Organizations should adopt several IT asset management (ITAM) best practices to effectively manage IT assets. These help streamline operations, maintain control over assets, and optimize costs and the ITAM best practices include the following eight activities.
8 ITAM Best Practices
1. Establishing a comprehensive ITAM policy
The first of the ITAM best practices outlines the scope, objectives, and guidelines for managing IT assets. It should cover all asset types, including hardware, software, cloud resources, and digital assets. It should also define ITAM roles and responsibilities, procedures for asset acquisition, usage, maintenance, and disposal, and protocols for ensuring compliance with licensing agreements and regulatory requirements.
2. Creating a centralized asset inventory
This inventory should include detailed information about each IT asset, such as its type, location, user, configuration, purchase date, warranty status, and lifecycle stage. Inventory management is one of teh most popular ITAM best practices.
3. Implementing automated asset discovery and tracking capabilities
These tools can automatically detect new devices and software installations, monitor changes to existing assets, and provide real-time updates to the asset inventory. The automation helps reduce manual effort, improves accuracy, and ensures that the inventory remains current.
4. Enforcing software license compliance
Three ITAM best practices activities help here:
- Review and audit software license positions to ensure compliance with vendor agreements.
- Maintain records of license purchases, usage rights, and entitlements and track software installations to prevent unauthorized usage.
- Implement software metering tools to monitor software usage patterns and identify unused or underutilized licenses that can be reclaimed or reallocated.
5. Optimizing IT asset utilization
Analyze asset utilization data to identify underused or redundant assets and optimize the deployment of IT assets to ensure they are used efficiently and effectively. For example, reallocating unused software licenses or consolidating servers to reduce hardware costs. Implementing a chargeback or showback model can also help promote responsible asset usage by assigning costs to departments based on their asset consumption. These days, this is one of teh most critical ITAM best practices.
6. Implementing a robust lifecycle management process (there’s a section on the asset lifecycle below)
Develop standardized procedures for each stage of the asset lifecycle, including acquisition, deployment, maintenance, support, and decommissioning. Regularly review asset performance and condition to determine when assets need to be upgraded, replaced, or retired.
7. Enhancing security and risk management
Incorporate ITAM into the organization’s security and risk management strategy. Maintain accurate records of all assets to ensure they are appropriately secured, updated, and patched. Conduct regular vulnerability audits and assessments.
These help to identify potential security risks associated with IT assets. Implement data sanitization procedures for retired assets to prevent data breaches.
8. Providing ITAM training and awareness programs
It’s important to educate employees on the importance of ITAM and their role in managing IT assets. Provide training programs on ITAM policies, software license compliance, security best practices, and the proper usage of IT assets. Raising awareness will help promote a culture of responsible asset management.
The IT asset lifecycle
In support of ITAM operations and the above ITAM best practices, the IT asset lifecycle typically consists of several stages, each requiring specific ITAM activities. The following is a high-level view.
Planning and acquisition
Identifying the need for new IT assets, planning their procurement, and acquiring them. It includes evaluating different vendors, negotiating contracts, and ensuring that purchases align with organizational needs and budget constraints.
Deployment and configuration
This stage involves installing hardware, configuring software, setting up user accounts, and ensuring that assets are correctly integrated into the existing IT environment.
Maintenance and support
This includes applying software updates and patches, performing hardware repairs and upgrades, and providing technical support to users.
Monitoring and optimization
This involves tracking asset usage, identifying underutilized resources, optimizing software licenses, and making necessary adjustments to improve efficiency.
Decommissioning and disposal
When IT assets reach the end of their useful life, they must be decommissioned and disposed of properly. This involves securely erasing data, recycling or disposing of hardware, and retiring software licenses.
What would you add to this short ITAM best practices article? Please let me know in the comments.
Further Reading
Please use the website search capability to find more useful ITSM and ITAM articles on topics such as how to mitigate risks, making informed decisions, cost-effectiveness, total cost of ownership (TCO), bottom-line improvements assisting decision-makers, long-term ITAM, how to reduce costs with automation, managed risks, continuous monitoring, protecting intellectual property, asset management systems, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (now just ITIL), software audits, understanding potential risks, and continual or continuous improvement.
Stephen Mann
Principal Analyst and Content Director at the ITSM-focused industry analyst firm ITSM.tools. Also an independent IT and IT service management marketing content creator, and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals.
Previously held positions in IT research and analysis (at IT industry analyst firms Ovum and Forrester and the UK Post Office), IT service management consultancy, enterprise IT service desk and IT service management, IT asset management, innovation and creativity facilitation, project management, finance consultancy, internal audit, and product marketing for a SaaS IT service management technology vendor.
