Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

It’s always something, isn’t it? It seems that just as you’ve gotten your organization up to speed with ITAM guidelines, some newfangled idea comes along to stir things up. But IT is (or should be) all about continuous improvement. Stationary things wither on the vine; things that move, evolve. ITAM 2.0 is precisely about keeping things moving along in the right direction. And, like it or not, managing your asset inventory is always going to be open to improvement.

Hardware and asset management is not easy even in relatively small organizations with 20 or 30 employees. As the size of the organization increases, it becomes difficult to keep track of all the laptops, printers, and other hardware used by the employees. This is where a detailed hardware inventory of IT assets becomes useful. A hardware inventory can help you keep track of all devices and equipment owned or used by your organization.

Historically IT asset management (ITAM) is the practice that was forgotten about by IT service management (ITSM) practitioners because it wasn’t considered a “core” ITIL process. This changed with the publication of ITIL 4, and now ITAM sits firmly in the ITIL management practice section of the service value stream. Done well, ITAM can help organizations to manage, control and support their IT services.

There are many aspects to keeping your IT house in order. And IT asset inventory management is just one of the many heads of this ever-shifting hydra. It’s also one of those practices that managers may sometimes gloss over in their effort to go after “the big issues.” In this guide, we’ll clue you into some best practices that you absolutely have to take into account to run things smoothly.