In the world of business Asset Management immediately evokes associations with hedge funds, IPOs and luxury, while ITAM (IT Asset Management) still remains a blank space for even some IT companies. Asset Management in IT is simply keeping track of equipment and tools at hand and making sure everything is accounted for and put to use. Unfortunately, the importance of a designated Asset Management tools is still underrated. That’s why in most IT companies the whole process of managing assets still consists of a huge entangled Excel spreadsheet and a miserable teammate who puts all the inventory numbers in it and has lost all hope to get this spreadsheet straight. Needless to say, this is a highly ineffective and inflexible “system”.
Nowadays the software market provides a large number of Asset Management systems and frameworks. Yet what are the basic functionalities that make the whole game worthwhile? We believe, that a good Asset Management software should enable a user to:
- tag every asset item with a unique ID number
- track the location and status of every asset item
- get all the relevant data about the item and use it to generate reports
All 5 ITSM aspects are interconnected and support each other. Those are the ways Asset Management contributes to each ITSM aspect in a team:
- as a source of information – to Knowledge Management
- careful monitoring the state of each asset to prevent breakdowns – to Incident and Problem Management
- knowing the technical potential and how to configure it to suit the current situation – to Change Management
JIRA is a modern, agile-centred tool by Atlassian. Primarily, JIRA is an issue tracking solution, yet Atlassian made it so versatile that it can be easily adopted as or transformed into, if you have it installed, a system for managing assets. What is more, it’s highly integratable with both Atlassian and third-party instruments, making it easy to onboard even in a well-established corporate infrastructure.
One of the most efficient Atlassian add-ons for JIRA and Asset Management is Insight. It empowers Asset Management with outstanding visualization of data and automation of routine tasks. Software developers will find Insight extremely useful for managing release information (for example, versions and packages), while business teams will undoubtedly benefit from managing marketing and legal assets data.
Some of the other useful Asset Management features of Insight include:
- QR Codes & Labels printing
- Open API’s
- Permission schemes
Actually, Atlassian offers a wide range of JIRA addons that can perfectly suit you. What to learn more about what Atlassian can offer your team? Turn to Polontech for a consultation and we’ll surely work out something you.
