Asset Management System Software: What is it and why is it important?
All companies in various sectors of the industry deal with several different assets in a day. Without an efficient mechanism to track this tied up capital, firms can experience disruptive workflows, resulting in huge losses and stunted growth rates. An asset management system software helps keep a record of business owned property including equipment, tools, vehicles and more to ensure the smooth operation of daily tasks.
Failure to have an updated database can lead to negative consequences for your business. Most firms are unaware of the amount, the location and the condition of the tools that they are housing. Missing out on procurement schedules can lead to unexpected outages and delays in work routines. The absence of accountability mechanisms also aggravates high misplacement and theft of tools. To prevent such scenarios, firms acquire an asset management system software to handle their asset management.
Benefits of asset management
A streamlined software allows you to effectively manage all your tools and equipment to allow you to increase your ROI. By creating a central database, you will be able to speed up your business procedures and improve productivity.
Read more: What is asset management?
Upgrade asset performance to gain the following benefits:
- Improved acquisition: Different types of assets have varying frequency of use. Once you start to track ownership, you can analyze an asset’s respective frequency. You can then use this information to design lifecycle management for maintenance, procurement, and disposal.
- Gain compliance: Business agencies are often asked to provide extensive data on their capital investments to ensure compliances. A reliable system to document all work operations makes this considerably easy.
- Informed decision-making: By assessing company performance in terms of risk management and profit opportunities, you can gather useful insights into your vulnerabilities. This information can be utilized to alter existing policies for optimizing business performance.
Key features of a management software
To help you gain higher levels of proficiency in handling business tools and equipment, an automated management software can help you with the following features:
1. Location updates to ensure traceability
Depending on the nature of the business, employees are required to travel to different sites for projects. In such cases, it becomes difficult to track the assets that accompany them. Such situations call for real-time location updates to avoid misplacements.
An asset management system lets you checkout every item before use. Doing this lets you record where a piece of equipment is going to be used and for how long. This data establishes transparency and reduces instances of asset theft and misuse. Input every asset’s respective location in your system’s online database to facilitate easy distribution and documentation.
2. Reservations for smooth work operations
Working in a fast-paced environment can be tough, especially where tight deadlines are the norm. Companies hold meetings, conferences and external events which require extensive planning. A slight delay in schedule can incur extra costs and waste valuable time. In order to increase efficiency in carrying out events, firms choose to make reservations in advance.
Using a cloud-based management system allows you to reserve equipment and venues before the designated time, saving you from any last minute inconvenience. A dashboard calendar also enables you to view items that are already booked so you can make timely alternate arrangements.
3. Inventory modules for streamlined procurement
When it comes to stock management, most companies tend to suffer from outages or excess storage. This can have dire consequences for your business by delaying work operations and tying your monetary resources. For optimal asset quantities, it is critical to lay down a streamlined procurement plan for timely replenishment. Procurement plans are extremely beneficial as they:
- Provide an opportunity to all stakeholders involved to discuss the goals and objectives of the business. Ensuring all relevant parties are a part of the procurement process speeds up implementation as well.
- Enable you to set realistic time-frames for all vendors. Sometimes logistic constraints can hinder quick deliveries so they need to be accounted for.
- Enable you to determine whether additional equipment support is needed.
You can achieve all this by defining minimum thresholds for all concerned assets. Whenever this limit is reached, an alert is sent out to generate purchase orders. This way you can ensure all your procurement deadlines.
Read more: How to get the most out of asset management system?
4. Timely maintenance to reduce downtime
All physical assets are subjected to wear and tear over time. To maximize the useful life of equipment, it is vital to have regular service sessions. Whenever you acquire new equipment, schedule it for maintenance activities through the asset management system software. Similarly, to avoid having to manually run the same session again, you can set up recurring services for your tools to automate the process.
In addition to this, you can also store a list of vendors for easy reference. Preventative maintenance can not only increase uptime but can also avail the following:
- Lower chances of large-scale repairs
- Decreased labor costs
- Reduced loss in production
- Improved safety conditions
Schedule service tickets every time you run a repair event for your tools to avoid unexpected delays in work operations.
5. Track history to optimize usage
Market demand fluctuates due to seasonal changes or adoption of new technology. Whatever the reason, it is the duty of your management team to efficiently handle these in order to avoid losses at a subsequent stage. Tracking history for an asset plays a vital role in its management. It provides you with a snapshot of usage trends and service cycles. For instance, you find out that one of the laptops used by the marketing department has had 3 maintenance events in the past month. Such irregularities could indicate that the device has a manufacturing defect or a virus, and needs a replacement.
Likewise, for procurement, you can identify which products need frequent replenishment. These items can also be purchased in bulk quantities to save costs. Having detailed information to configure consumption helps optimize usage using an asset management system software.
Conclusion
Having the best assets for your business is just the first step towards the successful achievement of your goals and objectives. The next critical step is to maximize your ROI. To attain this level of efficiency, a cloud-based management system offers you dynamic features to accelerate your business growth.
In addition to scheduling repair and service sessions, devising procurement plans, and enabling reservations, asset management system software also allows you to control user access. This is as important as the assets themselves. When it comes to business management, assigning and supervising work tasks efficiently is obligatory.
Keeping this in mind, software programs allow you to designate different user roles depending on the tools in question. This comes in handy when dealing with expensive equipment which should be used by designated personnel only. To strengthen data integrity and asset security, you can also set passwords and login approvals.
Gain higher productivity levels from your tools and workforce by employing refined techniques in the domain of asset management.
About EZOfficeInventory
EZOfficeInventory is the leading asset management software used by companies around the world. Use our solution for optimized maintenance workflows, accurate machine downtime tracking, and more.
