Top 5 Tips to Help IT Asset Managers Streamline Their Hardware Management Workflow

As the job landscape evolves, IT asset managers juggle an even more complex network of responsibilities. Coordinating the lifecycle of devices among employees who work in-house or remotely looks more like a game of cat and mouse than a streamlined, cohesive process. Here are a few issues companies face:

• Depending on the company size there may not be a dedicated IT asset manager, which can limit access to necessary protocols.
• There are no industry-wide regulations for vendors, so what you see is not always what you get.
• One security oversight can cost a company millions of dollars.
• Asset management has a lot of moving parts. Without the right system in place or depending on manual record keeping, can make it easy to miss something

Finding ways to organize and run an asset management program has inherent challenges, but with a strategic plan, IT asset managers can successfully manage company assets, no matter the scale.

Asset management expert Nate Poynter founded the Evercycle all-in-one platform to help IT asset managers navigate the asset management chaos. In order to develop an asset management program that is safe, efficient, sustainable and reliable, Poynter recommends these top five considerations:

1. KEEP COMMUNICATION SIMPLE

Centralized, automated communication is the key to simplifying the asset management process. When all communication feeds into one centralized location, everyone has clear access to the information needed, so there's no confusion or dropped balls. Notifications, reminders, alerts and support should be housed together so all touch points are clear and there's no break in the line of communication.

2. VET YOUR VENDORS

When it comes to finding vendors to service your devices, there are currently no industry-wide standards to protect companies from inferior support. Anyone can say they can service your device, whether it's a fly-by-night hobbyist on a popular e-commerce site or a legitimate company that adheres to necessary compliance frameworks. When developing a relationship with a vendor, it's important to ensure they understand compliance and how to answer compliance questions.

Here are some sample questions to consider:

• What are the vendor's data security protocols including their on-premise, and in-transit security?
• How does the vendor keep you, as the owner of the data-bearing devices, informed on the status of devices throughout the process?
• What warranties and insurance policies does the vendor have in place?
• What certifications does the vendor have? For example, asset recovery vendors should be R2 certified and if you are having Apple devices repaired, the vendor should be Apple certified.
• If the vendor has access to, collects, or stores any data from your organization or devices make sure to ask them why, how, where, and who exactly has access to it.
• If the vendor is responsible for data wiping for device remarketing or recirculation, how do they provide you with certified proof of data destruction?

3. HAVE A SYSTEM IN PLACE TO SUPPORT END-USERS

Devices slow down, stop working or have other issues. Having a system in place to replace the device so end users can keep working and miss as little downtime as possible is essential. Offering clear avenues of communication and maintenance and device support provides peace of mind to the end user.

4. KNOW YOUR DATA

While a solid asset management framework is the first step to creating a streamlined hardware lifecycle workflow, understanding the numbers that support that system is critical. Data is the lifeblood of a successful system because having the right information and knowing how to use it matters. For example,

• the current value and recovered value of your devices
• real-time and historic journey of devices through the chain of custody
• ensuring devices are handled in a data compliant workflow
• the positive impact your sustainable hardware services have on the environment

Without this data, it's hard to get a complete picture of how effective an asset management system is and whether it needs to be tweaked to improve it.

5. LOGISTICS, LOGISTICS, LOGISTICS

Where is everything? With security, this is the question every hardware asset manager has to answer with certainty. More than a handful of companies have found out the hard way that a stolen laptop, an inventory oversight or the improper disposal of devices are sure ways to dump millions of dollars into the landfill of company despair. Having an easy-to-use automated system that walks you through the lifecycle of every device is the only way to ensure that a company's asset management process does what it's supposed to do-manage assets.

At Evercycle, providing IT asset management solutions is built into its DNA. They've thought of everything on a global scale and made their platform easily accessible to companies of all sizes. They continue to meet and exceed the following standards:

• Environmentally and sustainability-focused with user dashboards that provide environmental impact metrics that monitor energy savings, greenhouse gas emission reduction, solid waste reduction and more
• Workforce efficiency through streamlined workflows, centralized communication, logistics tracking and critical data packaged in an all-in-one automated platform
• Chain of custody management that provides traceability for every device from the moment it leaves inventory to end-of-lifecycle disposal with customized tracking data.
• Trust and security through secure cloud-hosted data, enterprise-ready security compliance, infinite scalability, quality assurance checks and supported technology

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