Your technology stack is likely one of the most valuable parts of your business. Today’s companies rely heavily on IT solutions to help them maintain efficiency and productivity in virtually all operations. Yet, despite the growing importance of IT tools, many companies still fail to effectively manage their IT inventory. Just like managing a physical inventory, having the right IT organizational tools in place ensures that you can get the most value from your investments.
The good news is that you don’t have to handle everything manually anymore. Spreadsheets are a thing of the best, and new technology in the IT asset world will make it easier to track everything that’s happening in your environment with a greater level of accuracy and security. Here’s your guide on how to make the most of IT inventory management.
ITAM Technology
The first step for most companies is investing in an IT asset management solution. If you’re currently relying on spreadsheets to track your assets, or you don’t have the most reliable tool for tracking and managing your assets, then you can’t say you’re handling your inventory properly. Once you’ve chosen to implement ITAM, you can level up your strategy with agent-based discovery deployed to hardware with its own operating system, agentless discovery to scan your network for the location of valuable information, and even access integrations to fill the gaps in your IT data.
A solid IT asset management strategy should be able to allow you to purchase the right IT assets while keeping benefits high and costs low. It should also give you the power to optimize the use of your assets and determine how employees are using them. ITAM technology can further make it easier to decide when to add new assets to your collection, or retire old ones, with information on regulatory compliance, license renewals and more.
Implementing ITSM
When you’re ready to take your ITAM strategy to the next level, then you can begin to implement IT service management. ITSM and ITAM are usually described as separate solutions. However, these tools can also work together to drive better business operations all around. Asset managers can help you to see how many incidents a software or hardware has experienced, while problem management solutions allow managers to find common and related incidents.
ITSM and ITAM combinations often create an extra layer of support when you’re working on change enablement as part of your IT asset management strategy. You might notice a risk connected with a virtual machine, and before you make changes, you can assess the possible impact this might have on other devices if the risk turns into a full-blown problem. You can also add test and rollback plans in case something goes wrong with the change. The ITAM roadmap will often require companies to consider what they really need to manage and enable within their workplace. Only once you know what kind of assets you’re going to be managing, and what you want to do with them, can you begin searching for the right tech solution.
