Best Approach to Automating and Managing IT Assets and Inventory
Keeping track of IT and technological assets within an organization is a huge undertaking, particularly as the digital world continually expands. While every workplace is unique in its approach to operations, most businesses want to keep tabs on essential things like devices, hardware, licenses, cloud instances, and more.
Although growth is typically a positive development, IT administrators may face hurdles and growing pains when it comes to Apple IT inventory as business grows. Additionally, modern IT inventory now encompasses all device types and assets, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and even tvOS.
Whether you’ve been weighing the costs and benefits of IT asset management platforms, or you simply recognize the real pain points at your organization, Addigy is here to help.
In this post, we’ll tackle the basics of IT asset management and how you can leverage automation to improve your IT inventory processes.
What is IT Asset Management?
IT asset management is sometimes referred to as ITAM. For growing enterprise organizations, ITAM covers the “beginning to end” process of identifying, tracking, upgrading, updating, and removing IT-related assets when it’s necessary to do so.
Perhaps contrary to what some people may assume, IT asset management goes far beyond tracking laptops deployed to incoming employees upon hire. The process of tracking a technology fleet also encompasses software assets, logins and instances, cloud access, and protected digital information.
Here are some of the common items that IT admins track:
- The number of devices on a network
- Installed and approved apps on each device
- Types of devices most in used
- User credentials and access
As a result of the growing list of assets that are crucial for many basic business operations, IT administrators need reliable and secure platforms to simplify this responsibility.
IT Asset Management and MDM
While IT asset management focuses on tracking assets, mobile device management (MDM) is all about managing them. Together, these powerful features allow IT teams to keep track of devices on their network and ensure they are maintained, secure and up to date at all times.
An automated tool or platform offers freedom to burdened IT team members who are accustomed to tracking assets manually. With automated asset management, it’s easier to:
- Project and understand when new devices are needed
- Add new or current devices to an accurate inventory
- Make on-time updates and changes to the current inventory
- Quickly identify and address security threats
- Remove hassles associated with IT ticketing or troubleshooting
- Retire or eliminate devices from an organization at the right time
With a more predictive approach to asset tracking, IT admins can work in real-time and stay on top of important changes to the environment. This is, in contrast, to constantly playing catch-up or putting out fires as they happen.
Moreover, automation improves an organization’s ability to budget and spend smarter. Managing a growing IT fleet can be costly, and leaders need accurate numbers to bring requests to upper management or leadership. Automation helps you know which devices are on your network (especially if you have a BYOD program) and get a better handle on procurement for the future.
MDM falls naturally in line with the goals of IT asset management to help IT leaders track, understand, and improve mobile device usage and processes.
Choosing an IT Asset Management Tool
In order to select an IT asset management tool that best aligns with your group’s needs, you should first identify key pain points or frustrations. Some organizations immediately start to search for the best IT asset management software, while others wait until the workplace bottlenecks are too distracting to ignore.
Gain Access in Real Time
In end-to-end inventory management, there may be times when IT admins need access to other machines or devices. Secure remote access within the corporate network can help with issue resolution or security concerns.
Never Compromise on Security
As a network grows, security issues may happen with greater frequency. This includes common issues like lost or stolen devices. A modern IT asset management tool should give admins the ability to lock, wipe, locate, or secure a device, regardless of its location.
Maintain Appropriate User Access
Within a broad organization, users require different levels of system access and credentials. Managing IT assets appropriately means knowing which users can access certain applications, and making it easier for them to do so.
Boost Your IT Visibility with Addigy
One of the most significant things that you can do for your IT inventory management strategy is to increase transparency and visibility. To ensure that an IT team or department has all the insight they need to perform their own jobs and to equip other team members, leveraging a platform with clear, visible, and secure data is critical.
When you reclaim the visibility of your IT assets and inventory, you can increase productivity for your enterprise or organization as a whole. The growth of assets isn’t slowing down—which makes it more important than ever to keep up.
Access a helpful on-demand demo of Addigy today to see how Addigy’s device inventory tools can boost productivity at your organization.
