This is a guest post by Elena Bizina, who works at Marketing department of DataLink UK Ltd company, writes for Kayako Solutions project. Takes particular interest in eCommerce industry to learn from top professionals and share with beginners like herself. In the past - an English teacher and a Business Development Manager, at present – a full-time mother and a part-time Assistant to Marketing Manager whose core responsibilities are researching the eCommerce industry, in particular online retail and writing about it.

What is Asset Management in terms of enterprise? How does this process work in IT field? Who gets involved in the Asset Management in a given company? Many questions arise, and I suggest we get straight to the answers.

According to ITILv3, Asset Management is the process responsible for tracking and reporting the value and ownership of financial assets throughout their lifecycle. It is also part of an overall service asset and configuration management process.

In IT Asset Management delivers reliable up-to-date details about its infrastructure. It confirms any changes in the IT infrastructure, tracks the status of the IT parts, and guarantees a precise view of all Configuration Items (CI) that are present in Configuration Management Database (CMDB). The process of Asset Management has mainly two goals – to store dependable records of the details of the IT parts and services delivered by an IT organisation and to supply authentic information and documentation to support other IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes such as Problem Management and Change Management.

The IT Asset Management business practices must be focused on the processes and matured through iterative and centralised improvements. Most successful programmes for Asset Management suggest engaging every employee at a certain point, e.g. end users (informing on flexibility), budget managers (redistribution as an option), IT service departments (providing warranty information) and finance (invoice adjustment and fixed asset inventories updates).

Asset Management in IT commonly uses automated modules to run the assets for the inventory to be compared to ownership information. Complete business management of IT assets needs an archive of various sorts of information about the asset as well as integration with other systems like supply chain, procurement, HR systems and service desk. Asset Management in ITIL referred to as Configuration Management. The data quality within the Asset Register impacts the effectiveness of the whole corporate service management strategy, while all the processes use and supply Asset Management. However, it is more than just a registry of physical assets, as it covers documentations, service catalogues, service level agreements, knowledge and warranties. Asset Management encourages the organisation to run developing relationships of assets with clients, internal locations and departments, other companies and external providers.

The assets that the organisation invests in must achieve their objectives, remain productive and profitable while providing business value to the customers. With the company’s infrastructure becoming increasingly advanced and crucial to implement the enterprise business strategy, the assets will have to be run efficiently. Managers responsible for the big part of the assets have to practice strong monitoring over the investment process to decrease the risk.

Various companies out there develop modules that automate the process of Asset Management. A proper module would provide a single database to store all the data with regard to the assets including people responsible for this or that asset. Such a module would both facilitate and enforce this business process, and make the best out of it.

Good luck with your assets and thanks for reading!