Asset Management Awareness Month

March is Asset Management Awareness Month. You might be asking yourself, “what is asset management?” Well, it’s a lot more than just keeping track of your company’s assets. Turns out that asset management is so important to an organization, that there is a whole month dedicated to it.

This month is all about urging businesses and organizations to consider the value of asset management and how it can benefit your organization as a whole.

If you don’t know what asset management is, don’t worry. In this blog, we’re going to take some time to talk about what asset management is, why it is important and how it can help your organization increase its productivity, save time and help the environment.

Defining Asset Management

Let’s start simply by defining an asset. An asset is a physical item that a company owns and is responsible for that is used in everyday operations. This can be anything from a desk to a computer to an office chair.

When it comes to defining asset management, it is simplest to say it involves anything that brings value to an organization. It is the realization of the value for items that an organization is responsible for.

For example, you work for a large company and have a warehouse space full of unused office furniture. Everything in that warehouse is an asset and when you go into that warehouse and discover and organize these items, you are realizing their value and therefore can plan for better inventory and management of these items.

So, so far we have discovered that asset management is about organizing and finding the value of items owned by an organization. But what else does it involve other than keeping track of your assets?

Asset management involves:

• Overseeing assets

• Making purchasing decisions

• Planning for the maintenance of items

• Regular scanning of items

• Gathering data generated by the above items

• Managing inventory

  

When all of the above is done properly, asset management benefits everyone within an organization including stakeholders, decision-makers, and employees.

The main goal of asset management is to get the greatest amount of value out of every asset while reducing the overall lifecycle cost of each item.

Now, with the basics of asset management under your belt, we can move on to why asset management is important.

Why is Asset Management Important?

With so many items and so little time, it’s hard for employees to keep track of every asset and keep inventory spreadsheets up to date. In fact, 43% of small businesses fail to track assets and inventory effectively.

Failing to track assets is not good for an organization. When you don’t have an up-to-date management system in place, you end up making unnecessary purchases, overcrowding your warehouse space, or throwing items in the landfill that could have otherwise been circulated or properly recycled.

Understanding how much your desk costs, how old it is, what the lifespan is, and the repair history can all be beneficial when it comes to determining what to do with the desk when it is no longer in use.

How often does it happen where an office chair is thrown away at your organization and a week later, a new employee starts and is in need of an office chair? With proper asset management in a centralized location, these instances can be avoided.

Active tracking of assets helps to avoid all of the pain points associated with outdated systems and inaccurate data. When organizations rely on spreadsheets that haven’t been updated, the chance of having ghost assets greatly increases.

What’s a ghost asset? Glad you asked. A ghost asset is any asset that is lost or unusable but is still listed as active in inventory tracking. By implementing proper, digitized asset management, you can get rid of the ghosts in your office or warehouse and automatically save time and resources.

Now that we have looked at the importance of asset management, we are going to talk about one instance where it really comes in handy.

Asset Management During a Crisis

Imagine there is a flood at your office. You are required to retrieve a spreadsheet and images of what the items looked like before they were damaged. If you’re like the majority of companies, you likely don’t have this, or if you do, they are not up to date.

This is a situation where an asset management plan is key. Collecting this information while you are enduring a crisis is not ideal and can affect your decision-making. While you cannot anticipate every emergency, it is still important to proactively plan for when the situation does arise. Once you do have a plan in place, it can be adapted to various emergencies that come up.

Just in case you needed a bit more convincing on why asset management is important, we are going to go over the benefits that your company can see as a result of implementing a plan.

The Benefits of Asset Management

• Improve ROI

  • Asset management makes it easier for companies to know what items they have in their office buildings and circulate these assets within the organization, ultimately increasing the return on investment of these items

• Stop the “what ifs?”

  • As mentioned before, a what-if scenario can include emergencies, and having an asset management plan in place can help ease the stress of these situations

• Reach Sustainability Goals

  • Asset management enables your organization to implement a more sustainable workplace and makes it easier to reach your organizational goals of sustainability

• Optimize Asset Investments

  • Ensure that you are getting the most value out of the assets you have purchased by pre-planning for utilization and end of life

• Help with ESG Reporting

  • With asset management, you will have a record of the impact your organization has made on the environment which will make it easier to collect the appropriate data when it comes time to put together an ESG report

The benefits of asset management don’t just stop with this list. Not only can it help your organization become more organized and efficient with its assets, but it also helps in the long run when these assets are ready to move on from your company.

We hope that we have proven to you that asset management is much more than simply tracking your organization’s assets. With this month being all about awareness and urging organizations to learn more about asset management, we also encourage you to take some time to check out our website and learn even more about how HYON can step in and help your organization specifically. 

No organization is too big or too small to benefit from asset management. Less time spent looking for items means more time in your schedule for getting things done. 

Happy Asset Management Awareness Month from HYON!