How to Improve Productivity and Save Money with Asset Management

Asset management is a wonderful tool that businesses can use to improve productivity and save money. For many businesses, tracking of their in-service equipment or installed base and management of inventories are important factors in determining the prospects for customer service and productivity. However, many companies don’t use asset management and tracking to ensure that quality data is available to create business intelligence that can improve efficiency and save money. This is indeed unfortunate considering the fact that these tools are available for use. They only need to make it a priority.

Asset management

Asset management can be defined in many different ways, although most include financial considerations. Some are based on the ever changing maintenance management systems, whereas some are based on the management of factory floor equipment configurations. However, regardless of the application or situation your business is dealing with, the main definition of asset management remains constant: it is a systematic process used to identify, catalogue, monitor, maintain, operate, upgrade and replace physical assets of a company on a cost-effective basis.

For it to be effective, asset management must be built on widely accepted principals and supported by a perfect blend of financial acumen and sound business practices. If proper practices are employed, it can be used to make better short term and long term planning decisions. This is the main reason why asset management is something that every business should adopt and embrace.

Asset management can be defined in a more dynamic way to encompass the following components:

• An enabler to maintain and generate important management data for the use by the company and its suppliers and customers

• An all-inclusive process to obtain, acquire and assimilate important data into their corporate information systems

• A flexible system that allows for manual acquisition or electronic reconciliation and capture of data

• A program with intelligent and accurate reporting and important business and operational data

Asset management is not all about inventorying and identification of IT and other related equipment; it’s all about making the assets you have work efficiently for your business. In addition, it is not a system you are supposed to buy, but rather a business discipline enabled by technology, data, process and people.

Effects and signs of poor asset management

Poor data quality is often cased poor asset management. And poor quality management always affects your business over time. The effects of poor asset manage include:

• Increase in Asset Total Cost of Ownership

• Decrease in workforce productivity

• Decrease in customer satisfaction

• Increase in the number of external and internal audits

• Decrease in business performance

• Low Return on Investment on capital investments

• Increase in non-compliance issues

There are many causes of poor asset management; the symptoms can be pervasive and the results overwhelming. The good news is that there are solutions available that can help any business to avoid such situations. You only need to make it your priority.

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