We’ll go through 16 of the most important advantages of asset management in this piece, broken down into two sections:
The overall advantages for company of putting into practise an asset management strategy
There are further advantages to employing asset tracking software as a key component of a holistic plan.
8 Business Benefits of an Asset Management Strategy
Let’s first discuss the difference between asset management and asset tracking. The gist is that management refers to the comprehensive process of managing high-value resources, including people, tools, and equipment. A written plan and organisational accountability measures should be part of this approach.
Asset tracking is merely one aspect of knowing exactly where your assets are and where they have gone, despite being the most crucial aspect. But more on that in a moment. Let’s concentrate for the moment on the numerous business advantages of a sound asset management plan.
1. Reduce Customer Complaints
Customers, who are the backbone of your company, stand to earn much from an effective asset management strategy. Therefore, it is sensible to get directly to the point. Scott Cook, a co-founder of Intuit, once said:
“Pay attention to the consumer rather than the competitors.”
Whether you work in a warehouse, a construction site, or an emergency department, effective asset management will improve the efficiency of your entire business. The possibilities are endless once you have a formalised procedure in place for handling the equipment necessary to provide first-rate client service.
2. Increase Customer Value
Customers are more inclined to repurchase from you if they aren’t complaining. Additionally, client loyalty is more about the usage experience than it is about the actual product or service. The net promoter score, a handy little metric, is actually based on the astoundingly simple statistical tenet that a 5% improvement in client retention (i.e., repeat business), equals a startling 25-95% more business.
This vast range, of course, depends on how pricey your particular goods and services are, but you get the point. Any organisation can benefit greatly from increasing customer value, and effective asset accountability measures surely enhance the overall customer experience.
3. Improve Efficiency by Understanding Equipment Utilization
Checks and balances are a natural part of an asset management strategy and will show you where efficiency may be improved. Perhaps careful asset management has allowed you to “crack the code” of resource use and reduce replacement costs.
Or perhaps you’ve successfully educated your staff to consistently return resources to their proper places so that the subsequent user won’t have to waste time looking for them. If you’ve been able to accomplish this degree of organisational wisdom without the aid of asset tracking software, congrats, but we’ll get to that.
4. Budgeting (and Decisioning) for the Future
Budgeting and planning for current and future operations will become considerably simpler as you start to increase organisational efficiency. You can track how and when essential assets are being deployed more effectively even with a simple pen and paper method, such as sign-in sheets.
For instance, it is realistic to assume that you will need to lock more of your three widgets if you notice that they are continuously being signed in and out. On the other hand, if these same resources aren’t requested for several hours or days, you can have either too much or not enough. Additionally, if you have an excess of something, you may sell it off and reinvest the proceeds in your company.
5. Ensure Compliance with Regulations and Accreditations
This advantage operates on two levels. Since you’re using asset tracking spreadsheet, it will always be simpler for you to ensure (and demonstrate) compliance. Computers don’t lie, in general, but we’ll go into more detail about that in the asset monitoring section below.
However, in some circumstances, you can still utilise a pen and paper, an asset tracking spreadsheet, or other less advanced ways of recordkeeping to prove regulatory compliance. In fact, our customers frequently choose Link Labs to help them with their asset tracking difficulties because maintaining compliance and certification is so important.
Just make sure you are adhering to any rules that are specified. Keep things simple if you can get away with it; otherwise, don’t.
6. Equipment Maintenance
Many businesses, from hospitals to industrial plants, profit from maintaining a history of asset upkeep. In fact, many of them are compelled to do it by law.
For instance, workplaces such as factories and construction sites are required to maintain employee safety, whereas hospitals are responsible for ensuring that medical equipment is functioning effectively. As a result, when it comes to maintaining the health and wellbeing of human capital, these industries are highly strictly regulated.
Documenting adequate equipment maintenance is not only necessary for regulatory reasons, but it can also help ensure that you can take advantage of a warranty if an emergency arises.
7. Reduce Loss
While the majority of people automatically link “loss” and “stealing,” this is frequently untrue. Loss can occur under a variety of different conditions. Maybe you have food or other items in your inventory that expire, like face masks, that are perishable.
You will probably have to bear some of the expense if you don’t have a procedure in place for rotating products and resources at certain periods as part of your overall asset management policy.
Additionally, occasionally people “forget items.” Humans are forgetful and flawed. We lose time searching for things when we forget about them or misplace them.
8. Theft Prevention
However, individuals do genuinely steal things. Industry-specific costs for inventory theft vary widely, but they are generally estimated to cost corporations $50B dollars annually in the U.S. For this reason, the majority of us who have worked in retail have learned that eye contact with customers has been shown to be a theft deterrent.
The fact is that theft is typically motivated by opportunity. Heck, sometimes even nice dogs behave badly. According to research, when the lights are off, our canine friends are four times more likely to steal food from their owners.
However, if people or dogs believe that someone is watching them, they will typically not take the chance. Additionally, having a written asset management policy gives you another opportunity to keep a careful eye on important assets.
After reading about the advantages of asset management, you’ve certainly observed that asset monitoring technology, particularly the…
8 Benefits of Asset Tracking Software
Imagine having a virtual representation of your office with a view of each level and each essential location, allowing you to recognise, track down, and manage key resources such as personnel, tools, and equipment. Well, a concept known as a “digital twin,” or more simply defined, a digital representation of a physical object, makes all of that and much more conceivable.
9. Easily Locate Assets
Let’s imagine you manage an airport and offer travellers the option to rent one of thousands of carts to transport their belongings from their vehicle to the baggage claim. Although they are constantly in use, people leave those carts in the garage, despite the fact that airport staff is keeping them in reserve to help transfer other items from terminal to terminal.
Every time a cart disappears, rental revenue is lost. But you can locate those carts and put them right back into use by employing digital twin technology, also known as asset tracking software. Additionally, tools like the AirFinder SuperTag, which is now in beta, can assist you in finding them both within and outside the terminal building.
Pro Tip: When it comes to the great outdoors, avoid using ordinary GPS asset monitoring systems because their battery life is frequently prohibitively short and they hardly ever function indoors.
10. Proactively Monitor Equipment Condition
Monitoring the state of equipment and assets includes all kinds of incidents, such as shock from falling off a cart or damage from extremes in temperature. In reality, many firms need this kind of data for auditing procedures. For instance, hospitals are required to keep meticulous temperature logs for blood warmers.
Or perhaps you’re looking for early failure indicators and observe that a certain machine is taking longer to finish a given task. If you have asset tracking software, you can check the speed by keeping track of how much time is spent using it over a given period of time.
In other words, you would be able to continuously track the usage of the equipment, allowing you to make repairs or even replacements before they become necessary.
11. Know Where Your Assets Have Been
Although it may seem insignificant, knowing where your assets are at all times, including where they have been, can significantly increase productivity (and therefore, profit).
The fact that each tagged asset keeps a digital imprint means that you will, among other things, have a better understanding of equipment utilisation trends over time. Let’s imagine that one piece of equipment needs to travel throughout your facility repeatedly to be utilised in a new location. Perhaps you ought to locate it in a more practical location; doing so would almost certainly improve office productivity.
The ability to quickly locate lost or missing items thanks to that digital footprint is also a big advantage in terms of cost management.
Finally, the correct IoT asset tracking system gives you a digital paper trail that makes it simple to compile and generate reports. This, of course, eliminates the time-consuming, labor-intensive process of manually tallying totals.
12. Dramatically Improved Work-In-Process (WIP) Tracking
People frequently phone or write us asking for directions to specific parts in vast, multi-stage industrial complexes.
This may sound like a fairly simple operation, but there are actually very few techniques to determine when a certain refrigerator has reached the interior assembly stage in a million square feet of area.
That’s basically because large, open areas provide a lot of logistical difficulties that most indoor positioning systems can’t completely handle. At Link Labs, we are creating very promising technologies to fill this need, however…
13. Reduce Compliance Risks
In the business world, compliance is a significant matter. In addition to the external factors at play, you probably also have internal compliance standards, which is where automated tracking solutions come in handy.
Internally, for instance, it can be crucial to restrict the amount of time spent utilising a specific piece of equipment if you’re running low on it or if people are hoarding it for their own usage.
Furthermore, it’s difficult to think of a firm that isn’t subject to some kind of accreditation or control on the outside. Relating to blood warmer temperatures, hospitals are subject to harsh fines if they are even marginally out of compliance.
This brings up the following point.
14. Ease the Burden of Audits
Asset monitoring software ought to assist you pass audits as well if it lowers your compliance concerns. Absolutely! You may drastically cut down on the work necessary to demonstrate that you are currently in compliance and have been since the last audit by using the correct asset tracking technology.
Pro tip: Consider compliance requirements as you gather requirements for an asset tracking system. It’s always a good idea to incorporate such needs into your system from the beginning.
15. Ensure Employee Safety
We’ve talked a lot about asset monitoring for tools and equipment, but AirFinder by Link Labs also happens to be among the best staff panic button systems available.
Approximately 60% of hospitality workers have reported witnessing such behaviour from visitors, making assault a very serious concern for them. Our company’s solution provides staff members with wearable, covert Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) panic buttons through partnerships with major hotel chains.
As a result, security can be summoned right away in the event of an emergency and the whereabouts of an employee can be determined in real time. Of course, even while assault is not a significant problem in the majority of workplaces, it is a serious worry in any industry where there are lone workers or people who interact one on one with strangers or new acquaintances.
16. Add-On Capabilities
Last but not least, add-on features let you get even more use out of your asset tracking devices by monitoring things like temperature and shock.
Let’s imagine that your company is housed in a sizable structure with central air on the roof. That equipment leaks. However, if you currently have a Bluetooth asset tracking software in place, you can connect additional Bluetooth Low Energy (LE)-capable monitoring devices to that system.
Wrapping Up
These are the 16 advantages of asset management. Whether it’s a budget, compliance, loss, or another issue of equal importance, we hope that this post has served to highlight the entire potential of asset management while addressing the particular problem that piques your interest.
