Respondents to last week's IT Manager channel poll talked about a variety of ways that they tracked IT assets in their organisations.
A number of the IT managers who responded used spreadsheets to manage the process. "It's quite a challenge," said one IT manager. "We try to centralise all IT purchasing decisions and then keep a huge spreadsheet up-to-date of all equipment and software".
This IT manager said the company he worked at tracked purchase date, location, model, serial number, as well as warranty details, including expiry date.
Another IS manager said his employer had 80 desktops and six servers, with assets manually tracked using an Excel spreadsheet.
One respondent who was involved in tracking assets both for his company as well as a partner company spoke about the processes its IT department goes through in tracking assets.
The respondent spoke of the need to have assets barcoded, and to do a yearly audit to ensure a match in the system. "Any new assets purchased must be barcoded, [which should not be] removed until the assets systems are updated," the respondent said. "Any asset that leaves/returns to the office must [have] an asset movement form printed or e-mailed." This form includes details such as a description of the asset, serial number and who was taking it out of the office.
Simon McCormack, a network administrator at Evans & Peck, said that he had created an Access database to track IT assets in the organisation. This includes details of each machine, including a list of vendors and user lists.
"This has since been converted to an SQL format and incorporated into our intranet," McCormack said. "This is working very well--there are only a couple of people with full access to edit, then there are several people who can access it to view, to matching invoicing and the like".
Another respondent, who is a state MIS co-ordinator, said the organisation where he worked used an in-house database to track hardware and software licensing. In addition, he said, the IT department made a record of all new IT assets, recording who it was allocated before the equipment was sent to the user.
"Every now and then we will do random spot checks to make sure it is current, and there are no purchase we are unaware of," he said. "This system works extremely well, however we find it is rather labour intensive, particularly if one of the remote locations makes a number of changes or purchases we are unaware of".
The respondent said his company was also looking at installing on its PCs software which conducted out an audit every month, to ensure there was no illegal software installed.
Extending IT asset management to detail the business function each asset supports, is a suggestion another respondent made.
