Business Asset Management Software

Asset management software helps you keep track of your company's stuff
By Ned Averill-Snell Anything your company owns is an asset, and assets need to be managed. Asset management software helps with this task by maintaining a record of all your assets. Business asset management software covers the tangibles (chairs, desks). Digital asset management software handles the intangible (copyrights, patents). For software, there’s software asset management software, and for your computers and other tech equipment, there’s IT asset management software.

There's a business imperative to keeping good track of your business assets: Where everything is, what shape it is in, when it will need maintenance and when it should be retired from service. Asset management software keeps track of such details as their location, service schedules, maintenance records, depreciated value, contracts and schedule for replacement. Not surprisingly, different types of assets require a different asset management approach.  Although there are many types of assets, asset management software generally sees them in three main groups:

1. IT asset management: computer hardware and software, plus networking equipment, peripherals and so on.

2. Digital asset management: intellectual property such as valuable customer data or files for products created digitally.

3. General business asset management: office furniture, non-IT equipment, product inventory, and so on.

Here are the most effective solutions for tackling assets with business asset management software:

Take on digital asset management

Your company's digital assets are its stored digital files, such as media and document files, and are the bread and butter of art and media companies. Digital asset management software can track where those files are, the name of the client each file relates to, size, usage rights and so on.
Try:  Macrovision Corp.'s Content Access Control digital asset management software helps you package, license and distribute your content online, and control who accesses your digital content and under what terms. Check out celum IMAGINE for managing, processing, distributing and integrating pictures, photographs, presentations or graphics files. For large companies wanting to manage all of their digital assets (including customer data, financial data and so on), IBM's Master Data Management digital asset management software is a new and powerful option.

Stay vigilant with software asset management

Software asset management offers a surprising array of benefits: It helps you control the introduction of unwanted software by your employees (which may introduce viruses), keeps up with licenses and renewals and installs patches and upgrades to software throughout your network.
Try:  Small to mid-sized companies may benefit from Microsoft's Software Asset Management (SAM) system, which handles unsupported programs, viruses and security problems stemming from missing patches or updates. Other options include Special Operations Software's Specops Inventory and ExpressMetrix's Express Software Manager.

Tap IT asset management software to understand your network

IT asset management incorporates software asset management and adds computer hardware management - tracking PCs, servers, routers, printers and any other IT-related asset. Most of these products are inquisitive, scanning your network and checking on the disposition of IT assets regularly.
Try:  For large organizations, CA Inc.'s Unicenter tracks and manages hardware and software inventory, software usage, software license management and cross-platform reporting on Windows Server and Client Platforms, Personal Data Assistants, Linux and other systems. Vector AM Professional audits, logs and manages software assets and hardware assets and streams software applications on-demand. Alloy Navigator 5 integrates IT asset management with a help desk solution so that customer service staff can see what's happening with the IT assets when investigating a customer's problem.

Manage everything, with enterprise asset management software

An enterprise asset management software program, by definition, tracks any asset you could have, including hardware, software, inventory, desks, chairs, copiers, coffee machines, buildings and more. Enterprise asset management software and web-based solutions enable you to manage assets holistically, from a bird's eye view of all that you own down to the location of a particular telephone.
Try:  NetSimplicity's Visual Asset Manager tracks all of your hardware, software, office furniture and other equipment and can show you visual maps of assets' locations. Other good choices include ManageEngine's AssetExplorer and Infor's Datastream 7i.