Enterprise Consulting Services
Asset Management

Asset Life Cycle Management (ALM) is all about taking control of tracking, ownership and assignment of IT Assets, from the initial request through retirement and disposal. Understanding what you own, where it is, and how much it is costing you provides the context for continuous improvement, cost reduction and regulatory and security compliance. The same tools that automate and centralize Service Desk, IMAC and Break/Fix processes also provide best practice asset accounting.

ECS provides deep IT Asset Management consulting. IT Asset management in many IT shops is not only archaic, it's a serious fiduciary risk that many shops purposely back burner - until there is an audit. There may be an enterprise level Asset Management solution in place, but processes around care and feeding of the systems may be so bad that the data is unreliable and shrinkage goes undetected. Asset Management is more than inventory control. Modern asset systems manage the life cycle of company owned or leased hardware and software assets to ensure fiscal accountability, audit compliance and cost efficient operations. ECS can evaluate your existing processes and tools, streamline current asset management practices, develop new designs and controls and assist solution implementation.

Asset Life Cycle Management - What It Should Look Like:

ALMInventoryDiagv1.jpg

Inventory Asset Management

Improve the management of the physical, contractual and financial data associated with the IT assets in your environment, throughout their lifecycle-from receiving through disposal with Asset Life Cycle Management solution consulting. ECS has experience tracking desktop and peripheral inventories with an associated Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) including integration with Active Directory to associate assets with named users. Tracking must incorporate the full life cycle of an asset from goods receipt (pre-discovery) to disposal. Inventory reporting including goods receipt, in stock, spares (new and reallocated), deployed (with aging) and disposed assets must be tracked by location. Even using an automated discovery tool, periodic physical inventory of stock locations should be conducted to verify record accuracy and minimize shrinkage. Bar coding should also be employed to improve data entry of scanned information such as Asset Tags. Lease Management is a further extension to support refresh EOL cycles requiring exacting equipment return, buyout or extension processes.

Software Discovery and License Tracking

ECS can help improve utilization of an Asset Management Solution to track software contracts and service agreements associated with IT assets. Software discovery allows centralized management of the installed base which can then be verified against proof of purchase, procurement records, supplier data bases and enterprise agreements for comprehensive reconciliation. Built-in notification policies help avoid costly penalties by automatically notifying appropriate personnel about exceeded software licensing thresholds and violated service level agreements.

Usage Monitoring

To optimize IT asset investments, businesses can capitalize on software reallocation and retirement opportunities by identifying software usage patterns supporting reductions in procurement expense. Available solutions can manage software de-installation and automate license recycling.