Computer Organization
How Businesses Track IT Equipment and Fixed Assets
As corporate purse strings get increasingly tightened in this period of downturn, the need for organisations to perform IT fixed asset tracking is becoming more of a priority.It is the IT manager whose role is to manage this process of auditing and tracking IT assets. Following up a number of contacts in IT departments of various organizations, I looked at some of the methods different companies are using to fulfil their IT asset tracking requirements.
Spreadsheets
fixed assets register. The basic idea is as follows. At first the spreadsheet is created from an initial asset audit, recording all the hardware and software being used. The common details that are tracked are date of purchase, make and model, serial number, warranty info, location and name of user.Whenever new computer equipment or software is bought in the organization, this needs to be included on the asset register. As with many manual business functions, the spreadsheet’s downfall is that it doesn’t scale well at all.For larger businesses the spreadsheet can become extremely complicated. The spreadsheet system also doesn’t react very well to changes, such as breakdowns, warranty uses, change of staff and software license expiration.You can imagine the fragility of a system that requires the constant attention of one very thorough person.
Barcode Labels & RFID
Asset barcodes have been around for a while and are step up from manual data entry – each asset is given a specific barcode which stores all the relevant information from the asset register. These barcodes can be scanned using barcode scanners during regular asset audits and for helpdesk support purposes. RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, goes one step beyond traditional barcoding because they allow you to perform a hardware audit without physically scanning each asset. More importantly, RFID asset tracking allows greater flexibility for increasingly mobile equipment such as laptops and PDAs.
Fixed Asset Management Software
A number of software solutions exist to automate and streamline the whole process of asset management. Some will go down the intranet route, creating a bespoke solution which connects intranet users to the asset register database. At the other end of the scale there is specialist asset management software which covers all the fixed assets of the organisation, including things such as vehicles, containers, property and machinery as well as IT assets. There are also specially designed solutions to meet the growing plethora of asset accounting and tax regulations that companies need to meet – such as compliance with Sarbanes Oxley. The best thing about this kind of solution is that by combining the needs of IT, accounting, helpdesk support, and operations departments you also have a combined budget with which to procure a far more powerful asset management system.
If you have any other solutions your company uses for asset tracking, I’d be interested to read your comments.
Lec-1 Introduction to Digital Computer Organization
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