Assets, both tangible and intangible, are a major and valuable investment in your business. Asset management software provides you with a centralized platform that enables smooth asset tracking and allows you to have greater visibility of your assets. This helps improve asset management processes like maintenance, tracking, cost optimization, and more.
With a holistic view of your assets and associated costs, you can make wiser decisions pertaining to procurement and management. You can also better manage your assets by taking several actions, as simple as checking asset management metrics in a faster and more convenient way.
MarketsandMarkets reports that the asset management software market is likely to hit $4.8 billion by 2026. Some reasons for this are being compliant with regulations, optimization of asset purchase, maintenance, and deployment – the core driving factors of asset management software.
Here’s how you can optimize your business operations by employing an asset management tool:
1. Advanced asset reservation: How many times does it happen that the asset you aim to use has already been in the custody of another user? This is frustrating and wastes time, halting important business processes. It is, therefore, advisable to prepare yourself in advance to maintain productivity.
Asset management software allows you to reserve assets prior to the dates you require them. This means that you can reserve assets as per your needs before time, which also makes it easier to share office resources and develop a collaborative work environment. Saving you from the hassle of unavailable or overbooked resources, you can automatically reserve and better utilize the available assets.
You can also leverage the availability calendar in the solution. It gives you a detailed view of whether the asset you aim to reserve is available on that particular date or not. This greatly helps get rid of administrative complexities and makes asset management more optimized.
2. Preventive maintenance: Maintaining assets before they experience major breakdowns is a well-known tactic to prolong the life of an asset. Preventive maintenance is carried out periodically so that an asset does not age quickly, keeps functioning well for its useful years and your business does not have to suffer from lost productivity due to unexpected asset failures.
It is, therefore, advisable for every industry to implement preventive maintenance so that workflows can be optimized. Using asset management software, assets can be sent for maintenance and the status of the equipment is updated as “In maintenance”- this will notify users that the asset is unavailable. In this way, maintenance is never compromised because of the asset’s unavailability. For example, an asset will be sent for maintenance after every 3 months for regular checks and repairs.
Adopting preventive maintenance also prompts your technicians to improve response time and optimize workflows, improving operational efficiency. Not only does preventive maintenance ensure that your assets remain in the best shape, but also plays a vital role in ensuring equipment longevity.
3. Timely audits: To prevent financial loss and expedite asset management, it is imperative to conduct regular audits. Not only do audits keep you updated with important asset information, but help identify gaps in good asset maintenance and management. Audits make you aware of your operational and financial condition which makes it easier to strategize and make specific asset-related decisions.
By conducting location and custody audits through asset management software, you always know where your assets are located and in whose custody it belongs, along with the total amount invested in them. Once you conduct an audit, you have a complete list of asset quantities available, know whether they are over or under stocked, present in the wrong location, or need special attention. This allows you to take corrective measures and carry out better future planning.
Moreover, with audits, you are able to allocate a budget wisely because you can easily analyze business needs. Further, you know exactly which assets need immediate replacement, and repair so that you never suffer from halted business operations.
4. Efficient work order management: Work orders play a huge role in always staying updated with your current operations. Let’s say, you want to send a monitor for maintenance and want to make sure it is completed in a certain time frame. By using asset management software, you can send it for repair by creating a work order request, setting its time frame, and even attaching a checklist with it so that the maintenance is done based on your needs.
This also helps improve collaboration between teams because the stakeholders involved can always go back to the work order and check if the checklist has been completed, and the repair has been done based on priority. By providing all details in one place, you can ensure that the provided instructions are being followed.
Through work orders, you can cut down on necessary costs, and keep your operations organized which streamlines asset management. You will have the necessary information right in front of you so you can cross-check for confirmation.
5. Generate customizable reports: Interpreting and deriving meaningful statistics from large amounts of data can be a real struggle. Asset management software provides you with a platform to generate reports that better display data along with statistics and present the data in easy-to-read formats. You can even incorporate visualizations, such as customizable graphs, for improved data displays and analysis.
These asset reports help improve the management, tracking, and reporting of assets- making the processes efficient and smooth. Without using reports to consolidate data, you are at risk of losing important asset information; if you are especially using spreadsheets, there is a huge chance of human error. Reports ease the process of auditing as well since with the help of reports you can showcase your financials, some being expenses and other being investments on assets.
You can generate different kinds of reports, such as location reports, work order reports, inventory reports, and even customized reports, allowing you to develop more efficiency in asset management, and be a step closer to achieving your financial goals with data-based analysis.
How has asset management improved now?
With the rapidly changing technology and new means of handling assets, SaaS-based companies have taken a significant step ahead. Asset management has revolutionized, offering several breakthrough functionalities that have surely helped enhance business productivity and operations.
With asset management software, you can smoothly take care of your assets, control costs, and find the best ways to better utilize your current resources- executing asset-driven operations across major industries. Therefore, your overall business goals can be managed with much more efficiency and effectiveness.
