Are all your little costs becoming a big problem? Avoiding poor asset tracking is key to your bottom line.
It’s like a leaky bucket. You keep pouring money and resources into the top of the bucket but you still have gaping holes in the bottom. Your money gushes through the holes, even as you continue adding resources again and again.
Modern asset tracking software eliminates the leaky bucket problem. It prevents things from slipping through the cracks and plugs the gaps across your company. From individual employee workstations to large data centers, here’s how to track your assets at every level.
Increase visibility in your entire asset tracking System
One of the major contributors to poor asset tracking is a lack of visibility into the system. It may be an indirect result of employees’ failure to provide enough oversight, or it may simply be a paperwork problem.
Sometimes, as much as they try, nobody can get their arms around a complex or old-fashioned process. They don’t have the tools they need to manage assets productively.
The first step your company can take is to add transparency. Implement a tracking system, establish lifecycle management, and keep close tabs on your sourcing, contracting, purchasing, and all other asset-related activities.
Implement Tight Asset Controls
Do you have a firm grip on your assets? Most U.S. businesses hold $1.43 in inventory for every $1 in sales they make. That’s a lot of wiggle room.
Here’s another interesting fact: 46% of small businesses either still use a manual method to track their assets, or don’t track at all.
These businesses are easily caught off guard by a wide range of issues: incomplete deliveries, sudden shifts in demand, disorganization, and theft. Their oversight is too lax.
Asset management software gives you complete control. You’ll know when fresh resources are delivered, where everything is in your production process, and how every penny is being spent.
enforce Limits on Overages by Asset
Overages are a drain on company resources. They’re a form of inefficiency that can be invisible but harmful. The root cause of overages is inadequate asset management.
Let’s look at a basic example of overbuying. Imagine that your company uses dozens of boxes of printer paper every month. One of your company managers is in the habit of ordering more printer paper on the 1st of every month, regardless of how much has been used. Although your company is becoming more digital and using less paper, you’re still placing the same paper order month after month due to the manager’s habit.
Now imagine that your new asset management software interrupts this inefficient process. It simply requires the manager who orders the paper to input the current number of boxes available in the storage closet before a new order can be placed. The system does the calculation and places a limit on overage.
This same concept can be applied across your organization – overbuying, overstocking, overpaying, over-billing, and overtime. Alerts and notifications from the system keep everything on track, containing costs.
Determine Predictable Asset Lifespans
It’s easy to forget that each item in your company has a natural lifespan. Accountants call it an asset’s useful life, product designers call it the product lifetime, and IT managers call it the end-of-life date. See a simple product lifespan example below.
From Visually.
From the digital devices your employees use at their workstations to the individual raw materials you assemble to fulfill customer orders, everything has an expiration date. Think about the biggest piece of equipment in your company. What if it failed tomorrow, even though you’d hoped to use it for a few more years?
With asset management software, you can input the estimated lifespan of each item in your company, including minimums and maximums. This is an exercise in “getting real” about the ages of your assets.
While establishing asset management you would see that a failed piece of equipment was already 5 years past its maximum lifespan. If you’d known this in advance – through an alert from your asset management system – you could have set money aside for a capital expenditure so you wouldn’t be caught off guard.
Implement a scaleable, digital Asset Tracking Solution
Stave AssetPath helps you carefully track and manage your assets. It reduces inventory levels and costs by more than 20% and reduces overtime labor and contractor costs by up to 50%. For a typical company, AssetPath brings benefits equivalent to 20% of the total spending portfolio within 3 to 5 years.
Try AssetPath for free in the ServiceNow store.
