Keeping track of a company’s technology assets can be a challenging task. In this video, you’ll learn about asset management, configuration management databases (CMDBs), and the procurement life cycle.
Most organizations have a wide variety of technology they use to accomplish their task. This can include all of the mobile devices, laptops, desktop computers, anything that’s in our network infrastructure, such as routers, switches, or firewalls. We also have to think about all of the fiber modules and individual cards that we’re putting into these devices. And all of this information needs to be tracked and managed from one central point.
Having a centralized database with all of this information contained in it allows us to provide better support for all of these different products. When the user contacts us about a problem, we can bring up their entire system with all of the individual components, the make, the model, the date it was purchased, and any other important information that we might need to help resolve this problem.
We can also use this database from a financial perspective. We can create reports showing how much money we’ve spent on these technologies over the last year. We can determine if we have a larger spend on tablets versus laptops.
We can also run audits to make sure that all of these devices are still being used in the organization. And from a tax perspective, it’s useful to understand the depreciation of these devices. So it’s important to know when they were purchased and how long the organization has held on to these assets.
And if you work for a company and they’ve handed you a laptop, you might look at the laptop and notice that there is a tag on the laptop itself. This is an asset tag, and it usually has the name of the organization, along with some type of QR code or barcode, along with a number that is specific to this tag.
Inside of our database, we are associating this specific tag number with the component that it’s connected to. So we can ask our user for the asset number or the asset tag value. And we can bring that up on our screen and see exactly the hardware that we’re talking about.
This centralized asset tracking system is often referred to as a Configuration Management Database or CMDB. This is not just used by the help desk, but used across the organization. This might be used by the IT department so that we can tie a specific asset to a specific individual. So if we bring up a person’s name, we can see if they’ve been assigned a laptop, if they have a mobile device, or if they’re using a tablet.
Our financial department might use this database to understand when these devices were purchased so that they can understand which one of these devices are in warranty and how many of these devices are out of warranty. This might help them understand if they need to allocate funds towards a maintenance program or if they should budget for additional technologies in the coming year. And the licensing team might use the information in this database to understand how much they’re spending on individual software licenses and to get an understanding of what the renewal deadlines might be for these licenses and how much money they’ll need to spend.
Every company has a different process for requesting, purchasing, and then deploying these different technologies. We refer to this as the procurement lifecycle. This is effectively the process used for purchasing this equipment and getting it into the hands of the end user.
This commonly starts with an internal purchase request form that is coming from the user. This will list out all of the different devices this user is requesting. And it usually has information on whether this is something that is budgeted or not. And it might also include a set of formal approvals so you can see exactly who signed off on this user receiving this equipment.
The purchasing department is responsible for receiving these requests from the user and then negotiating with suppliers to find the best deal. This may not necessarily be the provider that has the least cost, because there are a number of terms and conditions that might be associated with this purchase. For example, one vendor might add on an additional year of maintenance, whereas another vendor might not provide that as part of the cost.
And once the purchasing department has decided on a vendor, they can send a purchase order over to that vendor for the purchase. The vendor then provides the products to the end user and then commonly sends an invoice to the purchasing department. This is a request made by the vendor to have the company pay for the products that have been shipped to the user. Usually, there is an accepted time frame between when the invoice is received by the purchasing department and when the payment is made by the accounting department.
As you can see, with this process, there are a series of checks and balances to ensure that the end user is getting the equipment they need, that equipment has been verified as something the user should be purchasing, and we have the proper procedures in place to receive the equipment, be invoiced on that equipment, and then pay the vendor for that service or that product.