With new business horizons and coming together of IT investments, the need for integration of resources in all aspects has increased. Decentralization, mergers and acquisitions as well as market competitions are the biggest challenge for organizations in this regard. IT assets are thus seen as the major source of supporting transformations, improving efficiency, reducing expenditure and opening new avenues. Effective management of asset is thus much diverse and involves much more than technological advances. Such tools helps in managing asset and enable organizations leverage their existing IT assets and improve effectiveness of all the IT processes. The four Cs of asset management can be summarized as follows:

1. Characteristics (hardware assets)

2. Configuration (software applications)

3. Contract (with service and warranty information)

4. Costs (financial data)

Identifying business practices

The foremost important thing for organizations is to map out a management procedure in order to handle their assets throughout the lifecycle from acquisitions to retirement. The main points which must be taken into consideration are as follows:

1. Basic steps involved to incorporate IT asset management

2. Time and cost requirement

3. Possible redundancies

4. Alternate solution

5. Whether existing ITAM system is well structured

6. Security and legal risks involved

Once the IT needs have been largely determined, the next thing is to plan out a strategy for implementing asset management. Based on the objectives of the organization and the applications which are critical to meet those objectives, a road-map can be chalked out. This helps in appropriating the different functional levels within an organization in order to identify the hardware and software assets. Proficient ITAM system tools help in asset discovery and manage their procurement, licensing, deployment, installation and maintenance.

Asset Lifecycle

For incorporating effective management practices, it is first imperative to track the changes throughout asset lifecycle and maintain inventory of the same. Asset lifecycle comprises stages starting from license acquisition, asset procurement, installation, movement and disposition. The requirement of an ITAM system tool thus arises which would provide precise information about deployed assets, license status of installed assets, unassigned assets and asset usage policy. Such information is vital for personnel who are responsible for asset management so as to diagnose problems in advance and minimize downtime situations. Discovery of assets and gathering reports on asset license or warranty data helps in taking adequate measures.

Justifying asset migration

It asset management helps in planning out migration processes, both in case of hardware installations and software applications. With efficient IT asset management tools, organizations can easily compile data to gain knowledge about percentage of assets fail to meet the migration requirements, cost of migration and available resources that could help in the migration process.

Management of software licenses

Perhaps the most crucial of all aspects on which ITAM system tools focus is management of software licenses. Asset management greatly reduces the legal and business risks for organizations by enabling them to comply by the different software license standards. With the help of ITAM system tool, organizations are able to establish a clear software policy and define the software procurement process. Furthermore, they can keep a tab on the existing assets and their license details which helps in proactively determining the software license compliances.

Hence, it is evident that with IT asset management tools, it is possible to focus on the entire infrastructure starting from procurement, licensing and clearance to leasing, shipping and upgrading the assets.