The new-age of IT is here, and you’re looking to integrate, consolidate, intercommunicate – all those ‘ate’ words. Where IT strategies across various silos are unified, that wonderfully magical place, that’s IT nirvana. And to achieve IT nirvana, you’ve got to optimize everywhere.

But, and this is important to note, proper hardware asset management is absolutely necessary for every IT discipline – security, end user experience, IT service management, etc. – to experience total enlightenment.

Without a savvy hardware asset management solution, it can feel like your organization is living in the stone age, with rudimentary spreadsheets and unaccounted-for assets. We’ve talked with the experts in IT asset management strategies, and the following are seven key principles of hardware asset management that will get you to IT nirvana fast. Follow the path laid before you, oh young apprentice, and you too will belong to the great kingdom that is unified IT.

Achieve Seven for Hardware Asset Management Heaven

1. Breadth

  • Goal: Review accuracy of hardware numbers to drive positive change
  • Identify one data point as a source of truth
  • On monthly/quarterly basis, compare data point to others to identify breadth of accuracy

2. Depth

  • Goal: Understand total purview of hardware asset fields
  • Measuring the actual device vs. your expectation of the device
  • Best practices: locked down hardware, automated request system (allows you to keep track of hardware/software before their deployment), and change control

3. Ownership

  • Goal: To know where the asset is and who’s using it
  • Sense of accountability allows for more efficient, better innovation
  • Important for both security and software licensing

4. Naming Conventions

  • Goal: Being able to identify a hardware asset when we see one
  • Build a naming convention around your unique environment
  • Standards and uniformity are necessary for logical conventions

5. Performance Metrics

  • Goal: To show business value of hardware asset management
  • Track metrics that show value against your original business plan
  • Ex. Unknown device metrics, maintenance metrics, leasing expiree metrics, assets lost/stolen metrics, etc.

Manage your own success!

6. Major Process Areas

  • Goal: Managing hardware effectively throughout its lifecycle
  • Processes include: hardware request, hardware move, hardware replacement, employee offboarding, lifecycle steps, reclaim/redeploy, disposal/recycle
  • Chance for integration between IT Service Management and Asset Management

7.  Stakeholders

  • Goal: To engage various stakeholders from across an organization into the hardware asset management process
  • Stakeholders such as:
    • Software Asset Management
    • Service Management
    • Information Security
    • Procurement
    • IT Projects/Enterprise Architecture
    • Finance

IT Nirvana: Successful Hardware Asset Management & Beyond

Following these seven, key hardware asset management principles will help you on your way to achieving total IT nirvana. Because again, if your hardware assets are mismanaged, so too is your entire IT environment. Get enlightened with Ivanti.

Check out the webinar recording, “Seven Pillars of Modern Hardware Asset Management (HAM) Practice,” which features Martin Thompson, owner and founder of The ITAM Review, and Darren Wilensky and Todd Hogan, both ITAM product managers with Ivanti.

And to ensure you’re on the right track, learn more about our unified IT strategies here!