Asset Lifecycle Management a Crucial Aspect Of Business Integrity

1. Asset Lifecycle Management a Crucial Aspect Of Business Integrity Limiting inefficiency and overspend through asset maximisation and alignment Businesses today own a vast amount of IT assets relative to the size of their organisation. Typically, these assets are of varying ages and values. Managing which assets to retire, recycle, replace or refurbish is difficult and time consuming. However, IT asset lifecycle management is an essential part of ensuring and efficient and cost effective business environment. Asset management versus asset overspend Poor asset management is the leading factor in IT overspend. This ranges from a complete lack of knowledge of the current assets owned by the business, how to store and maintain these assets, and how to safely dispose of obsolete hardware, to not maximising usage of owned assets to meet current needs or to poor commercial deals on hardware acquisition. There needs to be strategic alignment of hardware vendors and also awareness to ensure that current hardware isn’t preventing modernisation. Businesses need a process in place to identify and keep track of their valuable IT assets to ensure they’re always compliant and maximising usage. Asset assessment Asset lifecyle management is a technical process that begins with asset assessment and asset auditing. This involves discovering all hardware assets and building a comprehensive inventory. Such an inventory must necessarily contain multiple fields such as current usage, warranty, support status, and gross value as well as net realisable value in order to build a current service model. The aim of any asset assessment is to obtain a centralised, standardised view of assets across the entire estate. This includes elements related to the relationships between people, processes and technology to obtain an even handed view of how IT assets are operating and where usage can be maximised to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness. Implementing an asset management plan The service model developed in the assessment stage is used to develop an implementation plan that covers all aspects of IT asset realisation, including targeting equipment for modernisation, retirement or recycling, identifying opportunities for cloud service migration, hardware fault logging, maintenance tagging, and identifying assets suitable for relocation or storage. Modernising and optimising current IT systems may be the most effective solution in some cases, but research by IT analysts reveals that most data centres have under utilised servers and storage. There may be significant scope to tap into unrealised opportunities and significantly reduce operating costs and power, while improving efficiency and becoming cloud optimised.

2. Businesses often struggle to recruit and train staff with the required IT skills to keep pace with the demands of asset lifecycle management. An internal skills gap develops that creates vulnerabilities and inefficiencies in operational processes. An asset lifecycle management plan that takes workforce augmentation into account maximises profits while minimising overheads. Recycling and retiring IT assets IT is a rapidly moving field and many businesses may find themselves in the position of managing the disposal of their now defunct assets. This could be due to migration to cloud services; outdated equipment that does not support new, requisite software; outsourcing; or growth beyond the capacity of legacy hardware. New data protection, financial governance and environmental compliance laws have created a fluid situation that may be difficult to navigate as staff are not adequately trained in asset disposal. New regulations create the need for the support and guidance of asset lifecycle management specialists to assist in the correct disposal of legacy assets as well as maximise return on end-of-life equipment. End-to-end asset lifecycle solutions Information technology and the laws that govern it have become increasingly complex as the field continues to develop at a rapid pace. An ad hoc approach to asset management is no longer appropriate or prudent and could lead to inefficiencies and financial losses. An integrated and centralised asset lifecycle management protocol allows for end-to-end tracking of IT asset spend as well as return on investment. Checks and balances throughout the process of assessment, identification, procurement, usage and ultimate retirement ensure significant benefits for any size business and it is highly advisable to obtain the support of experts in the field. About us: Bell Integration provides expert IT services and consultancy to businesses across Europe and Asia-Pacific. Their services are focused on four key capabilities – transact, transform, run and recycle – to provide their customers with an end-to-end service and a wide range of propositions to help meet business challenges. Bell is at the forefront of helping companies drive down operating costs and improve their ability to engage with their own customers, either by supporting the growth of their channels to market, or by aiding their responsiveness and service quality. Bell Integration is proud to have won listings in The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200 and The Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 and has featured in The Business Magazine’s Solent 250 and Southern Tech 100. Bell Integration continues to grow and now has over 300 permanent staff and over 50 associates employed at their offices in London, Portsmouth, Wokingham, Stevenage, Hyderabad, Singapore and within many of their customers’ sites. For more information Please visit: https://www.bell-integration.com/ Call: 44 2392 825925