IT Asset Management: A Practical Guide for Technical and Business Executives

Preface

IT Asset Management is often considered a boring and low-grade task by many technical executives, CTOs, and even CIOs. This is because most technical staff in many organizations hate getting involved in the commercial and financial aspects of managing IT assets as they think this is just a glorified storekeeper job. Such misconceptions result in frequent battles between the finance, audit, and technical departments. However, IT asset management is an extremely crucial function of any organization and must be given the highest importance possible by senior management. An IT asset manager’s job is a powerful position that can help organizations to save costs, ensure material discipline, offload asset activities from technical staff who may not be qualified or interested in doing such activities, ensure physical and data security, help in budgeting, and supervise the complete lifecycle of IT assets used in an organization. Secondly, it’s not a mere storekeeper’s job as many executives fear and this book will show why.

This book simplifies the procedures and processes used to successfully implement a workable IT asset management department in an organization. It removes any doubts or uncertainties about how it can be easily achieved with the help of a simple combination of qualified internal members of staff, contractors, external consultants, and some common sense.

To make it easy for the reader to implement asset management, no IT jargon or theoretical standards are mentioned in the main contents of this book. This is because the book is intended to be a purely practical guide and also the concepts explained have no shelf life. Simplicity should be the hallmark of any IT support department. If you make things simple, then all your customers will appreciate it. If you make things complex and bureaucratic, then only you will appreciate it.

Unless stated otherwise, the names of any companies or people mentioned in any examples are fictitious. Where names of actual companies and products are mentioned, they are the trademarks of their respective organizations.

Chapter 1: Introduction to ITAM

The head of technology (HoT) of a large organization was once presenting his department’s activities to the CEO and other senior managers. During the presentation, the HoT claimed that he is responsible for successfully supporting and managing 35,000+ computers in the company. The CEO was puzzled and asked one simple question, Mr. HoT, we have only about 28,000 employees, including contractors and consultants, in our company. Why do we have 35,000+ computers with us? The HoT was unable to answer this question and was soon bombarded with many other tough questions. As a result of this discussion, the management and the HoT initiated a full-fledged audit and found several shocking facts.

The company had no dedicated department or employees to manage its huge number of expensive IT assets.

No centralized IT purchasing existed. Each department was doing its own budgeting and purchases. If a computer or some other equipment stopped working, they would simply order a new one, and discard the old one in some cupboard.

Many employees had more than one computer, one in the office and one at home.

Hundreds of laptops and other portable items were untraceable, locked in personal cupboards, or maybe stolen.

Items from multiple purchase orders were mixed up.

Several computers and other equipment were out of warranty or support by the vendors.

Payments to several vendors were pending and invoices untraceable. Everybody was passing the buck with no accountability.

The finance and audit departments were unable to get satisfactory answers from the technical departments for the financial accounting of IT assets.

Hundreds of obsolete and unused equipment were lying all around the building with no accountability.

Software licensing was a mess with no count of how many licenses were actually required. Support payments were being made for software licenses that were no longer in use.

No security checks existed on materials coming in or going out.

The simple reason for all these issues was the company had no dedicated IT asset management department. As a result of this investigation, the concerned management immediately approved the creation of a dedicated team for the sole purpose of managing all IT assets in the organization. Qualified and competent staff were hired or transferred from various departments to handle this department. Within a few months of intense efforts, the company was able to bring some material management discipline and start seeing its immense benefits.

Who should read this book?

As you can see from the above example, too many CTOs, CIOs, and their technical staff irritate their CFOs and their CEOs because they cannot answer the below important questions fundamental to running a successful business:

What IT assets do you have?

Where are they, and who is using them?

What is it costing to maintain these assets?

Do you have any excess materials?

Are you having IT assets that we no longer use?

This book will help you answer such questions and is aimed at anyone who is directly or indirectly involved in managing IT assets. If you belong to one of the groups mentioned below, then you will find this book extremely useful. Though the book is aimed at small and medium organizations, the concepts also hold good for large organizations.

IT managers

Chief technical officers or chief information officers

Business managers and consultants

Board members

IT consultants

Anyone who has been assigned the responsibility for overseeing IT asset management for their organization.

What is an IT Asset?

An IT asset is basically a physical or virtual item that is owned or leased by your company. Typical examples are desktops, laptops, phones, mobiles, printers, tablets, servers, networking equipment, storage devices, racks, routers, etc. Software licenses, either 3rd party or in-house developed, are also considered virtual IT assets. However employee-owned devices, even if used for official purposes, are not considered company assets. This is important as a new trend called BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is becoming popular. Also, depending on your finance department policies, any IT infrastructure items provided by the building owner where you operate may not be considered company IT assets as such items will be owned and managed by external parties.