Hello and welcome to lecture three of how to start an ITSM department. A Practical course for busy executives. Please give me a couple of seconds to adjust the video camera. Good to start. Hello and welcome to lecture three of how to start an ITSM department a practical course for busy executives. I am teaching Russia in lecture three asset tracking to maintaining an accurate inventory of all it asset is crucial.

If you have to manually dig through old records, spreadsheets, or remember who was assigned which item and their location, then the whole process will become a nightmare. This is where an asset tracking tool will help. This is a software that gives the user location technical and financial details of all assets in the organization. It has three main functions. One, document all assets within an organization. For example, if there are 10,000 laptops, 3000, desktops, 50, servers, 60, printers, 500, smartphone etc.

In an organization, then this tool must have a detailed technical, financial and locational record of all these IT assets. Second, it should identify location of all assets. For small organizations it may be possible to physically locate all assets. But as organizations grow it is not possible to use physical tracking each time an asset has to be located. Third, it should provide timely alerts and reports For example, it should give alerts about an impending warranty and for a purchaser, or give a list of systems that have gone out of warranty. Now which tool to use, the cost for such asset tools can range from a few thousand dollars to several hundred thousand depending on the size of the organization.

The type of tool you need is fully dependent on what you want to get out of it. For small organizations, the tool can even be a simple Excel spreadsheet. For large organization you should use heavy duty asset tracking tools. However, I will not recommend any specific branded tool but we will only provide what features the tool should have to start your asset tracking journey. Begin We will use a fictitious company called ABC Corp that operates in two buildings. Let us assume that each building has 10 floors that can accommodate 500 employees each.

In addition, each building has several meeting rooms, data centers, cabling rooms, executive cabins and other types of rooms for security stores facilities, electricals, cafeteria etc. We should design an asset tracking software for such a company. Now, let us assume that you have or will hire a bunch of qualified software programmers who will build such a tool for you. Now, let us get into gathering requirements. requirements gathering is a collaborative exercise. For this, you will need qualified staff from multiple departments like technology, finance, facilities security, and any other company's specific department.

Technology requirements. These are the requirements for the tool. technology requirements should provide asset types and essential specifications of all IT assets. For example, the essential asset specification of a desktop can be its brand model, memory size, this size, monitor size and its model. The tool must have fields to enter these details. All other detailed internal specifications like the motherboard and software drivers are not necessary from the asset management point of view.

In a similar way, finance department should What they look for in an asset like capital expenditure, operating expenses, depreciation, leasing, purchase, currency, tax, and so on. They won't be interested in its technical specifications, but will only consider the asset from a financial perspective. This tool must have fields to enter these financial details. Facilities department should provide floor wing room and seek details of the buildings. This is necessary to capture the exact physical location of all ITSM. For example, a number like five n 32 can mean fifth floor northwind and seat number 32.

This tool must have fields to enter this location details. security team should provide what safety measures are needed or expected from them to protect the organization assets. For example, they can check random users carrying out laptops to ensure that they are carrying out Only the laptop that is formally assigned to them. Also in all other departments depending on the type of assets used, if this tool has to store non IT assets, then you will need qualified staff from those departments also. Now the features of the asset tool an asset tracking tool is basically a software database with necessary data fields, numeric, date, alphanumeric text only, and so on. Plus third import export and reporting features.

The Ascent tool must fulfill the needs of all the above departments by having all the necessary fields to input data. Next, continuing the technical features, the tool must be web based and work on all types of browsers and must be able to work with industry standard databases like SQL, Oracle and so on. The tool should have finished For a unique asset add explain later. based on the type of asset being used into the tool, no two assets should have the same asset ID continued. The tool should also have the ability to change font size, background color, add company logo illiterate, for printing and so on. It should also have different level of admin access for the tool like read only full rights edit only etc for different kinds of tool operators.

These are the desktop brand and technical fields of an asset. Example laptop desktop, VDI servers switches routers model serial number when the tech specs upgrade status at later stage, example a memory upgrade for a computer and so on. Now, let us come to the finance features and fields. This tool should have the ability to add any number of vendor details. The tool must also have fields for a unique finance ad again explained later based on the type of asset being input into the tool, no two asset should have the same finance ID. Next, it should have the ability to add commercial information of an asset like vendor invoice cost, currency tax payer details contract, capex OPEX lease or purchase operating status of an asset like in use or retired depreciation and so on.

Next, the fields for the facility department this should This can include building floor wing room and cabin numbers Bay and seat numbers location ID and other details that the facilities department maintains. Now, let us now let us come to the common fields for all departments. For each of the departments, there may be a need for custom and comment fields for adding any additional information for an asset. Again, this can be alphanumeric only numeric or date fields for an asset The tool should also have the ability to add attachments. This is for embedding important files of an asset for example PDF files of purchase orders, invoices, entry papers, photographs, etc can be added along with each asset. Next, it should have the ability to export and import of data, ability to export and import full or partial data into Excel, PDF, word CSV, and other formats.

This ability is needed for generating custom reports or analyzing data. Another important feature is the search and replace feature ability to do single or bulk search and replace for data. Automated reminders, email and inbuilt notifications for time bound issues, lease expiry, warranty, experimenting and schedules, etc. Other features like asset letter generation, logs and history, any other common requirements, if any Now I'll explain what are asset and finance IDs. In order to track any asset and know its specifications, it is important to have a unique alphanumeric text called the asset and finance ID. This is a crucial feature for any asset Id like social security number and no two assets should have the same IDs.

For example, if 10 Dell computers were purchased, then you can assign asset IDs like Dell hyphen 2019 001222010, to show that they are Dell computers purchased in 2019, having separate IDs 0012010. This will be the permanent asset identification IDs for the entire lifecycle. In a similar way, each of the above computers should have a matching and unique finance ID for example, They can assign comp 2019 001 to 10 as the finance IDs for the 10 Dell computers. These two will be the permanent asset and finance identification for the entire lifecycle. Each asset used in the organization should have these two IDs and all tracking should be done via these two IDs. Now, the asset tool screens while the design usability and the aesthetics of the asset tracking tool can be left to the programmers expertise, the below screen samples will give you a raw overview of the functionality.

Now, look at look at the first screen that has assumed that this is the first screen that the tool opens ABC Corp asset tracking system and these are the categories computers, servers, printers, network equipment, phones and scanners. Thanks Double clicking on the computer's button can open a master screen like below containing names of all computers. I will show you the screen shortly. If you look at this screen by clicking on the computers button in the main dashboard, it will show the asset IDs of all the computers and the corresponding finance IDs. And it will also tell you the asset type, the description, the serial number and the status, whether it is in field or in stores and so on. Next, if you click on the first asset ID, I'll just go to the previous screen and show you the yellow one Dell 2019 001.

If you click on the first asset, ID, it should open further screens or tab select below. Similarly clicking on other IDs should open the respective screen depending on the asset the custom fields can also be filled. I will show you how an asset individual asset will look like For example, when you click on Dell 2010 001 it should open this screen. It should have technical financial location usage and other details. Each of these are buttons that you can click. Now if you click on the technical button, it will give a full list of details of the computer Dell 2019 001.

If you look at this, these are there are standard fields and custom fields. In the standard fields, it will do the asset ID, finance ID, asset type, subtype model, Serial Number, Manufacturer, memory, disk, Mac ID, vendor, warranty start warranty and vendor contact vendor email, and any attachments that you can do and upgrade details. And in the custom fields, you have date one, day two, text one text to number one and number two, which you can fill depending on what you need for access The next one they have filled a second support number of the vendor. Now if you click on the finance button, it will go all the finance details of the asset. For the same two asset IDs asset ID is the same Dell 2019 001 finance it is comp 2018 00. From the finance perspective, it has classified retest capital expenditure, the vendor, the P one number, the P word, invoice number, invoice date, unit cost, currency, lease start leasing, leasing, vendor lease number, depreciation and any attachments associated.

Here they have not entered any custom fields but if they want they can enter the finance department can enter. Now if you click on the location button, it will tell you where this computer is located. It will tell you building flow wing Bay number and seat number and further details can be added depending if there are some Some more specifications in the facilities. Now if you click on the usage button, it will tell you which user is using for the same computer, it will tell you the user name somebody called Robert Jordan, his employee number, his email id, his phone, what type of toughies who is his manager, the main department, the department, number, sub department, sub department number, user location, issue, date, issue, letter, and any other custom fields. In a similar way, clicking on the other buttons like servers printer theater to on the main dashboard will open the respective technical financial location and user secrets.

But all this data will not magically appear in the tool. How the screen information gets populated in the database is explained in the next lecture. Thanks for watching. This concludes lecture three