5 Tips For Choosing The Best Asset Management Tool

Show:

January 29, 2022 Business

Asset management involves tracking and maintaining company assets, be it intangible assets such as website, software, or domain names to tangible assets such as land, cars, and equipment. However, tracking these different company assets is time-consuming, especially if they’re spread across various areas or come in different types. Because of this, investing in an asset management tool becomes necessary to help you better manage your company’s assets.

Nonetheless, choosing the best asset management tool is usually very confusing due to the many options. This fact is made worse because a particular asset management tool might be ideal for one business but not for yours. To ease your trouble deciding which asset management tool to get, here are crucial tips you need to consider:

1. Your Objectives And Expectations

Before investing in an asset management software such as the RFID inventory tracking software, first know the goals and expectations you’re hoping it can achieve. And to ensure you make an informed decision, it’s advisable to engage everyone in the company to get their opinion, from IT personnel to other staff. With their insights, you’ll know the specific goals and expectations of the asset management tool, hence knowing the ideal software to select.

For most companies, the most common objectives for getting the asset management tool include:

Increased accountability: Monitoring all business assets is often a big challenge for most companies. This is why many of them invest in inventory tracking software to know exactly who and where their assets are located using RFID tags and QR code tags. With a free QR code creator companies can now easily generate QR codes to track their assets and enhance accountability. RFID technology allows companies to track and locate their assets in real-time, which further improves accountability.
Increased visibility: Using asset management software ensures you make optimal use of your company’s available resources. It also creates a detailed list of software licenses to stop you from making unwanted purchases.
Eradicate waste: Your company’s goal is to reduce as much waste as possible to increase your profit margins, and this is what an asset management tool helps you to achieve.
Cost savings: You need to keep track of how your business spends every dime; otherwise, risk increasing the chances of overspending money. An asset management tool helps you eliminate unnecessary spending and boost transparency.

With these uses in mind, you’ll have a simpler time identifying an asset management tool that best satisfies your needs.

2. User-Friendliness

Because not everyone within your company is technically gifted with using an asset management tool, you should choose software with a simple user interface. This way, it’ll be a lot simpler for your employees, executive decision-makers, and managers to make informed decisions a lot faster using the information at their disposal. In addition, it’s a lot simpler moving across different aspects of a user-friendly asset management tool. After all, they’ll easily understand how to enter and access the information they want.

A helpful tip to identify a user-friendly asset management tool would be to look for an automated reporting feature. This way, your users are guaranteed that the system will always deliver information smoothly while promoting ease of use. An easy-to-use asset management tool also helps save on money that would have been spent on training your employees, which is usually quite expensive. This is often the case because most asset management tool vendors only offer a limited trial or demo to test how the software works right after purchase.

3. Essential Features

After identifying the intended use of your asset management software, the next thing to do is know the features it needs to have. If a particular feature is missing, you should look elsewhere for a different option. Some of the crucial features include:

Variable monitoring ensures you can monitor the different aspects of your fleet’s assets.
Historical location helps you monitor asset history to recommend optimal routes or increase the information’s accuracy for business intelligence.
Cellular connectivity and SIM cards which are useful for communication over long distances than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
Geolocation mapping services allow you to track an asset’s real-time location using geolocation mapping services.
OTA firmware updates help you easily send new updates and features to your solutions.

4. Scalability

One of your goals as an entrepreneur is to see your company’s growth, and you need an asset management tool that grows with you. This way, the software remains effective and feasible to tackle all your business needs even as you expand in size and scope. Besides the software’s built-in customization and configuration, you also need to examine the pricing to see whether it’s flexible enough to meet your expanding needs.

When searching for a flexible asset management tool and vendor, certain questions can help you determine whether to choose a specific software, and these include:

Can this tool be used as a platform for the Internet of Things (I0T) projects?
Can you agilely add some personalized features to the tool at an affordable price?
How well does the asset management software integrate with other systems such as the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system?

With the answers to these questions, you’ll be able to identify the perfect and growth-friendly asset management tool.

5. Asset Tracking Capabilities

All asset management tools should incorporate built-in GPS tracking capabilities. But besides the exact location of your business assets, you also need to know other essential details to boost business intelligence. As a result, this helps increase the profitability of the asset management software. Because of this, you should choose an asset tracking software that allows you to monitor all your asset’s details, including:

With these additional features, you’ll be able to always know the location of all the company assets at a particular time. You’ll also learn about the possible impact of ambient conditions and how to transport the assets. Using this knowledge, you’ll be in an excellent position to decide on aspects such as whether there’s a need to change the processes and systems in your company, supply chain options, and future investment.

Takeaway

Failure to manage your company’s assets is what sees the downfall of most businesses, and this is why using an asset management tool comes in handy. However, the reliability and quality of asset management tools usually differ, so you need to first do exhaustive research to know which one is the most effective and efficient option. Fortunately, reading this guide has provided you with insights into what to consider to ensure you make an informed pick when looking for an asset management tool.