Asset Management Software

What is asset management?

Asset management is the act of managing the inventory, health, and status of the assets in an IT environment. To understand asset management, it’s important to first define what an asset is. An asset is essentially any item owned by a company. In IT, these can further be categorized as either “hard” or “soft” assets. “Hard” assets, called hardware, can include any physical item, such as servers, workstations, laptops, monitors, routers, A/V equipment, and a variety of related devices. “Soft” assets, called software, typically include any programs and applications installed on hardware.

How does asset management in IT work?

IT asset management leverages a set of processes used to track the deployment, use, and maintenance of hardware and software assets. IT technicians involved in asset management must always keep a finger on the pulse of every asset within their organization, which often means they’re charged with tracking the whereabouts of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of assets at any given time. How IT teams track assets can depend on many factors, such as budget, business size, and amount of assets to track. Keeping track of all these assets—as well as who’s using them, their health, and when warranties, leases, and licenses for these assets will expire—is no easy task.

While some may choose to manually track assets using spreadsheets, this solution can lead to inventory information quickly becoming outdated and unreliable. Many organizations prefer to streamline their asset management strategy using asset discovery tools to import third-party asset inventory information and automatically catalog all the assets into one centralized repository. With the ability to quickly search inventory records, identify when an asset was last checked out (and when it’s due back), as well as when it’s time to renew your warranty, lease, or license for an asset, asset management tools and their built-in alerting systems can help automate many of the manual tasks often overlooked or disregarded when using spreadsheets to track assets. Asset management software can include the ability to email notifications when inventories fall below pre-determined thresholds, when an asset due date has arrived, and when it’s time to renew your asset contracts. Through detailed engineering and in-depth dashboards, asset management IT solutions can help streamline and alleviate many manual asset management efforts.

Why is asset management important?

Asset management is important because it consolidates all the hardware and software assets across your organization, enabling you to easily and consistently manage the health and status of your company’s IT assets—from laptops and servers, to monitors and software licenses. Through asset management, you can visualize the full asset lifecycle and even link your assets to service tickets. For example, by attaching an asset to a service request, the ticket can include an extensible and searchable history of the asset that can be reviewed at any time. This level of in-depth insight into an asset’s history will equip support teams with the information needed to make smarter business decisions, like whether to replace a single hard drive or an entire server, saving you from manually sifting through incident reports. Asset management is also important because, with the right asset management tools, you’ll never fall behind on warranty, lease, or licensing agreements.

What does asset management software do?

Asset management software helps manage dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of hardware and software assets through one, centralized digital hub. Gone are the days of having to rely on a spreadsheet to track your assets. With an asset management system in hand, you’ll have the information you need at your fingertips—the exact amount of software licenses you hold, how many functioning laptops you have on hand, the health and status of those assets, and more. No more wondering who was the last one to borrow a monitor or when it will be returned. You’ll also be equipped with the information you need to keep licenses and warranties up to date, so you can provide upper management with robust, accurate budget proposals and never fall behind on the renewal of a critical asset. The right automated asset management tools can save your team time and resources.

How does asset management work in Web Help Desk?

Web Help Desk asset management software leverages a built-in scanning engine to discover your network systems based on subnet or IP range. Using scheduled WMI discovery, Web Help Desk can periodically poll endpoints to update hardware and software inventory information, including host name, model, serial number, operating system, hard drive, memory, and software installed. The platform also allows you to import asset inventory information from third-party asset discovery tools, spreadsheet records, and network management systems.

Web Help Desk integrates with third-party asset discovery tools, such as Casper and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). And if you’re running SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, Server & Application Monitor, or Network Configuration Manager, you can even synchronize your Web Help Desk node and asset discovery in your corporate network. All of this helps ensure all of your asset information lives in one, easy-to-access location.