When budgets tighten and accountability rises, IT teams can't afford blind spots. That is especially true for governments and universities that are working with public funding. Unfortunately, those blind spots are an all-too-real problem.
Asset records are scattered across spreadsheets, mobile device management (MDM) tools, service desks, and finance systems. Numbers and data depend on who you ask on any given day. And it’s a constant scramble to track and manage assets during moves, offboarding, and audit times.
That was the former reality for panelists on our recent webinar (August 2025). They, like so many other teams, struggled with one core issue: without a single source of truth for their IT assets, every report was suspect, and managing and defending budgets was an uphill battle.
But that all changed after a few key revelations. By consolidating asset data, automating lifecycle workflows, and taking careful control of data access to stakeholders, these teams moved from chaos to clarity, earning trust from finance, speeding up audits, and freeing IT practitioners from endless admin work.
Multiple Data Sets Mean Multiple Problems
There’s rarely one blanket reason that IT teams struggle with messy asset management.
In some cases, such as those at the University of San Diego who needed visibility across 12,000 students and 3,500 faculty and staff, legacy solutions that used to suffice no longer support the levels of complexity with current ITAM requirements.
In others, such as in the City of Dublin, California, there was no visibility in the first place and even when teams got it, it was out of date.
Sometimes, as was the case in the City of Pleasanton, California, which manages around 4,000 assets, IT teams had to sift through spreadsheets and disconnected files before they could find a single piece of data.
As Allen Hammond, Director of Information Technology of the City of Pleasanton, admitted, “We had to go to three, four, or five different places to find data and get insight on an asset.”
Regardless of the reason, it results in chaos.
- Siloed, inaccurate data sprawl across tools means IT never has a full picture of assets and can't justify spend.
- Budgeting is a gamble because IT lacks the ability to give finance defensible data.
- Operational strains create lost assets, duplicate purchases, and audit and security gaps.
- Manual effort balloons as IT teams reclaim assets, reconcile costs, and hunt down untracked devices.
Looking back at how his team had to divert their time and resources, Allen said, “There's just so many of these hidden costs and shadow operations that occur that don't get captured in terms of the time involved to take action on that. It’s death by a thousand cuts.”
On top of that, without accurate device details, IT teams struggle to know when a device needs to be replaced, defend their choices in not replacing certain devices, and get more funding when demand increases.
“We had this sprawl of computers, devices, and accessories, and we just did not have any way to just rein them all in and know exactly where things are. [When finance asked us about different divisions], we were just not able to give them the data that we felt comfortable with,” said Shahra Meshkaty, Senior Director of Academic Technology Services at the University of San Diego.
Eventually, IT teams reach a tipping point and realize they need to invest in IT asset management that delivers accurate, trusted data that they can use to have stronger oversight over their assets, justify spend, and inform budgets.
ITAM Powered a Turning Point
Each panelist knew that, if they were going to get a handle on their asset data and leverage that data to empower better decisions and strategy around IT asset spend, they needed to change the way they track devices.
They turned to Oomnitza for our modern ITAM platform. This wasn't about just picking a solution. It was about rethinking asset lifecycle management from forecasting to final depreciation.
In partnering with Oomnitza, teams adopted a single source of truth for their IT assets. They’re able to integrate purchase data, service desk tickets, discovery, and finance information in a single platform that feeds normalized data back to their other systems.
Lifecycle automation replaced manual chasing by IT team members. Steve Windsor, Chief Information Security Officer for the City of Dublin, California, recalled how his team had to perform physical inventories to account for IT assets to reset things when he first came on board–and he doesn’t miss that nightmare. “It’s an expensive thing to do. It's mundane and monotonous work to go and interrupt other people that are trying to do their job.” Physical inventories are a thing of the past now with modern ITAM.
Oomnitza’s ITAM platform also supports trust and transparency with other teams. Role-based access has opened trustworthy reports to finance and other departments, improving credibility.
Speaking of the importance of this, Allen said, “The idea of being in the state of good repair has never been more true. A spreadsheet can tell you what you should be spending or what that spend is, but it doesn't really reveal the actual true cost that you might have. Oomnitza has been able to do that for us.”
These turning points have enabled impactful results for each panelist and those they serve.
Each Team Saw Measurable Wins
How Steve describes the impact of Oomnitza’s ITAM solution: “We were in chaos with our asset management. I think we're at the clarity stage now.”
The City of Pleasanton, the City of Dublin, and the University of San Diego are all at different stages of their Oomnitza journeys. Even so, they have realized significant outcomes that have changed the way they manage their assets, optimize spend, and automate processes.
- Full Asset Clarity: They have rapid, accurate reporting of what exists, where it is, who has it, and when it’s time to refresh.
- Faster, Cleaner Audits and Security Reviews: Server and asset reports that used to take weeks to export now take only minutes.
- Budget Alignment and ISF Planning: With clear, accurate purchase dates, costs, and support lifecycle details, they can deliver defensible data to earn replacement funding and avoid "special" mid-cycle asks.
- Procurement-to-Inventory Automation: The platform automatically ingests order data, such as serials, costs, and dates, so assets are tagged on arrival and refresh dates set automatically.
- Labor and Time Savings: Mobile scanning app and workflows cut the “death by a thousand cuts” admin work so IT can do IT.
Shahra Meshkaty also saw a huge opportunity to change how they used existing assets to meet demand. When she viewed usage data that showed only a certain kind of computer was used in a university lab, she and her team were able to switch the devices and standardize the lab on PCs, instead of a combination of PCs and Macs.
“We had the proof right there and could [go to the people requesting Macs] and say, ‘This is not the right use of resources,’” she said. “It was about optimizing what we already had to better serve the instructional needs of the area.”
Steve also feels the impact of having data at his fingertips. “When there are limited resources and you're the one who can back [your budget request] with trusted data and very accurate data, you're the person who gets money versus someone who says ‘we need this,’ but they don't have an idea how to back it up. I have negotiating power now.”
Panelists Learned Process Lessons…and Pass That Wisdom to Peers
IT leaders like these don't go through an ITAM transformation without learning some lessons along the way.
From looking back at where they were–using chaotic, time-consuming methods that still didn’t enable the asset visibility they needed–to seeing how far they've come and the current state of their asset management process, the panelists had some sage wisdom that they were willing to pass on to other IT professionals.
Start with a Good Physical Inventory Establish a Baseline
Having gone through several physical inventory counts, Steve advised, “Once you do it, get an ironclad process in place such that you never have to do that physical inventory again.”
Put Teeth in Procedures
Non-IT folks can’t have the wiggle room to go around processes once they’re in place. Either they go through ticketing and IT-approved processes, or they face consequences if they try to move things around on their own.
Open Data, Preserve Control
Allen said, “Opening [the data] up to management analysts in different departments outside of just finance reveals the truth in terms of what our spend is going to have to be to be in that state of good repair.” However, he also warned, “You don't want people editing the data, so have different roles and profiles of different people and what they need or should be seeing.”
Clean Your Data, Even If It’s Daunting
After performing your base physical inventory count, Shahra recommended, “Reconcile it with your digital inventory and try to figure out the gaps and the holes. If you do that from the start, that makes a big difference.”
Quantify Disruption Costs
Steve reminded viewers that “You're going to interrupt everybody in the organization [during a physical inventory]. You’re going to go to their desk and stop them from working. Put a cost to that for people so that they can see that, yes, software costs money, but so does interrupting people because we don’t have software to keep track of things.”
Automate the Boring Stuff
When modern ITAM can automate tedious tasks like offboarding, device returns, refresh notifications, and order intake, there’s no reason to still do those things by hand.
Modernizing ITAM with a unified asset system + lifecycle automation gives city governments and universities credible data, clean processes, and repeatable cost control, turning reactive spend into planned, defensible investments while tightening security and audit readiness.
Want to watch the full webinar for more results and advice from the panelists? Catch the replay here!
