Technology Asset Management – How to Avoid Making the Same Mistakes

By bedigital on September 14th, 2020

As someone far more intelligent than me once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Yet in the world of IT Asset Management (ITAM), this is all too familiar, and many organisations continue to face the same problems repeatedly, wasting both time and money. The truth is that this needn’t be the case. You can escape this repetitive cycle by taking a few simple, but pretty transformational, steps.

What Can Be Done to Avoid Making ITAM Mistakes?

I’ve been working with companies like yours for a long time now, and I see the same mistakes happen every day. The added issue is that infrastructure is only getting more complex and in today’s modern world, there are far more licenses and devices than ever before. This makes getting your technology asset management in order not only absolutely critical but increasingly urgent. So, what can you do?

Be confident in your next audit

Whilst audits can be an essential exercise in getting a ‘point in time’ snapshot of what your technology estate looks like, they can be expensive and resource-heavy but perhaps worst of all – manual. Throwing huge amounts of money at something that is out of date almost as soon as it’s complete, can seriously harm your long-term goals. A decent ITAM solution will take an ‘always on’ approach to your estate. This means complete transparency at all times not just during an audit and provides a simple way of checking the status of licenses whenever you need to.

See the bigger picture

I understand how tempting it is to see not investing in proactive asset management as a way of saving money. Choosing not to invest, however, will almost certainly cost you more over time. I see this constantly and it’s very frustrating, especially because I know that the short-term pain of investment will ultimately be returned through cost savings and the quality of data being made available. Being able to see issues coming, being proactive in estate maintenance and having the information you need to drive efficiency in the palm of your hand will deliver for you in the long term, I guarantee it.

Talk to your people

Don’t forget how little people like change. Especially at the moment, when we’ve had enough change to last a lifetime. Your teams might also be scared by what tools can do, and what it means for them. Automation is a word that will instil fear into even the most stoic of architects. Spend time talking to your teams about why ITAM will improve their jobs as well as the experience of their stakeholders. If you have them onside, the process will be much easier.

Bring your leadership team along with you

You need the whole of the Board bought in as without them securing investment is going to be a very difficult conversation. Work on selling the benefits to them, particularly the benefits of security, transparency, flexibility, and not to mention savings! Proper ITAM is going to make theirs and their teams’ lives much easier. You just need to make sure they know it.

Don’t throw money at the problem

A Tool on its own will not fix your problem. The more plentiful and shinier the tools, the better they work, right? Well, experience tells me that is sadly not always the case. In order to get the most out of your new toy, you need to know how to play with it. Data is your gateway to fully optimising any investment you make, so make sure you ringfence your budget to understand what you actually need before you invest. Don’t get taken in by a glitzy sales pitch. Except this one of course.

I know all of this is easier said than done, and I appreciate it can be a long and laborious road to getting ITAM working for you in the right way. That’s why we are here to help. Not only can we offer the solutions, but we can also help you navigate your way to getting the budget and thumbs up on investment. Our team have worked with thousands of organisations just like yours and can help make this urgent transformation happen.

Get in touch to chat about how we can support you.

Written by

bedigital

bedigital