Process, Software and Its Benefits, Best Products

Editor’s note: In this article, Boris explains the essence and importance of asset management, clarifies how a company can benefit from an asset management solution, and presents popular asset management software. If you are looking for a proper solution to track and manage your assets, ScienceSoft can offer its asset management consulting services and become your reliable partner.

Asset management: the essence

Asset management is a process of tracking, organizing, and maintaining a company’s assets. It covers numerous types of assets, both tangible and intangible, depending on business type and scope. Asset management can be roughly categorized as follows:

• IT asset management (ITAM) involves hardware (e.g., company-owned devices) and software, including subscriptions, licenses, patents, and network infrastructure components.
• Enterprise asset management (EAM) covers physical assets throughout their lifecycle.
• Financial asset management deals with investments, securities, loans, and more.
• Infrastructure asset management is used by public organizations and large companies. It is focused on maintaining, updating, and removing physical infrastructure assets like roads, bridges, and utilities.

A common goal of asset management is to optimize the utilization of assets throughout their lifecycle, increase productivity, and reduce operational costs. Asset management software helps businesses achieve that via collecting asset data, tracking asset lifecycle, and providing automated reports for company management to analyze.

Why to use asset management software?

• Improved accuracy of asset documentation as compared to manual document management, since human errors like typos or accidental omissions are minimized.
• Better asset accounting. Asset management software help be aware of what assets are available and where, who should work on them and when. For example, the software helps identify ghost assets as well as avoid asset theft and loss.
• Time and cost saving. Automated asset management workflows allow asset management teams to do more in less time.
• Enhanced asset utilization. Asset management software ensures better visibility and control over assets. It provides means to analyze asset utilization patterns as well as plan asset availability and maintenance, thus helping improve asset utilization strategies.
• Improved maintenance management. The preventive maintenance feature of an asset management solution help achieve stable and continuous operation of assets.
• Better compliance. Keeping in mind all license entitlements and requirements of relevant laws and regulations can be challenging. An asset management system helps minimize legal risks and reduce non-compliance costs.

Popular asset management software

AssetExplorer

ManageEngine AssetExplorer is a web-based ITAM tool aimed at managing IT assets and offering features for physical asset management. Its features include:

• Comprehensive inventory management throughout the asset lifecycle from procurement to disposal for all hardware and software inventory.
• Software license management to support compliance, identify unnecessary or underutilized licenses, detect unauthorized software installations, and more.
• Contract and purchase order management to monitor contract expiry dates and get contract- or PO-related analytics by parameters like spending patterns, contractor/supplier performance, and more.
• Asset reporting to generate pre-built reports or create custom reports on the key asset data in multiple formats. Reports can be scheduled and automatically emailed to selected recipients.
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to track all configuration items and their details in one repository and categorize them.
• Mobile app to track and manage hardware and software assets in any location.

The starting price is $995 per year for 250 IT assets.

Asset Panda

Asset Panda is a cloud-based asset management and tracking platform that offers a range of features like barcode scanning, unlimited users, and custom reporting. Its features include:

• Asset tracking, including asset assignment to users or workplaces, contract management, compliance and maintenance tracking, ticketing management, and more.
• Barcode management to design and print custom barcodes and QR codes to optimize asset management.
• Mobile app with built-in barcode scanning, GPS pindrop, and access to reports to manage assets on the go.

Pricing depends on the number of assets and is available upon request to AssetPanda.

GoCodes

GoCodes is web-based asset and inventory tracking software for companies that need to manage physical assets. Its features include:

• Patented QR code tags with unique IDs show asset details like type, serial number, and assignment help eliminate duplicates, and prove ownership.
• Automatic GPS tracking with a mapping feature enables managers to see and update asset location every time a barcode is scanned.
• Automated field service requests help review service records, schedule future repairs, and set service reminders.
• Depreciation calculation and reporting for fixed assets based on common calculation scenarios.
• Auditing financial performance and operation of assets using a fixed assets register with a possibility to review a complete audit history.

GoCodes offers five pricing plans on a monthly and annual basis, each including different number of assets, users, etc.

Make the most of your assets with asset management software

Asset management is a complicated and intensive process that plays a key role in the operation of every business dealing with assets. If you are looking for a partner who can develop a custom asset management solution to meet your company’s needs, or help you choose and customize an off-the-shelf product, just let us know.