A Guide to Asset Management Software

In this detailed guide to Asset Management Software, you’re going to learn in-depth:

• What is Asset Management Software?
• What is the objective of an Asset Management System?
• How does Asset Management System work?
• What is the importance of an Asset Management System?
• What is Asset Life Cycle Management?
• What are the types of Asset Management Software?
  1. Fixed Asset Management Software
  2. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
  3. Software Asset Management (SAM)
  4. IT Asset Management (ITAM)
  5. Financial Asset Management
  6. Infrastructure Asset Management

Let’s read the answers to the above questions one by one.

What is Asset Management Software?

Asset Management Software is a digitized solution that helps businesses to enhance the usability of their revenue-generating assets. These assets play a vital role in a business’s daily operations. Hence, this software enables the users to track and manage all types of assets that involve in the business’s life cycle. However, it examines all the phases of planning, purchase, operation, maintenance, and disposal. Then tracks and optimizes every asset, throughout the journey, that is potentially responsible for boosting the business revenue.

What is the objective of an Asset Management System?

Asset Management System fulfills the following objectives of a business.

• Identifies asset roles and significance.
• Enhances the visibility of every potential asset in the business.
• Optimizes the usefulness of revenue-generating assets.
• Targets cost-effectiveness of procurement and maintenance.
• Improves and ensures business compliance.
• Ensures that assets are functional for as long as possible so that they can keep generating revenue for the maximum time.
• Calculates depreciation value.
• Improves assets life and safety, and taking a preventive maintenance approach.

The asset management system not only optimizes the assets but also provides a registration system for the entire assets catalog. This asset catalog is completely centralized; making it easily accessible and available.  The assets can be either stock, machines, equipment, software, infrastructure, or any intangible business services.

How does Asset Management System work?

This digitized tool collects real-time data with the use of different technologies like Bluetooth, GPS, and Barcode, etc. Once this tool fetches the detailed information of the assets, it enables the users to know:

• Where the assets are stored
• Which personnel is using the assets
• How these assets are used
• How these assets benefit the business

These aforementioned factors are not limited, they vary from tool to tool, depending upon its nature. Therefore, there are various types of asset management tools available to manage different types of assets. One of the popular tools is SMACC that is widely used.

What is the importance of an Asset Management System?

The significance of the Asset Management Software is different for every business as it depends upon their types and sizes. Whereas, the tool holds more importance for large-scale businesses, especially those that are heavy in assets. Hence, for every business, there is a right tool for its asset management.

The following factors demonstrate the importance of an asset management tool for a business:

• Leverages the business’s ROI.
• Optimizes the assets.
• Maximizes the asset’s useful life.
• Improves business life cycle management.

Whereas, a classical asset management system serves the following:

• Monitor asset life, performance, and condition across multiple sites and facilities.
• Creates an accurate asset catalog.
• Track asset locations in real-time across each channel.
• Provide efficient and accurate current financial status.
• Helps in better forecasting of future financial planning.
• Reduces costs and downtime by implementing optimized maintenance schedules.
• Helps in determining if an asset outweighs the total running costs.
• Provides easier decision-making when to replace/dispose of an aging asset.

What is Asset Life cycle Management?

The term Asset Life cycle Managements focuses on optimizing the revenue generated by the assets throughout the business processes. Wherein, asset life cycle is an analytical set of operations that systematically identifies, optimizes, and manages the revenue-generating business nodes. These operations are iterative.

There are four key stages of an asset life cycle.

1. Planning
2. Procurement/Acquisition
3. Operation and Maintenance
4. Disposal

Different Types of Asset Management Software

For different businesses, there are different types of asset management software. For instance,  for an owner of a coffee, his asset will be his coffee machine; for that, he will require regular management. Similarly, a manager of an IT company will review the compliance of his software licenses to prevent any sort of harmful consequences; including breaches and fines.

It’s critical for a business to choose the right Asset Management Software for its management. So, there are different tools available for managing different types of assets. So, it is vital that you should analyze your business type first before making your selection for a management tool.

The following are the types of Asset Management Tools.

1. Fixed Asset Management Software
2. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
3. IT Asset Management (ITAM)
4. Software Asset Management (SAM)
5. Financial Asset Management
6. Infrastructure Asset Management

a. Fixed Asset Management Software

Fixed Asset Management Software is used to track and maintain an organization’s physical assets. These assets are typically recorded on a balance sheet. Whereas there are some assets, that lack physical existence, are counted as fixed assets e.g. copyrights and patents, etc.

Here is a generic list of the fixed assets.

• Intangible Assets
  • Copyrights
  • Patents
  • Trademarks
  • Intellectual Property
• Tangible Assets
  • Land, Buildings, and Property
  • Infrastructure
  • Machinery and equipment
  • Office equipment
  • Vehicles
  • Furniture
  • Fixtures

Fixed asset management allows businesses to monitor their fixed assets; especially the tangible ones to maintain their condition and profitability. Consequently, upon iterative management, the tool helps to reduce the chances of assets damage/loss. Hence, businesses can achieve improved and optimized assets for a longer period.

b. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

Enterprise asset management (EAM) is performed by the incorporation of specific software, systems, and services in a group. These incorporations are responsible for maintaining and controlling all the operational assets and equipment from procurement to disposal.

Hence, EAM software performs the following functionalities:

1. Operational asset management and tracking.
2. Operational maintenance, planning, and scheduling.
3. Purchasing and forecasting assets needs.
4. Procurement management.
5. Labour and inventory management.
6. Operational workflow and order management.

c.      IT Asset Management (ITAM) Software

IT asset management refers to monitoring an organization’s software and hardware assets. Basically, the  ITAM tool is designed to carry out the management of IT inventory to aid better decision-making. Therefore, this tool manages the IT equipment/software by recording them in a register to track their usability and condition. Also, these tools contain features to help users easily track and list the associated risks against each asset.  Moreover, they also help to manage contracts and finances for IT inventory.

Here’s a list of IT assets.

• Desktop applications
• Cloud-based software and web apps
• Computer Systems
• Smartphones/Mobiles/Tablets
• Networking gadgets such as Routers and servers

d.    Software Asset Management (SAM)

SAM practices involve the management and optimization of software purchase, utilization, deployment, maintenance, and disposal, within an organization. Contrary to ITAM, Software Asset Management Tools are designed to manage only software assets exclusively. They do not manage IT hardware properties such as printers, computers, and servers, etc.

With the use of SAM tools, businesses can:

• Perform SaaS management
• Get insights into software costs and expenditures to extract useful decisions
• Review and monitor that business complies with license terms to avoid hefty fines
• Understand that software running in the organization meets the technical needs
• Optimize software budget and usage

e.     Financial Asset Management

As the name suggests, financial asset management tools aim to track and manage all financial assets of a corporation or organization. These assets are not limited to but include:

• Contractual agreements
• Loans
• Investments
• Funds
• Bonds

f.       Infrastructure Asset Management

Infrastructure Asset Management is a critical set of strategies involving integrated and multidisciplinary approaches to sustain heavy public assets. Typically, large-scale firms and sectors require an Infrastructure Asset Management tool. Such firms can be construction companies and public sectors etc. However, the larger infrastructure assets include:

• Roads
• Water treatment facilities
• Sewer lines
• Utility grids
• Bridges
• Railways
• Sidewalks
• Curbs and gutters
• Traffic signals
• Traffic signs
• Street trees
• Landscaped medians
• Storm drains

There are many more relevant examples of infrastructure assets. However, any long-lasting capital assets that add value to the land and that system are considered infrastructure assets.

Similar to the other management tools, the purpose of Infrastructure Asset Management tools is to maintain, upgrade and dispose of the outdated assets of a larger infrastructure.