Hello and welcome to lecture one of how to start an IT asset department. A Practical course for busy executives. Please give me a couple of seconds to switch on the video camera so that you can see me. Good, let us begin. Hello and welcome to lecture one of how to start an ITSM department. A Practical course for busy executives, I am degeneracy nose.
Start a powerful department that will manage the complete lifecycle of all IT assets. Protect and track company IT assets. save costs on hardware and software. Implement technical and financial leadership. Keep management, Finance and Audit happy About Me, I am a gender and author and life skills coach. I've already given my introduction in the previous sections, so I will skip this.
First some tanks. All images and videos used in this course are from sites like pixels open clipart and unsplash full credits and thanks to the respective artists. Let us begin Lecture one, what is it? First, let us identify the audience for this course. The audience for this course consists of technology managers, finance managers and auditors, CIOs, CTOs and CFOs. Anyone who manages it assets in an organization and trusted board members and it consultants before we begin, let's Take this route.
Almost all companies worldwide of any size will have the usual standard departments like sales, HR, finance, tech support marketing, r&d and so on. But, they will be missing one critical department that is necessary to save and optimize costs and the equipment they use. What is that missing department? Now, let us investigate. Let us begin the story with a technology presentation by the head of technology to the top management in a fictitious company. That decade said during his presentation to the top management, we are responsible for successfully supporting and managing 35,000 plus computers in the company.
For this, the top management had only one question. Hold on. We have only 28,000 plus employees, including contractors in our company. Why do we have 35,000 plus computers with us? The head of technology could not give a satisfactory answers. And this was the blame game afterwards.
The Content Management then initiated an investigation into this. They want to know why their company has 7000 extra computers when they have only 28,000 employees. After a few days or weeks, the results of the investigation was out. There was no dedicated department to manage the huge number of expensive IT assets. There was no centralized it purchasing each department was doing Get to budgeting and purchases. Many employees were having more than one laptop, one in the office and one at home.
Software licensing was a mess with no count of how many licenses were actually required. support payments were being done for software licenses that were no longer in use. Also, no security checks existed on materials coming in or going out. Several computers and other equipment or out of warranty or support by the vendors. Some more. Dozens of laptops and other portable items were untraceable or locked in personal cupboards, or maybe stolen hundreds of obsolete and unused equipment lying all around the building with no accountability.
Technical department unable and unwilling to do asset management and its commercial and financial activities. Also, Finance and Audit departments couldn't get satisfactory answers from the technical department for financial accounting of IT assets, frequent arguments and blame game between them. Now, let us investigate. Why did the tech and finance departments fight with each other frequently? These are the reasons technical staff almost in most companies often irritate their finance, audit and top management because they cannot answer the below important questions fundamental to running a successful business. Like what IP assets do you have?
Where are they and who is using them? What is it costing to maintain these assets? have any access it assets are still having it assets that we no longer use. Why are several portable devices aren't traceable? Why are computers from different purchase orders mixed up and so on? Now, let us go to the reasons why tech cannot give answers.
Technology departments want to do only tech activities. They were unable to or unwilling to manage assets and get involved in its commercial and financial activities. They assumed or argued that managing assets is basically a storekeeper job and not a technical job. Then what happened as the result of this investigation and the mess that it had created, the top management immediately ordered the creation of a dedicated team for managing all IT assets in the organization. But the question was how to start such a department. This unique course will teach you how to start such a department.
Let us first define what is an IT asset. An it asset is basically a physical or a virtual item that is owned or leased by your company. Typical examples are desktops, laptops, phones, mobile sprinters, tablets, servers, networking equipment, storage devices, racks, routers, etc. software licenses as a third party or in those developed are also considered as virtual IP assets. But they imply you want devices even if use for official purposes are not considered as company assets. This is important as a new trend called BYOD.
Bring Your Own Device is becoming popular also in this course. We will not consider non IT assets like furniture, power supplies, equipment etc. But the concepts mentioned here can be applied to search equipment also by the content departments that manage them. Now, what is it asset management or items for short? It asset management is a set of best practices that combined technical, financial, contractual and inventory activities to support the lifecycle management of all IP assets and not just a storekeeper job. It Asset Management answers questions like what it sh Do you have, where are they who is using them are they're obsolete with proper winter support are there extra set sets etc.
It involves purchase contracts, leases, payments, paperwork, issue, recovery, location, ownership, disposal, etc. Of all it Assets used in an organization. Item is a completely different function than it operations management whose objective is to provide performance and delivery of technical service. It is a critical function but often misunderstood. Many deaf tough thing, item is barely a boring storekeeper job, but this is the wrong assumption. In reality item is actually a powerful and high visibility department.
And the staff working here will be exposed to a variety of knowledge that can help the organization and their courage like subject knowledge, you will gain a tremendous amount of industry knowledge about hardware and software as you will be continuously involved in the lifecycle of an asset. You will get financial leadership to handle mega budgets on large value purchases, initiate cost cutting optimization exercises, decide on disposals etc. You will have the advantage of dealing with top vendors to explore competitive products and services gain industry contacts, price negotiations, attend seminars with subject experts and so on. Also, by managing an asset team, you will interact with a variety of stuff ranging from junior staff to senior managers and understand their requirements. Also, management will depend on your data for approving budgets and take strategic decisions. You will attend important meetings to present the ongoing and impending it costs to the management Now let's look at the benefits of it.
Asset Management lifecycle, it asset management will ensure that the large quantity of expensive and frequently churning assets is effectively managed from beginning to end to achieve the highest return on investment. decisions. Senior management can take better decisions regarding the right infrastructure with a properly functioning item department. purchasing a well managed it Asset Management data can help organization they evaluate purchasing trends to guide future actions. Inventory helps organizations in understanding what assets you have, where they are deployed and what they are being used for. costs.
It avoids excess purchases of equipment and software license that are not needed. Next standardization, an ITSM team can ensure that the organization buys only standardized hardware and software to reduce that support hazards. For example, non standard hardware and software can cost any organization a lot of money. It also causes headaches for the IT staff to maintain a variety of equipment for the same job. For example, if you're buying laptops and desktops from three different brands, like let us say HP, Dell and Compaq, Lenovo and so on, then it is a nightmare for the IT staff to maintain a variety of drivers for video hard disk, and so on for their support activities. Instead, if you standardize on one single brand, and single model within that, the IT staff can easily support hundreds of machines with less number of drivers and other support issues.
Tracking each and every IoT asset ranging from a small memory module to a mainframe can be tracked the risks of not having an IT asset management team. no control over it assets. This will result in a company buying more assets than actually needed. Budget overshoot. If there is no proper mechanism to utilize all assets then the budgets will overshoot. Old and obsolete equipment will be lying all around with no ownership or disposal mechanism.
Theft and misplacement will become common. employees will unknowingly mix up assets from multiple purchase orders resulting in a nightmare to track assets and financial hazards for you to dispose of later. The company may even get hit by data theft lawsuits and audit issues if they don't manage their software licenses and customers. Data properly. This is why it Asset Management must be given the highest possible priority and must be started on a war footing. This department can also be considered equivalent to an armed forces of a nation who protects the nation's assets.
This comes to the end of the lecture one, please proceed to lecture two to continue the course. Thanks for watching.