Tracking your business’s assets can solve numerous challenges. This presents you a robust framework that allows your business to become more efficient. Efficient asset tracking ensures efficient use of the available resources to achieve the desired business goals.
To track your company’s assets effectively, you should focus on choosing the right analytics solutions for tracking assets, use the right implementation approach, and exercise the right management practices.
Choose the right asset tracking
Successful asset tracking begins with the right foundation: robust systems, tools, and applications that allow effective asset tracking and automated solutions that streamline the data collection and analysis process. The following tips will help you make the right choice.
Define what you need to track
It’s important to know the user on each machine, the equipment maintenance schedule, and any possible downtime. Integrating an efficient asset management system into your factory or warehouse operations can improve the availability of the necessary production equipment and reduce the cost of production through better asset maintenance programs.
Think about the project management lifecycle
Some projects can last for over 20 years. It’s apparent that your project starts with engineering and construction activities. It then grows to include asset maintenance costs, operational costs, and after a couple of years, the equipment may need to be replaced. In the absence of sufficient analytics solutions for tracking assets, it’s difficult to manage the lifecycle of your assets from the cradle to the grave.
Prioritize your business requirements
It’s advisable to perform a regular evaluation of your business fixed asset requirements and prioritize them. Then, evaluate each of the available products and determine how each of them measures against your need. Before you make a purchase decision, perform a test drive to test all the features.
Opt for software with analytics and reporting functionality
It’s impossible to manage what you cannot measure, and it’s challenging to estimate what you can’t see. Therefore, it’s wise to pick a tool that can collect metrics required in the process of determining the effectiveness of your operations.
Visibility is crucial before equipment acquisition
Before you purchase the asset tracking equipment, ensure that you are fulfilling your responsibility to your business by having closely monitoring all your valuable assets. That means it’s easier for you to deploy on idle or underutilized resources to achieve your business objectives.
Implementation of asset tracking strategy
The implementation approach of analytics solutions for tracking assets plays an integral role in the functionality of the entire system. Therefore, you should identify all the available assets, categorize them, and differentiate asset management from inventory management activities. The following tips will help you complete these tasks effectively.
Keep track of the acquired assets
Determining everything that needs asset tracking is a challenging task. An easy way would be tracking assets as you acquire them. That means you should include a new asset in your monitoring list them the moment you purchase it.
Assign each asset a unique code instead of using its serial number
Sometimes, an asset may have a similar serial number to another asset. In case you opt to use serial numbers to track your assets, a duplicate serial number will create confusion because there is no way you can differentiate the two assets easily. Compromised data leads to inaccurate analysis and in the end, you may end up making an incorrect choice.
Differentiate inventory tracking from asset tracking
Note that tracking your business’s assets involves knowing all the items your company uses, where these items are stored, and who is in charge of them. It involves managing all the valuable internal resources required for continued company operations. That means you should track the items you are lending out, monitor depreciation, warranty contracts, and more.
Perform regular equipment analysis
Knowing the cost drivers in the process of tracking your assets will unravel all the expenses associated with the excess inventory of replacement parts. An effective way of reducing your inventory to what’s necessary is performing a regular equipment analysis.
Don’t you wish it was easier to find all your business assets? Whether your business handless tens or thousands of fixed assets, it’s wise to tack them. Chaos is guaranteed as the number of your business increase. However, choosing and implementing the right analytics solutions for tracking assets can help you stay away from asset tracking chaos.
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