Managing company assets, whether tangible or intangible, takes a lot of time and effort. Things get even trickier when you have a large amount of assets that need to be sold to clients and customers. Whether you are in a retail business or run an IT solutions company – asset management plays a crucial role in running several business operations. You can also improve the efficiency of your business processes with the right asset management practices. Here are some of them.
1. Give the Responsibility to a Reliable Individual or Team:
When you are running a small business, it may not be possible for you to take care of multiple operations single-handedly. As you have several major responsibilities to fulfill, you should delegate the asset management responsibility to someone reliable. The person can be someone from your organization or a team of professionals who offer customized asset management solutions for businesses. Even large enterprises do the same to manage their company assets effectively. While choosing a third-party service provider, do a thorough background check to ensure they can be trusted with the responsibility.
2. Determine the Life Cycles of Your Assets:
Every asset has a certain life cycle – starting from the purchase to its disposal. To manage these assets better, you need to analyze and forecast how long they will be useful to your business. The data will help you determine the best time to conduct assent maintenance. When you are aware of the life cycle of your assets, you can make better purchasing decisions, saving your business a significant amount of capital. Imagine you run a software development company where your employees require high-end computers to perform their tasks. Investing in more durable computers that last longer can help your business save more in the long run.
3. Routinely Track Your Assets:
Regular asset tracking can save your company from significant financial losses. Your company needs to pay for taxes, purchases, insurance, and maintenance of the assets. If some of these assets have already depreciated or are no longer in use, it does not make any sense to still pay for them. With regular asset tracking, you can identify the assets that are inadequate to meet your (or your clients’) requirements and take the necessary steps to discard them. Also, it helps you identify if any of your assets are missing or have been damaged.
4. Know the Depreciation of Your Company Assets:
A majority of your company assets lose their value or depreciate over time. For seamless business operations, you must have a good understanding of the depreciation of your assets. This means knowing which assets can no longer be used and identifying the causes. If you do not know which assets are outdated, your employees may continue using them. This will impact their productivity significantly. With regular depreciation tracking of assets, you can easily identify which assets can no longer be used and determine the best time to make new purchases.
5. Identify and Correct Data Inaccuracies:
Accurate data is essential for effective data management practices. If there are any deviations from the asset management procedures or any disruption to the process due to unforeseen circumstances, you will have to identify them and make the necessary corrections. While you can easily detect such inaccuracies with regular tracking of assets, you should consider using tools like hand-held scanners and RFID tags to manage your asset data effectively. With a systematic approach, you can reduce the risk of such data inaccuracies in the first place.
6. Use Asset Reporting and Metrics to Improve Transparency:
Asset reporting and gathering metrics are major aspects of running a business. This information is essential to make various strategic decisions. The asset metrics also help your business in several ways, including:
- Improving business transparency
- Acting as audit support
- Creating a baseline for improvements
- Comparing against the top industry benchmarks and best practices
- Helping with performance evaluation based on improvements and better results
- Monitoring the performance of the asset management team (or individual)
If you are hiring a third-party asset management solution, make sure it has metric-collecting capabilities. The data will help simplify the other processes for your business.
Conclusion
From cutting down your business expenses to improving the transparency of operations, you can achieve a number of goals with proper asset management practices. While there is nothing wrong with managing the company assets all by yourself, delegating the task to a professional service provider has its own set of advantages. The choice is yours.
