Best IT Asset Management Software

What is an IT Asset Management Software (ITAM Software)?

IT Asset Management Software consists of a set of business processes that manages the overall life cycle of assets strategic by joining the contractual, financial, inventory, and risk management responsibilities in a single Asset Management System. It also involves tactical and decision making for the IT environment. Here, ‘assets’ include all of the software as well as hardware available in the business environment.

Best IT Asset Management Software can also be referred to as IT Asset Inventory Management Software as it involves encapsulating all the software and hardware inventory information for the purpose of decision making regarding purchase and use. Having an appropriate It Asset Inventory Management Software ensures that all the assets are managed effectively and no unnecessary purchases are made along with reusing the existing resources.

IT Asset Management System (or IT Asset Inventory Management Software) also provides an advantage by ensuring that no risk to costs is being taken by building new IT projects upon outdated infrastructure along with lowering risk due to less accuracy of provided information.

A large portion of a company’s assets are managed by the respective IT organisations, even though these IT assets are very costly to acquire as well as maintain. This ensures that IT Asset Management System enable the IT teams to efficiently use the organization’s resources for the needs of users and businesses.

According to a prescribed definition upon research, Financial Asset Management Software (i.e. IT Asset Inventory Management Software) isn’t all about inventory of assets but also about using the encapsulated information to reach some strategic and tactical decisions.

Goals of Asset Management System in IT

The following are some of the goals of the best Asset Management System in IT:

1. To ensure that whatever security alliances and policies are set based on corporate regulations, they are complied within the organization functioning.

2. To ensure that the said technology is employed with a focus on meeting the needs of the users and business functions thereby improving productivity.

3. To ensure that all the underutilized resources and licenses are either eliminated or reused in order to reduce the licensing and support costs.

4. To ensure that any overhead cost for IT environment management is controlled and reduced.

Lifecycle of IT Assets

Assets in IT are those that have a limited life but still quite useful. Best Asset Management System has some processes that use the concept of asset lifecycle to support decision making thereby maximizing the value for the company. Depending upon the organization’s processes, the definition for lifestyle stages may vary along with the information that is most relevant to the respective organization. But ultimately the lifestyle stages remain the same.

The structure of the IT Asset lifecycle is as follows:

1. Planning:

This stage involves the study of what all assets are required in the organization, how to attain them, how to use them, and how to fund them.

2. Acquiring:

This stage involves the procurement of assets through leasing, buying, building, or licensing them.

3. Commissioning:

This stage involves setting up of asset within the organization’s IT system by integration with other components, setting up processes, and user access.

4. Maintaining:

This stage involves maintenance of the assets in use within the organization that involves reparation, upgradation, and overhauling.

5. Retiring:

This stage is in motion when the life of the asset is completed and when it is no longer in use. This ensures that all assets not in use are terminated to save costs of maintenance.

IT Asset Management Software Benefits

It’s a very important question to ask, as to why do we need the top IT Asset Management Software. All that we have seen till now enables us to understand the software, its components integration and working. Now we need to understand what can be achieved with this software.

Following are the 3 core benefits of the best IT Asset Management Software:

1. Managing IT Costs and Budgets:

This enables you to proactively plan and manage the costs associated with IT assets quite efficiently. The planning and management of cost is only possible since your assets have complete visibility and are in control throughout the life cycle. You can-

• Optimize the use of assets that are currently in use

• Completely forego all unnecessary maintenance (with the help from Asset Maintenance Software) and support costs

• Increase billing accountability

• Take advantage of the warranty

• Increase service desk productivity

• Eliminate penalties

• Avoid costly noncompliance fines

• Provide users with self-service and put the power in their hands

• Automate the processes that are very time-consuming in case of manual

• Ensure high consistency as well as quality in IT Asset Management Solution and other activities

2. Increasing IT Service Management Efficiency:

IT Asset Management Software integrates seamlessly with IT Service delivery processes as it provides all the important details of the asset in case of any incident, problem, change, configuration or request management.

This enables the service managers, technicians and analysts to extract any relevant information required to study and analyze the problem to find out the root cause. IT Asset Management System in integration with ERP, finance, procurement, invoicing and human resource systems associates all business data together including the asset information, enabling a cost-effective and efficient service and management decision making.

3. Reducing Security and Compliance Risks:

IT Asset Management System ensures that all the processes and controls are in place and developed keeping in mind compliance with corporate, contractual, and regulatory requirements. By combining systems and IT Asset Management Tools with the formalized capabilities, IT Asset Management System enables a better understanding of managing, controlling, and optimizing the IT operations and budget with amplified accuracy.

Top IT Asset Management Software is here to ensure that no unnecessary costs, penalties, litigations etc. are being generated to potentially harm the organization’s cost sheet or reputation.

With the finer details within the best IT Asset Management Software, the information regarding the software licenses and contracts can enable the IT Asset Software to avoid all non-compliance fines as well as prevent excessive spending on maintenance and support.

Storing all the necessary information regarding processes and tools as well as the complete IT Asset Tracking Software repository enables the IT Asset Management System to support the organization in complying with all regulatory requirements.

Best Asset Tracking Software repository plays a major role in the compliance regulations. The knowledge of which assets are in use and where, along with the usage policies being followed, like the appropriate asset allocation, is core to IT security.

IT Asset Management System enables standard automation for IT asset processes like request, purchase, receive, distribute and maintain. This ensures compliance as well as consistency and proper control. This also ensures that anything that can potentially harm the organisation in case of cost, reputation, infrastructure, etc, is visualized and controlled.

Must have Asset Management System Features

When you are tracking an Asset in the traditional way and you are looking forward to the Best Asset Management Software package that can make your lives easier, what features do you imagine that it will have? Well, to help you out, the following are some of the features that a top IT Asset Management Software solutions must-have. This means no forgoing with these features in favor of a cheaper IT Asset Management System. It would just mean that your work efficiency is reduced by a lot.

1. Use it anywhere:

Previously, IT Asset software had to be installed on local computers. This meant either using a dial-up connection or actual physical access. This also meant not being able to efficiently work remotely or use this software in case of a non-sitting job.

At present, the latest and all upcoming best IT Asset Management Software are hosted on the cloud. This makes using it quite easy as the cloud can be accessed through the web, which can be done from any device.

2. Visibility:

Desktop machines did not have the provision of reports on empty drives. This caused problems to a lot of employees as managers demand those reports. Since the visibility of components is low, the data could definitely not be extracted for compilation.

What the new IT Asset Management System is giving you, is the visibility of all or majority of components on any new system under evaluation. All this through a few reporting functionalities.

3. Simplicity:

Technology doesn’t wait for you. It moves on. But it still is always looking to give you advancements in the way that is quite easy for you to grasp. Technology’s trend is bound towards simplicity. A clean and easy-to-interface is the way of today. No matter how much further you move on, you will never have to struggle through to learn about a new piece of technology.

That is where IT Asset Management System is also aiding you. It is user friendly, allows easy data sharing, connects users easily, generate reports intuitively and simplifies your workflow.

4. Integration:

An important requirement of everyone today is the easy integration of new apps and software with the existing ones. Wouldn’t it be difficult if your software does not allow you to run other apps of yours that are probably your favorite? Well, the best IT Asset Management Software is pretty much open for any kind of integration and lets you run your favourite apps without any hindrance.

5. Rapid Deployment:

Upgradation is itself a trend today. If you are not updated with the latest versions of crucial software, then you won’t be as efficient. Upgrading cloud-based Asset Management Solutions has one major concern i.e. data migration.

Your system must have a smooth deployment feature that will ensure that you are not left stuck somewhere. Mostly, this deployment is for database movement. Well, it must be hassle-free. So, it would be extremely wise to ensure that your vendors suggest the best systems with efficient deployment times and performance.

What are the Types of Asset Management Software?

Best Asset Management Software consists of many processes. Asset Management can also mean a lot of different things. Given below are some of the types in which it can be classified:

1. Financial Asset Management Software:

We often use the term Financial Asset Management software interchangeably with Inventory Management System (from IT Asset Inventory Software), which is a branch of financial sector where all investment funds are managed and clients’ accounts are segregated.
Financial Asset Management System is a part of the financial service industry that the industry experts apply for managing money and investment of the clients. This also involves studying the client’s assets and planning of suitable investment amount. Asset Managers are responsible for the recommendation of suitable clients based on their respective financial health.

2. Enterprise Asset Management Software:

This involves the management of the maintenance of the physical assets of the organization throughout the lifecycle of the assets. Enterprise Asset Management is used to plan, optimize, execute and track the maintenance activities which are associated with corresponding skills, materials, tools (special focus on Enterprise Asset Management Tools), priorities and information (particularly for IT Asset Software).

3. Infrastructure Asset Management Software:

Infrastructure Asset Management includes the maintenance of the entire asset lifecycle including not only the main 5 stages of the lifecycle but also their subdivisions like designing, construction, commissioning, operating, maintaining, repairing, modifying, replacing, and retiring of all physical and infrastructure assets.

4. Public Asset Management Software: 

It is also called as the corporate asset management that is incorporating the management of all things of value to its citizen’s expectations. All public assets that are interconnected, share proximity through the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The GIS-based public asset management allows data interoperability making the process of sharing of information quite easy.

5. IT Asset Management Software:

A set of several business processes consisting of functions based on finance, contracts and inventory, support lifecycle management, and strategic decision making within this Software. All of this encapsulated in one package allows organizations to instantly integrate it with their system, with the best Asset Management System, with the help of IT Asset Management Tools.

6. Fixed Asset Management Software:

This is an accounting process that tracks fixed assets for financial accounting, preventive maintenance, and theft prevention. This kind of tracking is done through Asset Tracking System (Fixed Asset Tracking Software).

Best Asset Tracking Software allows organizations to track what all assets have been procured, the location of the particular asset, expected date of retirement, maintenance schedule, and cost. IT Asset Tracking Software tracks the location as well as the information of an asset.

7. Digital Asset Management Software:

This involves the management of media objects that are the assets of any organization.

How does IT Asset Management Software Work?

To understand how the best IT Asset Management Software solutions work, you need to understand the process that it entails because Process is the essence of IT Asset Management.

The importance of process and IT Asset Management Tools to support the Asset Management Solutions through life cycle can be depicted through the following quote: Well defined processes that are structured, enforced and automated in a supporting IT Asset Management Tool, are the foundation for IT Asset Management Solutions’ success.

IT Asset Management business practices are based on the process and they achieve maturity through focussed improvements. IT Asset management generally uses automation to manage discovery of assets. For small and medium-sized businesses, an IT Asset Management Solution might not be able to influence many departments. But it is still required that the IT Assets be tracked for risk management, appropriate cost and placement allocation as well as resource provision. This is where IT Asset Tracking system steps in.

Best Asset Tracking Software basically has 3 functions:

• Documentation of all assets (physical devices)

• Identifying the current position and use of each asset

• Scheduling maintenance for each asset along with the calculation of value reduction over time

An important question that arises here is, why do we really need such an Asset Tracking System? The answer to it is pretty logical. Assets when purchased, can be deployed in any place. IT Assets particularly can deployed at various different places in multiple locations.

So, when we are required to troubleshoot a particular asset, we are stuck in a jumbled mess of the asset’s usage history. Even the data might not be really enough or even relevant to study.

IT Asset Tracking Software enables easy tracking of all the information in one place related to a particular asset making it easier to solve any issues that may have occurred. Not only that, assets are bound to age over time and their value depreciates substantially with use.

Asset Tracking System enables a constant check onto the asset which predicts the length of the life of an asset in order to keep the financials in check.

Till now we have seen that the process for IT Asset Management Solution can be followed by keeping a thorough check on the prospective client’s assets, studying the asset’s data, identifying its value, procuring it, creating its information repository and finally tracking it through an IT Asset Tracking System.

The complete IT Asset Software consists of these sub-processes within its own work domain.

At this moment, we can define a few components based on which the effectiveness of the best IT Asset Management Software process can be judged:

1. Complete coverage of the IT Asset life cycle and tracking from Planning to Retirement

2. Well defined process development to ensure efficient, consistent and accurate execution of all IT Asset Management solutions, tasks and activities

3. Continuous process improvement for increment in value as well as maturity

4. Effective IT Asset Management Tools that provide process support and automation

IT Asset Management Software Industry Insights

Following are the Industry Insights for the ITAM Software, based on:

Size of the Enterprise

1. Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs):

It is very crucial for small businesses to keep a proper track of all the assets as the loss of even a single one can prove to be a big roadblock to deliver the product. It is quite necessary that with a use of relevant software, all your assets are neatly tracked.

Best Small Business Asset Management Software (or Best Small Enterprise Asset Management Software) is an asset in itself. Even though you may find investing in the software a bit costly, you can rest assured that the benefits that you will reap will outweigh the costs.

Another thing that you can keep track of is your budget and finance. It is very common to misplace a particular equipment, buy a new one then ending up finding the old one. This leads to duplication which is nothing but a severe pushdown on your finances.

Best Asset Tracking Software can also go a long way of helping you keep a proper repository of each asset. Since what you have in your repository can help you better fulfil the customer needs.

2. Large Enterprise (LE):

Large enterprises have a large number of facilities available along with hundreds of employees. This means a lot more of the big-picture insights with a vast amount along with complex tracking. What commonly is needed in such big organisations is the requirements of inter-facility comparison. This includes comparisons of assets and their performance, the regulatory compliances as well as costs of different facilities, all needed to run a business effectively.

These large businesses can hence make use of the Enterprise Asset Management Software to manage their assets within as well as across the different facilities, departments and locations for effective as well as efficient business solutions.

Type of Deployment Platform

1. On-Premise:

Today, on-premise deployment is less common, but even then, businesses are looking into on-premise deployment of IT Asset Management Software. In this, all the applications and physical servers are stored on site enabling the company itself to manage the server in-house.

Maintenance functions (either through a manual team or with the help of relevant Asset Maintenance System), system upgrades, cooling equipment and provisions and entire power house setup along with all relevant tools (Cloud Based Asset Management Tools) are the responsibility of the business housing the servers.

While this may still sound reasonable, the ultimate cost of setup is something every business owner is sure to think twice about. Imagining the size of setup machines and rooms along with equipment can make anyone change their minds. Not to forget, an addition to this would be substantial manpower to maintain the setup and equipment.

It has been seen that running an in-house/on-premise deployed application might cause running errors like lag in time and speed as well as lagging in concurrent executions. This problem is usually due to limited bandwidth.

What most businesses do is add a couple of more servers to increase the bandwidth which once again leads to an increase in maintenance as well as purchase and setup cost. With increment in population size the future might need an expansion of even more servers. Where would space come from then? Also, the amount of security and protection needed would be all-time high.

This has made many businesses shift to Cloud-based deployment.

2. On Cloud:

Cloud-based deployments are reaching a hike like never before due to businesses realizing the advantages of storing data and applications in an off-premise environment with a lot less difficulty.

In the case of on-cloud deployment, the solutions are housed in the cloud-based infrastructure in a different organization’s data center. This ensures that the server maintaining capability remains with the outsourcing company.

It has been recorded based on a survey that out of several businesses that deployed on the cloud, 71% of them have experienced much easier application management while 45% have benefited from faster application deployment.

Let’s not forget the masses that have benefited from the increased bandwidth for concurrent processing. Several large enterprises are at present being benefited from cloud environments due to the size and number of applications running through them.

3. Hybrid:

There are cases where some of the organizations move towards the on-premise as well as cloud-based deployments together. For example, they might have some regulatory concerns that do not allow the deployment of some assets on the cloud.

That way the availability or provision of on-premise deployment comes in handy. There might also be cases where some of the crucial, confidential financial documents need to be stored on-site while the marketing and operational documents can be stored on the cloud.

End-user of the Asset Management Software

1. BFSI:

Modifications in the economy can affect banks, insurance firms etc. in the financial sector. To absorb the changes successfully, a constant restructuring and innovation is required. It will also require you to take heed of the regulatory norms to meet the demands of customers.

Advanced technology can help you strategize and prioritize your actions, act upon any possible risks and grow unwaveringly. ITAM Software provides you with a system full of innovation, agile solutions and services in Banking and Financial Service Institutions.

2. Telecom and IT:

It has been a boon for IT and Telecom professionals to find the solutions for automation and integration of the assets management. It has allowed the capability and flexibility of these assets to increase the processing, visibility (through Asset Management Tool) and business values throughout the organisation. Asset Tracking System for all businesses have also proved to be the best in managing the assets and viability.

3. Government:

Government organizations manage a large amount of assets including military bases, fleet vehicles, roads, parks, buildings etc. With such an amount of assets, it is necessary that management of these are done properly to avoid any unnecessary spending and ensure all regulatory compliances.

A large amount of paper-based data gathering can prove to be inaccurate and inconsistent. Adopting the best IT Asset Management Software solutions can definitely prove to be of great benefit to the government as it can increase asset life, track costs (IT Asset Tracking System), maintenance schedules, prevent failures (predict also), ensure compliance, reduce downtime and improve productivity on the whole.

4. Healthcare:

When you are swinging between a life and death situation, all you are concerned about is what the doctor will say. You are not concerned with what are the assets or how do they manage it. All you believe is that the doctors would be updated with latest tools and technology to help you with proper treatment that could probably save your life.

Implementing a system like best Asset Management Software solutions, can provide many benefits that not only save time and money but also ensure that what you offer your patients is the best possible service with 100% reliability. Asset Tracking Systems coupled with some latest technologies like bar code scanning can prove to save a lot more time that is precious to each of the patient (using Asset Management Tools).

5. Transportation:

In the transportation industry, Asset Management is a new concept. Still many localities under a well settled jurisdiction enjoys the benefits of this system. All the public assets like roads, bridges, transport like buses and metros, metro stations, etc. are facilities that need full accounting (Asset Tracking System) of assets and equipment in order to work well under the Asset Management Software system.

6. Manufacturing:

The manufacturing process is on schedule for every little operation within it. Hence downtime for it needs to be low and all decisions and resolutions for issues needs to be quick. There could be multiple work centres each with a separate issue. But through Manufacturing Asset Management Software (and Asset Management Tools), this can be resolved quickly through data tracking in Asset Tracking system.

7. Energy and Utilities:

Through the adoption of the first generation of Asset Management System, utilities have acquired a lot of data regarding their assets. This data in structured manner aids in strategic asset management. The next generation of best Asset Management Software systems would not only collaborate the entire data but also enable making sense of it (Asset Tracking system).

This has enabled a reduction in wastage of financial resources, enhancement of economic growth and living standards along with environmental sustainability.

Future Trends in Asset Management Solutions

As per the industry analysis report by future market insights, the IT Asset Management Solutions’ market is expected to register a huge percentage of Annual Growth by 2026. This has encouraged IT Asset Software managers to know all about the drivers for this growth as well be hyper aware of any trends that impact the Financial Asset Management Software market.

Following are the 4 main trends of the future that industry leaders feel are already affecting the industry:

1. Mobility:

It does not matter what the work is, a mobile application is a sure way of carrying out all your important tasks of routine while saving a lot of time and resources. For example, say that your maintenance team is equipped with a mobile Asset Management System or applications, then they can readily input inspection data for assets or equipment in their mobile itself as it is always handy nowadays.

This not only reduces the manual data entry work but also reduces the significant amount of calculation errors that are bound to cause issues in case of manual work. Additionally, since your mobile application allows work order initiation process, this eventually saves a lot of your time and cost because of no necessity of being at your workstation.

2. Cloud:

Advantages of hosting your cloud-based Asset Management Software are endless. These include scalability, agile project management, high network security, disaster recovery planning procedures, flexibility and low cost of ownership.

It is definitely no surprise that cloud is the most preferred software delivery model for nearly all current and upcoming business applications including the best Asset Management Software. Remote asset management, data security, easy sharing etc. are just some of the benefits of having a cloud hosting for cloud based Asset Management Solutions and more.

3. Predictive Analysis:

What Asset Management Solutions really imply is the core necessity of managing as well as mitigating any current or predicted risks. Identifying, quantifying and prioritizing the identified risks enables the organisation’s hardware Asset Management Software approaches to go from reactive to predictive.

The Best Asset Management Software offers solutions for preventive maintenance (PM) as well as reliability centred maintenance (RCM) where maintenance is carried out through Asset Maintenance Software.

Under RCM, the best Asset Management System analyses the IT Assets Software repository for study of criticality of the risk and then reduces the severity of failure by determining the corresponding optimum maintenance policy. Under PM, a beneficial result is customer satisfaction due to less amount of failures.
Predictive Analysis of an Asset enables proactive knowledge of potential safety risks and compliance issues by analysis of historical data as well as current along with multiple case studies for accurate results.

4. Internet of Things:

Asset Management Solutions is the crucial area where the Internet of Things can have maximum utility. Since IoT is responsible for making machines and systems interact with each other without the intervention of humans, processes like preventive maintenance and RCM have become much simpler. This not only enables a huge amount of efficiency but also cuts cost.

Data sharing and knowledge transfer have also become increasingly efficient. Combining best Asset Management Software solutions with intelligence of IoT can benefit the overall Asset Management System procedures as well as shape the future of proactive technology.

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