Transform Asset Lifecycle Management with Modern Technology Asset Management

Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) is crucial for maximizing the value of an organization's assets, reducing operational risks, and ensuring sustainable and efficient operations. ALM provides a structured approach to managing assets -- including through the lifecycle stages of asset planning, acquisition, utilization, maintenance and disposal -- supporting long-term success and growth for the business.

But traditional Asset Lifecycle Management is not enough for the modern CIO and IT organization that are laser focused on delivering exceptional business outcomes and experiences for both employees and customers.

For instance, if IT doesn’t know what happened to the laptop of an off-boarded employee, then knowing where the laptop is in its lifecycle becomes somewhat irrelevant. As another example, if a company’s ALM implementation requires limited IT resources to spend time completing laboriously manual tasks, the CIO runs the risk of bored employees, inevitable human errors and gaps in the visibility of all its assets. Increased employee turnover and required rework are two recipes for degraded business outcomes. Gaps in asset visibility can greatly disrupt processes that rely on a precise understanding of technology asset state, performance and security postures.

Put another way, the modern IT organization needs to transform its traditional ALM strategy by adding automation to the processes that involve the business’ technology assets, as well as ensuring more accurate visibility of its technology assets.

This is where Modern Technology Asset Management (TAM) comes to play: Combining ALM capability with workflow automation, business intelligence and an ETM database to enhance asset data accuracy at scale.

Asset Lifecycle Management is critical for the business

For starters, Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a critical component of any IT organization’s strategy for several reasons:

1. Optimal Resource Utilization: ALM helps organizations make the most of their assets by ensuring they are used efficiently throughout their lifecycle. This leads to better resource allocation and reduced wastage.
2. Cost Savings: Properly managed assets tend to have longer lifespans, reducing the frequency of replacement or repairs. This, in turn, leads to cost savings over time.
3. Strategic Planning: ALM assists in long-term planning and decision-making. Organizations can allocate budgets for maintenance, upgrades, and replacements based on the anticipated lifespan of assets.
4. Risk Management: Asset failures or unexpected breakdowns can disrupt operations and lead to financial losses. ALM allows for proactive maintenance and risk mitigation, reducing the chances of sudden asset failures.
5. Regulatory Compliance: Certain industries have regulations and standards regarding asset management and maintenance. ALM helps organizations comply with these regulations, avoiding legal issues and penalties.
6. Performance Optimization: Regular maintenance and upgrades ensure that assets operate at peak performance levels, leading to improved productivity and customer satisfaction.
7. Data-Driven Insights: ALM involves tracking and analyzing data related to asset performance and usage. This data can provide valuable insights for optimizing processes and making informed decisions.
8. Sustainability: Proper management of assets can contribute to environmental sustainability. This includes extending the useful life of assets, reducing waste, and making more informed choices about disposal and recycling.
9. Improved Asset Tracking: ALM involves keeping detailed records of assets, which makes it easier to track their location, status, and maintenance history. This reduces the chances of assets getting lost or forgotten.
10. Predictive Maintenance: ALM allows organizations to implement predictive maintenance strategies, where data analysis is used to predict when an asset is likely to fail. This approach can help prevent unplanned downtime and optimize maintenance schedules.
11. Asset Retirement Planning: ALM includes planning for the end of an asset's life cycle, which involves decisions about decommissioning, disposal, and replacing the asset. Proper planning avoids last-minute rushed decisions and associated costs.

Put simply, the modern enterprise can’t afford to not implement asset lifecycle management. The question then becomes what is the best ALM strategy for the business?

Enter Modern Technology Asset Management

Modern Technology Asset Management (TAM) combines traditional ALM capabilities with the following:

• Connector Integrations that provide bi-directional data flow technology assets running technology management tool agents that
• Connect to an Enterprise Technology Management (ETM) Database that continuously provides data accuracy across your entire technology asset portfolio.
• Business Intelligence to report on the performance and state of your technology assets, along with robust monitoring and notifications.
• Low-Code Workflow Designer to turn asset data into action and outcomes by automating common IT processes.

Essentially, Modern TAM (TAM) enhances the accuracy of a company’s asset database, enables the automation of IT processes that deliver services back to the business, and furnishes the requisite reporting and monitoring capabilities essential for effectively overseeing the entirety of a company's technological portfolio – throughout the asset lifecycle.

Take employee offboarding as an example use case. At a minimum, IT wants to offboard employees as efficiently as possible, while ensuring all ex-employee issued assets – such as laptops, tablets and mobile phones – are returned, scrubbed, and depending on where the devices are in their lifecycle either return to inventory or properly retired. With Modern TAM, IT can do much more, like:

• Automate the offboarding process in a matter of weeks with standardized workflows, versus years which is typically required when building offboarding processes.
• Automate the reclamation process for endpoints and accessories by integrating with logistics services to deliver return labels or boxes to departing users, track in-transit or received packages, and enforce legal hold and data archiving requirements.
• Send automated alerts if the devices are not returned on time.
• Revoke ex-employee access to systems and resources across on-premise applications, SaaS, and multi-cloud, including user access to applications and resources managed by or outside the purview of single sign-on (SSO) tools.
• Ensure business continuity by automatically reassign ownership of documents, data, and workspaces from departing users to other pre-designated users, such as their managers or peers.

Interested in learning more about how Modern Technology Asset Management works? Check out Oomnitza’s Modern TAM solution.

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