The Covid-19 pandemic has forced businesses to allow staff to work from home. Some of the Tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have asked its employee to work from home till the end of the year. To efficiently work from home, staff need to take home some amount of company equipment. This all of the sudden hasty arrangement has meant many employers have had to sacrifice good record keeping for expedience. This led to very important aspect of Tracking Assets which is very critical in the current scenario of work from home.
Some of the best practices which can provide effective asset management are:
1) Proper staff requirement and guidelines: –
Identify all the equipment/documents/files which will be required by the staff and create custom fields requirements for each asset for tracking purpose. Make sure the employees are complying with the requirements. Team wise task assigning and the team leader has to ensure everyone is completing the task.
2) Single source of combining data: –
Framework and deploy a solution that enables IT to import and combine data from all sources to keep at a single storage point that will help in comparing actual data against discovered data and reporting on discrepancies. It will enable IT to capture all assets in use by remote/home workers, integrating any new data to arrive at a complete asset picture across the organization.
3) Optimization post combining data: –
IT has a central repository of asset information from which to spot previously unsecured assets and to better manage asset lifecycles. Improved visibility through an integrated solution enables IT to identify when assets need to be replaced and more accurately gauge the impact of switching out assets on workforce productivity. This will help in cost optimization and optimal use of the assets.
4) All the licenses are in place: –
IT teams must have insight into the complete inventory of licensed assets to prevent applications from being used that are out of compliance. Unlicensed applications, if any, can put an organization at financial risk. Software/IT audits will look to identify these unlicensed assets in use, resulting in additional costs to an organization. Asset management system is the solution that can efficiently tracks licenses by monitoring contracts, purchase and warranty data. With a centralized asset management system, IT can avoid more compliance headaches.
5) Accurate asset data boost security: –
Visibility through a centralized, integrated asset management solution is essential to protecting against threats and data breaches that can quickly put an organization out of compliance, and/or cause a devastating loss in business disruption.
Having accurate asset data and the entire chain system in place can help IT team in smooth conduction if the entire asset management system.
6) Asset Management System should be flexible for both remote/on-site work: –
Once the life comes to normal and people will return to work, there should be smooth transition of the system. Employees may desire a mix of remote/on-site work as their new normal as a result, IT teams should be prepared to help make these changes a secure and productive one for the organization. Deploying an asset management system capable of handling these diverse environments will give IT team the gift of efficiency and order the business needs during this post-crisis time.