are readily available - it is simply a matter of making it a top priority.
There are many definitions of "asset management", although most deal primarily with financial factors. Some are based on evolving maintenance management systems; some on the management of factory floor equipment configurations; and some for the purposes of monitoring network equipment as well as railway car and container locations. In contrast, regardless of what situation or application your business deals with, the core definition remains constant; asset management is "a systematic process for identifying, cataloging, monitoring, maintaining, operating, upgrading and replacing the physical assets of the business on a cost-effective basis".
To be truly effective, the asset management process has to be built upon a foundation of widely accepted accounting principles, and supported by the proper blend of sound business practices and financial acumen. It can provide management with the effective tool that will be used to derive better short- and long-term planning decisions. As such, it's an element that every business should consider adopting - and embracing.
Poor asset management leads to poor data quality - and poor data quality can negatively affect the business over time. Actually, experience shows that there are a variety of common causes that will lead to poor asset management, including lack of business controls for managing and/or updating asset data; lack of ownership for asset data quality; and an out-of-balance investment in people, process, data and technology. On top of that, some businesses might not consider asset management to be a critical function, focusing on audits only; while some might not consider asset data to be an important component of the business's intellectual property.
The primary symptoms of poor asset management also are fairly ubiquitous, and may include everything from numerous compliance and security issues, to uncontrollable capital and/or expense budgets, excessive network downtime and poor performance, under- or over-utilized assets, incompatible software applications, increasing operational costs and headcount, and great site non-matching asset data produced from different organizations and/or business systems.
What's more, poor ongoing asset management practices can impact a business by degrading customer support delivery, polluting the current installed base of data and distracting sales resources with customer data issues For instance, Service Delivery might be impaired by inaccurate depot sparing creating customer entitlement issues, increasing escalations to upper management and lowering client satisfaction. An uncertain installed base lengthens contract renewal cycle-time, limits revenue opportunities and inhibits technology refresh planning.
