Making the most of asset management

Asset management may not be the most popular topic among firms, but it represents an opportunity for the canny VAR, writes Jon Collins

There are some jobs that people do not want to do – nowhere is this more evident than in the operational management of IT.

Asset management in particular involves activities that many would rather not undertake: logging item codes, tracking equipment moves, registering what is running on what, to name but a few. The result is such that records do not get maintained as well as they could, an issue that is exacerbated by the fact that many organisations still rely on paper-based mechanisms to keep track of their IT assets.

In an online research study of 2,630 IT professionals undertaken by Freeform Dynamics last year, respondents said that while this was more likely to be the case in smaller rather than larger organisations, it was still an issue for companies of all sizes.

This is a shame, and not just because it would be nice to see things done better. Respondents told us that there was a clear link between how well existing IT assets were understood in the IT department and end-user perceptions of IT service delivery.

Improving service delivery is a worthy goal, but it is unlikely that perceptional data on service would be much use when putting together a business case for IT asset management software. It is far more likely that it is justified on the basis of supporting cost management or compliance initiatives, such as security, performance and licensing. In general, these are ‘must do’ activities rather than ‘want to do’ ones. As resellers and integrators know, when a firm is aware that asset management software can help them with these issues, this makes things much easier to sell.

While such initiatives might get the products in the door, it is post deployment where the cracks can start to show. This is illustrated in graph three, which looks at the relationship between how often IT assets are audited and the state of the asset knowledge base.

The graph only shows part of the story because it will always be rare for an y organisation to be absolutely confident about the quality of its records. All the same, the trend is clear: the more frequently that audits are carried out, the greater the accuracy of the data and therefore the quality of the perceived service.

Where does this leave us? Yes, automation can help organisations deliver better asset management and improve service delivery as a result. However, if this is treated as a one-shot operation the benefits will degrade over time. An element of auditing can counter this, but while tools can help automate audits – such as through the use of auto-discovery mechanisms – auditing has to be considered as a task that has to be planned and executed manually.

This is both a threat and an opportunity for organisations that have already implemented a basic level of IT asset management – the ‘must do’ set – and of course, for their suppliers. Such organisations may well be open to an incremental investment in products or services that could help them further exploit the potential of what they already have.

An obvious place to start is with auditing of IT assets, because it is here that end-users are feeling the pain. By helping kick off a process of audits, VARs can demonstrate how they can add value to existing customers, while opening conversations about how they might be able to help in the future.