What Types Of Assets Can You Acquire As A Business?

No matter what industry you are in, or how big or small your business is, assets will be required to keep your business operations running smoothly. The management of these assets is critical because you can incur unnecessary expenses if they are lost, broken, stolen or depreciate before their time.

This article will explore the different kinds of assets that businesses rely on and how proper asset management can ensure they are working and reliable when you need them to be.

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How Asset Management Tools Benefits Businesses In All Industries

For companies that need to get the most out of their physical assets throughout their lifecycles, enterprise asset management (EAM) is imperative. Asset management tools and software help companies monitor, manage and report on the status of all their critical assets so they are proactive about solving problems and do not incur unnecessary operating costs.

Bloomberg BNA conducted a survey that revealed 46.8 per cent of respondents worked manually recording assets on spreadsheets for four to five days each month.

The time they spend on asset analysis and preparing strategies can be used for more important tasks. Asset management software keeps track of, monitors, and categorizes all the things your company owns such as products, machines, vehicles, and other items. It offers the following benefits:

Reduce unnecessary expenditures.
Reduce human error.
Make sure that assets are in good condition.
Keeping assets insured and paying taxes will be easier.
Financial reports will be more reliable.
Assets will be easier to manage.
Monitoring fast-moving assets will be easier.
Internal audits no longer require a large amount of time and resources.
Asset records will be more detailed and accurate.

With that in mind, what are the kinds of assets businesses can acquire that can be managed by asset management tools?

Buildings, Property And Facilities

It is important to monitor and track the condition of all of the buildings your company uses across all locations for maintenance purposes. Not only does wear and tear create the potential for parts of your buildings to break or fail, but they could also potentially create safety hazards as well.

But monitoring and tracking buildings and facilities are not just about the physical assets themselves. It is also important to monitor factors like energy consumption (the largest expense in any facility), HVAC requirements, water and gas use and other expenses. With the right asset management tools, you can identify issues and retrofit new technologies that can drive these consumption costs down.

This is not just beneficial for your bottom line but also helps businesses address ongoing pressures to create sustainable work environments.

Computer Hardware And Software

Software and hardware licenses are generally referred to as IT assets. An organization can benefit from effective IT asset management in the following ways:

Asset visibility and control.
Better utilisation of assets.
Complying with audit requirements.
Meeting regulatory requirements.
Reducing hardware and software costs.
Facilitating organisational changes.
Aligning asset costs with services.
Provide configuration data for service management.
Providing accurate decision-making data.

Furniture

Management of furniture inventory assets isn’t something you can set and forget. There are several reasons why organisations should maintain a real-time inventory of their furniture.

You can make better decisions about your needs when you know what you have and where it is located. Not only does this apply to your office inventory, but also to any furniture stored in an off-site warehouse. This information lets you make the most of your existing inventory instead of purchasing new items you won’t use.

By viewing a product’s complete history of maintenance, you can be certain of its condition. By creating work orders, you can track the status of items in need of repair. Facilities managers can also generate and share reports for planning and budgeting purposes using a furniture inventory asset management platform.

Machinery And Plant Equipment

Both motorised and non-motorised machinery assets are managed, monitored, and maintained using asset management software. A strong equipment management program can significantly impact a firm’s ability to deploy its vehicles and equipment where and when it is needed, and to reallocate assets as needed. The software enables firms to track where their assets are located as well as whether they are being used.

Vehicles

Monitoring all of your vehicle assets is one of the most important asset management functions any business will carry out.

Essentially, all of the reasons above apply to vehicles. You need to know where every vehicle in your fleet is located at any time. You need to know the maintenance and service history. You need to know when they are being repaired or – ideally – know when they are due for repair before they break down on the job.

Vehicles are a large expense for most businesses and you want to ensure they are on the road for as long as possible. Asset management software gives you the tools to ensure they are running reliably and optimally at all times.