The Factors Shaping the Future of Asset Management

1. Remote work: 52% of CIOs surveyed by Gartner expect to see increases in people working from home in 2021. As this occurs, it becomes critical for IT to track off-site assets. The challenge becomes: how do you govern IT assets when they exist on your employee’s home network? You no longer have the ability to run around the office and fill out an Excel spreadsheet by hand for each device. Granted, you could survey every single employee, but what are the odds that they would all turn in their information regularly to ensure that your data is kept up-to-date?

2. Cybersecurity: Cybercrime is expected to inflict damages of $6 trillion in 2021. Cybersecurity Ventures expects this to continue and grow to $10.5 trillion by 2025. This makes cybercrime more profitable than the trade of illegal drugs across the globe. Asset management allows security professionals to know the hardware and software deployed for remote work and in the office is secure. Asset management software enables them to create reports and identify equipment that needs to be updated or replaced due to cybersecurity concerns. Security professionals need to be ready when attacks happen, which is true even in a remote work scenario. This is why IT needs to have real-time asset management to know all of the assets that could be affected and be proactive in protecting them before an incident occurs.

3. Cost optimization: as companies move forward with digital transformation, it becomes essential to balance IT cost reduction with IT cost optimization. This move is an opportunity for businesses to focus on reducing asset-related expenditures. It is an opportunity to look for redundant hardware and software that can be deployed to new people as needed. These actions can alleviate spending and optimize costs. Some companies have saved 10-20% by evaluating their asset management practices.

4. Better visibility into IT assets: in 2021, organizations will likely improve their productivity to make up for any disruption caused by the pandemic. One way to increase productivity is to have better control over IT assets. This visibility will help monitor, detect, and track asset life cycles. The Enterprise Strategy Group conducted a research survey of 200 IT professionals and it was reported that the average employee used four or more devices every week to do their work. Additionally, 73% of the organizations surveyed said they lacked inventory visibility. Utilizing an asset management tool helps increase visibility into IT assets, which is essential when employees regularly use multiple devices. 

5. Preventive maintenance: an online asset management tool provides detailed IT data in the form of a checklist and reminders that add value to the organization. ChannelView helps businesses keep their systems up-to-date and manage crises down the road. It reduces asset downtime and supports scheduled preventive maintenance at an ideal time. 

6. Real-time data on assets: to have up-to-date IT asset management information, organizations need to use a solution that provides comprehensive data in real-time across the organization. To accomplish this, you need an online asset management tool with vendor information, lifecycle management details for maintenance, and licensing information in real-time. 

7. 5G: As 5G becomes more prevalent, it’s going to do a lot more than push the latest smartphones. Innovative organizations will use this technology in new ways. The Internet of Things will benefit from this technology as it becomes more common. It’s also likely to positively impact remote work and result in more data usage. As these new devices roll out, having ChannelView will allow organizations to know which devices are up-to-date with the latest technology and which devices may need to be updated to the newest version. 

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