Anyone who thinks of a TI department imagines that their only responsibilities are fixing computers and keeping the network running. Of course, this is part of the routine, but the work of a TI department goes far beyond its responsibilities.
Summary
However, one of the fundamental obligations of these professionals is the creation and management of the inventory system of TI, based on the assets of TI (hardware, software and users).
In today's article, we'll talk a little about this and the importance of good asset management. After all, what is an TI inventory system? Follow up:
What are TI Assets?
What are TI assets in the inventory system?
Firstly, a TI asset is information related to the user, system or hardware belonging to the company and which is used in the course of business activities. In summary, the main asset classes are: hardware, software and users.
These are grouped together and given the name inventory or portfolio. Among these, you can create other classes according to the peculiarities of the company in your inventory. Here are examples of one of these classes:
Hardware
This class includes devices (laptops, cell phones, tablets...), desktops), printers, servers, routers. In short, everything that has connectivity with the network, with people or that generates information. This also includes all the company's hardware, such as motherboards, processors, network cards, mice, keyboards, monitors, etc.
Software
In principle, this includes licenses, versions, endpoints, cloud services and applications. It involves collecting information about all the software used in the company, cross-referencing the information and then making decisions at the asset management. In conjunction with the "users" asset, it allows policies to be drawn up to increase productivity (check out this other article on the increased productivity).
Users
In this asset, the TI team collects data on how users are accessing their devices (login and logoff times) and which programs are being used (by the active screen, for example). This means that the "user" asset measures productivity within the company.
Like stock, it's not enough to know what's in the warehouse. In other words, information on assets must be used to the company's advantage. And this is the task of TI asset management.
TI asset management
First and foremost, the TI team is responsible for managing assets, developing and maintaining policies, standards, processes, systems and measures that relate coherently to the company's portfolio in terms of risks, costs and controls. The control of these assets or asset management is then the set of practices that reduce costs and optimize decision-making strategies within the TI department, while at the same time increasing the understanding of the business value of TI itself.
Asset inventory
This management involves collecting and carrying out an inventory of assets. With strict control, you can make more efficient use of resources, eliminate waste and future expenses and increase efficiency. An example of this is monitoring the life cycle of software. This is the role of asset management do not allow licenses to expire, which cloud services are renewed unnecessarily e prevent obsolete versions of software from continuing to be used.
In this scenario, we can illustrate the following situation. If there is a need to purchase new licenses, a look at the software inventory will make it possible to analyze how many licenses are idle. In this way, the manager can just buy the differencesaving and optimizing the use of software. This also applies to idle hardware.
Due to its complexity, quality inventory management is carried out using specialized software. This software is committed to adding new assets in an automated way, keeping track of the life cycle of all assets and generating elaborate reports on this.
However, good asset management is only possible with the collaboration of the entire team and especially senior management. As a TI manager, it is your duty to draw up a good plan and present all the benefits of managing these assets in such a way as to justify obtaining specialized software. Your company will certainly not regret it.
Want to know more about TI assets and inventory?
Contact us! Keep visiting our blog to find out more about equipment management and solutions for TI.
