Asset Management Program:
Foundation for Service Level and Configuration Management
What is IT Asset Management Program?
IT asset management establishes a lifecycle management process for all IT assets, including governance and infrastructure, including products, processes and people that assist in monitoring and managing a company's IT hardware, software and license assets. Asset Management, an ITAM (Information Technology Asset Management) discipline, still provides the basis for important ITIL processes like service level and configuration management and is required for service catalog and CMDB development.
Why Develop an Asset Management Program?
Many times, asset management projects are triggered by events that highlight an organization's lack of information about their assets. For example, data center moves or expansion, failed audits, overhaul of procurement processes, large inventories, restructuring as a result of growth, cost cutting dollars on computing resources or software licensing renegotiations are all factors that may trigger an asset management program, and provide the basis for developing a business case and ROI analysis. Asset management programs may also be implemented as a basis for identifying assets for development of configuration management, service catalogs, CMDB.
What is the Business Case for Asset Management Program?
Good IT asset management programs yield sustainable reductions in costs, offer improved management of risks and optimize operational efficiencies, through:
- Establishing consistency and control over procurement, receiving, maintenance and equipment retirement processes.
Asset Management can significantly reduce security threats (through having the capacity to track all information technology devices that could contain sensitive information). It can also mitigate potentially damaging legal issues, such as security, intellectual property and licensing compliance breaches, as well as regulatory concerns.
Quantifiable financial benefits that may be used for calculating ROI include:
- Consolidating maintenance management for different hardware classes.
- Eliminating/retiring unused or underused software/hardware products.
- Retrieving software licenses from retired hardware.
- Saved dollars on storage, maintenance and taxes on unused hardware.
Seven Steps to Developing IT Asset Management Programs
- Step 1: Establish Corporate Goals and Objectives This step should evaluate the factors discussed above in developing the 'business case' for ITAM and from that list, prioritize the goals and detail the objectives. Overall short-term and long-term objectives should be developed for each process. Process and program goals should align with the overall strategic and tactical goals of the business.
- Step 2: Define Associated Policies and Procedures Key policies and procedures associated with the stated goals and objectives need to be identified. For example, if one of the strategic goals is optimization of the procurement process, then policies associated with request, receiving, deployment and retirement processes should be targeted and associated with Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs.
- Step 3: Identify, Define, Categorize Assets All software, hardware and IT assets must be located, identified and categorized within 'asset classes'. Asset classes should group like assets according to use.
- Step 4: Benchmark and Design New Processes Processes for each procedure should be reviewed with a baseline assessment. Target metrics must be developed, as well as Global ITAM processes, and a gap analysis performed for comparison between current processes and new Global processes, in order to achieve target metrics. New processes should be applied to specific asset classes.
- Step 5: Analyze Current Methodologies/Personnel Current methodologies and tools must be examined for tracking, monitoring, inventory and retirement of assets. Analysis should focus on improvement of manual processes and centralization of access to asset data. Personnel that currently manage specific assets should be identified and their functions associated with those assets.
