Assets are the foundation of any organization. Owning assets alone, however, isn’t enough. Whether it’s machinery in a factory, software in an IT firm, or property in real estate, these resources need careful management to deliver real value. That’s where asset management comes in.
The global asset management market, valued at USD 458.02 billion in 2023, is expected to grow at a 36.4% CAGR from 2024 to 2030. This growth is driven by digital transformation and technological advances.
Looking for Asset Management Software? Check out SoftwareSuggest’s list of the Top Asset Management Software solutions.
We’ll now define asset management, look at the benefits of an asset, and find out how to manage assets.
What Is Asset Management?
Asset management is the systematic process of monitoring, preserving, and maximizing assets throughout their existence to guarantee a maximum return on investment. All intangible assets, like digital material and intellectual property, alongside tangible assets like property and machinery, can be included in this.
For example, to avoid downtime, a manufacturing company can use asset management strategies to schedule maintenance and monitor equipment health. This helps them prevent equipment failure and reduce production interruptions, ultimately boosting overall productivity.
Credentials
To deepen the expertise presented here, this guide draws on insights from industry experts in asset management and best practices observed across top asset-intensive industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and real estate.
What Are The Benefits Of Asset Management?
Strong asset management processes offer several benefits, including helping with regulatory compliance of assets and reducing operating expenses. Let’s take a look at some key asset management benefits:
1. Improved Asset Utilization
Before investing in new assets, the asset management software ensures that all available resources are used to their utmost potential. Asset managers can improve resource allocation, lower the need for new purchases, and increase productivity by identifying underutilized assets.
2. Cost Reduction
Asset management lowers replacement costs and helps avoid expensive repairs through proactive surveillance and maintenance. Businesses can extend asset life and prevent emergency repairs by foreseeing asset demands, which eventually saves a significant amount of money.
3. Risk Management
By keeping an eye on assets for wear and tear, proper asset management reduces risks like unplanned downtime or safety problems. Early detection of possible problems helps businesses avoid mishaps, monetary losses, and interruptions to operations.
4. Enhanced Decision-Making
Managers can make well-informed decisions regarding upgrades, replacements, and purchases when they have access to thorough asset data. For example, tracking asset performance trends helps determine when to replace outdated machinery, maximizing return on investment.
5. Regulatory Compliance
In the manufacturing, infrastructure, and healthcare sectors, in particular, asset management is important for adhering to industry rules. Proper documentation and consistent upkeep guarantee that assets fulfill legal requirements, shielding companies from fines.
80% of employees lose 30 minutes each day just finding information—That’s weeks wasted every year! Quick access to assets isn’t just a perk—it’s essential to cutting costs and staying efficient. Source : PROFILETREE
Different Types Of Asset Management
Asset management types vary depending on the assets in question, each with unique approaches and challenges. Let’s take a look at the different types of asset management:
1. Physical Asset Management
Physical assets include equipment, machinery, and buildings. Managing these assets involves regular inspections, preventive maintenance, and adherence to safety regulations.
Example: A logistics company might use physical asset management to monitor vehicle maintenance and ensure timely repairs, minimizing the risk of delays.
2. Digital Asset Management
Digital asset management involves organizing, storing, and retrieving digital assets like images, videos, and documents for quick access and use.
Example: A media company could use a digital asset management system to organize and retrieve branded visuals efficiently for campaigns.
3. Financial Asset Management
Financial assets include investments like stocks, bonds, and real estate. Managing these assets focuses on maximizing ROI, reducing risk, and meeting financial goals.
Example: Investment firms and financial institutions use financial asset management to maximize portfolios and meet client growth goals.
Suggested Read: Asset Management vs Investment Management: Key Differences
4. Infrastructure Asset Management
This approach is essential for public infrastructure like roads, utilities, and bridges. It prioritizes long-term maintenance and risk management for these critical assets.
Example: Governments use infrastructure asset management to track the condition of bridges and plan timely repairs, ensuring public safety.
Data and analytics will lead the way in asset management for the next 3-5 years or more. Both managers and owners are focused on tapping into big data’s potential with tools like AI, ML, and cloud computing to stay competitive. Source : BNY
Popular Examples Of Asset Management In Various Industries
Businesses can increase overall productivity, lower expenses, and improve operational efficiency by carefully managing their assets. Here are a few examples of how asset management is used to promote long-term growth and add value across multiple sectors:
1. Manufacturing
Asset management in manufacturing includes tracking performance, optimizing machinery, and maintaining equipment to prevent downtime and increase machinery lifespan.
Manufacturing industries can retain their market share by using strong asset management processes, which can result in greater production rates and improved equipment reliability.
2. IT Sector
Asset management is essential to the IT sector to track licenses, manage hardware and software assets, and maximize use. Effective IT asset management can cut IT spending and hardware replacement expenses by avoiding redundant purchases and improving resource use.
35% of company data is left unprotected! That’s a huge risk for data breaches. Smart asset management is one of the best, most critical security practices for IT and could protect you against cyber attacks. Source : PROFILETREE
Must Read: IT Asset Management Best Practices
3. Real Estate
Asset management helps with property upkeep, tenant interactions, and lease tracking in the real estate industry. Through better tenant retention and effective property management, asset management techniques have been demonstrated to maximize return on investment and raise rental income.
4. Healthcare
Asset management is essential in the healthcare industry for monitoring and maintaining medical equipment, guaranteeing adherence to healthcare rules, and reducing equipment downtime. An efficient system can cut down on equipment downtime, which is important for both operational effectiveness and patient care.
How To Implement Asset Management Successfully?
Businesses must follow these important steps to optimize assets and generate value consistently while implementing asset management:
Step 1: Asset Identification
Evaluate everything. Make sure you identify and catalog all of your assets, including their locations, operations, and ownership information. It lets you see exactly what you have and where it is.
Step 2: Asset Valuation
Next, determine each asset’s worth. It involves looking at the market value, usage history, and condition. Knowing the worth of each asset helps in resource allocation and smart budgeting.
Step 3: Asset Tracking
It’s time to track when you know the value. To keep your records current, monitor the location and performance of each asset. It guarantees you’re prepared to deal with any problems right as they arise.
Suggested Read: What Is Asset Tagging and How Is It Used?
Step 4: Maintenance Planning
Once tracking is established, schedule routine upkeep. Planning maintenance keeps everything working well and assists in avoiding unplanned malfunctions.
Step 5: Data-Driven Decisions
Lastly, make strategic decisions based on the information you have gathered. When it comes to determining when to replace an asset or how much to spend on maintenance, your asset data will help you make the best decisions.
Interesting Read: On-Premise vs Cloud Asset Management: Which One is For You?
7 Best Practices For Effective Asset Management
Implementing these asset management practices can ensure lasting asset value by promoting consistency, accuracy, and data-driven decision-making.
Each practice plays a crucial role in optimizing how assets are maintained, utilized, and replaced, ultimately supporting financial health and operational stability. Let’s take a look:
1. Automate Data Collection
Data collection is automated by using IoT (Internet of Things) sensors and asset management software, which greatly lowers human error and manual labor. Real-time insights into asset performance, utilization, and condition are made possible via automated data collection.
This immediate access to reliable information enables businesses to better track assets, react to problems more quickly, and make sure that choices are based on the most recent facts.
2. Implement Predictive Maintenance
By using data analytics to predict when an asset is likely to need repair, predictive maintenance enables businesses to proactively service assets before they break down. This prevents wear and tear from becoming a serious problem, extending asset life and lowering expensive downtime.
To avoid unplanned breakdowns, industrial equipment vibration levels can be monitored to determine whether a component needs maintenance.
3. Track Depreciation Accurately
Compliance and financial transparency depend on accurate depreciation tracking. Businesses can learn about an asset’s financial lifespan and make plans for future replacements and maintenance by tracking its depreciation over time.
Better investment and replacement decisions are supported by this method, which also guarantees that asset values are appropriately reflected in financial reports.
4. Create Asset Inventory
A thorough and recent asset inventory gives a clear picture of all the assets that the organization has, highlighting the distinction between asset management and inventory management. With the use of this inventory, asset tracking is made simpler, which enables asset usage monitoring, loss prevention, and policy compliance. Organizations may maximize asset use and prevent unnecessary acquisitions by being fully aware of their assets.
5. Rate And Assess Asset Conditions
Organizations can find assets that might be underperforming, out-of-date, or nearing the end of their lives by routinely evaluating asset conditions. Businesses can optimize asset value and lower the risk of unplanned failures by prioritizing maintenance, upgrades, and replacements based on the condition assessment of each asset.
By 2025, global assets under management are set to hit an astounding $145.4 trillion—an all-time high that’s reshaping the financial landscape! Source : empaxis
6. Focus On Change Management
Organizations can handle transitions like upgrades, replacements, or adjustments in asset use more easily when they implement effective change management processes. It guarantees that employees are ready to work with new resources and reduces operational interruptions.
Effective change management enables businesses to keep asset management plans in line with changing business requirements and sustain productivity during transitions.
7. Calculate Replacement Cost And Value
Companies can more precisely plan capital expenditures by calculating the replacement cost and residual value of assets. Better financial forecasting becomes possible with this approach as it enables firms to foresee future investments required for asset replacement or maintenance.
To maximize an asset’s overall worth to the company, decisions about whether to repair, repurpose, or retire it are also influenced by these expenses.
The tools listed here are selected based on user feedback, industry reputation, and feature sets that align with various asset management needs. No affiliations are held with the tools listed below.
Top 3 Tools And Software For Asset Management
Selecting the right tools for asset management can simplify operations, improve asset tracking, and enhance decision-making. Here are three top asset management tools that cater to a variety of industry needs and organizational sizes.
1. Asset Panda
Asset Panda is a flexible solution that gives companies customization for monitoring and controlling assets in various places. Barcode scanning is one of the features that makes asset location tracking easy and simplifies asset check-in and check-out.
Additionally, the platform allows the creation of comprehensive maintenance schedules and reports, meeting the needs of sectors like healthcare and education, where asset visibility and control are important.
Features
- Asset lifecycle management
- Fixed asset management
- Order management
- Serial number tracking
- User management
Pricing
- Custom pricing
- 14-day free trial
- Asset Panda adapts to unique business processes, unlike most preset tools.
- It offers versatile tools that work for various industries.
- Adding asset data is simple, with effective management features.
- The dashboard lacks depth, and navigating between assets can be cumbersome without a direct “next asset” option.
- Sessions time out quickly, often redirecting to incomplete report views instead of the main list, disrupting workflow.
2. ServiceNow
ServiceNow’s strong IT service management is well-known, and its asset management features are as remarkable. Asset lifecycle tracking, asset utilization monitoring, and seamless integration with IT processes like incident and change management are all made possible by the platform.
With ServiceNow, teams can manage everything from asset decommissioning to procurement, giving them a comprehensive picture of both IT and non-IT assets.
Features
- Cost management
- Incident management
- Issue auditing
- Request assignment
- Self-service portal
Pricing
- Essentials: $10
- Standard: $25
- Enterprise:$50
- Premier: $100
- ServiceNow is user-friendly and quick to set up, streamlining requests and ticket management.
- Supports custom workflows, change management, and chat features to fit organizational needs.
- Simplifies report analysis, reducing IT workloads and boosting user satisfaction.
- ServiceNow offers a comprehensive range of tools to streamline workflows.
- Designed to support complex processes and boost productivity at scale.
3. IBM Maximo
IBM Maximo is an all-inclusive asset management and wealth management platform made to maximize the efficiency of tangible assets in industries, including transportation, utilities, and manufacturing. It uses predictive maintenance to anticipate and address asset issues before failures occur.
IBM Maximo supports operational efficiency across asset-intensive industries by allowing organizations to extend asset life, decrease downtime, and reduce maintenance costs through real-time monitoring and analytics.
Features
- Compliance management
- Incident reporting
- Maintenance scheduling
- Status tracking
- Sustainability management
Pricing
- Custom pricing
- 14-day free trial
- Technicians can access and update data from anywhere, boosting efficiency.
- User-friendly and integrates smoothly, ideal for frequent use.
- Reliable customer support for any feature issues.
- IBM Maximo relies heavily on internet access, causing disruptions in data sync when offline.
- It has a steep learning curve and requires significant setup resources, challenging for smaller teams or tight budgets.
Conclusion
Asset management is important for organizations to maximize the utility, lifespan, and value of their resources. Through strategic asset tracking, maintenance, and planning, businesses can avoid costly downtime, optimize resource allocation, and support long-term growth.
Next Steps: Begin implementing best practices suited to your industry, consider asset management software options, and reassess your strategy periodically to ensure alignment with organizational goals.
Expert Insights:
Asset management is about using the data to make smarter choices. When you focus on getting the most out of your assets, you not only cut costs but also boost long-term value and ROI.
– Shaily Aditya, AVP Sales
Priya is a seasoned writer with expertise in the SaaS industry. With over five years of experience in the field, she deeply understands the requirement of this specific industry, its techniques, and tools. Her articles, whitepapers, and blog posts are known for their clarity, practicality, and actionable insights. Priya also possesses in-depth knowledge of SEO and content marketing, which enables her to develop effective strategies to increase website traffic and improve brand visibility.
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