Hardware Asset Management

If you want to save money, plan for future business growth, and maximise your team’s productivity, good hardware asset management is one of the key ways to do it.

Knowing the condition of your assets at every stage of their life, how they are affecting your team’s everyday work, and what to do when they reach the end of their service life is vital.

The alternative is a team that struggles with computers that can’t run modern software and hardware that is no longer supported by manufacturers. This creates slow-downs, crashes, and dangerous cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Eventually, poor IT asset management leads to old hardware being disposed of non-sustainably after a snap decision to buy unsuitable new equipment at an unplanned-for cost.

That’s why managing your hardware assets is one of the key parts of Dial A Geek’s Protect & Grow managed services. From buying your devices to tracking who uses them to sustainability, we ensure your business manages its hardware in the smartest possible way.

What is Hardware Asset Management?

Hardware Asset Management (HAM) is a collection of policies and processes that cover how you track and control the hardware assets owned and used by your company. This process starts the moment you buy an asset, continues through its life, and ends when you finally dispose of it.

HAM covers all your physical technology assets, even those in storage. This means end-user devices such as computers, tablets, and smartphones. Network hardware. And peripherals like scanners and printers.

But what is hardware asset management? What exactly does it involve?

HAM handles equipment requests from your team. It includes purchasing the most suitable options. The deployment of devices, including configuring them correctly. Monitoring their use. Maintaining them, where necessary. Finally, retiring the asset sensibly and sustainably.

Effective asset management in IT is vital for all businesses. It reduces costs. It makes it easier to have a predictable hardware budget. You will also spend less on your hardware overall – and it will require less work while enabling your team to do more.

Dial A Geek’s Hardware Asset Management Services

Because of the importance of good IT hardware asset management to everything from your productivity to cybersecurity to your overall IT budget, it’s a key part of our Protect & Grow managed services at all levels (although Protect & Grow Standard only offers basic asset management which does not include warranty monitoring).

This starts with handling purchase requests from you and your team and helping you select the most suitable technology and devices for your needs.

Purchasing should never be a spur-of-the-moment call. It should be a carefully planned event timed to maximise team productivity. This makes sure devices aren’t used to the point where their performance degrades, but also keeps costs down.

We help you forecast and plan for when that time will be from the moment we purchase the equipment and configure it for your team. This configuration will always be in perfect line with cybersecurity compliance standards and other factors.

As your hardware asset manager, we also provide maintenance when those assets need it and plan for their retirement at end of life. This all ensures your technology is working for you, for a change. Cost is minimised. Productivity is maximised. Everything is planned for.

Asset Management Life Cycle

Request

The asset management life cycle starts with requests from within your organisation for tools that help fulfil a business need. We help you consider available solutions and what budgetary expectations are.

Our approach is always guided by the business case for any request and making sure the solution chosen is the most suitable option for your business.

Fulfil

Fulfilling requests for which there is a clear business case and budget requires extensive knowledge of which vendors are out there.

What makes a particular piece of equipment a good or bad choice? What problems do they address? What unique solutions do they offer compared with alternatives?

We also confirm compatibility with your existing system and how easy it will be to integrate with the way you do business.

Deploy

Configuring and deploying the asset and integrating it seamlessly into the other technology that makes up your system comes next. Devices assigned to employees may be signed out and entered onto your device management system for centralised tracking and maintenance.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) personal devices used by your employees go through the same process. This ensures there are no cybersecurity gaps to be exploited and no one is working on devices that cannot integrate fully with everyone else.

Monitor

Remote monitoring of your devices ensures any issues – including cybersecurity threats – can be tracked and identified by us in real time. Sometimes we will even resolve issues before you or your team notices they exist.

Service

Everything from scheduled maintenance to regular updates and upgrades to emergency repairs are frequently required to ensure your technology continues to do what your business needs it to.
Equipment that is being serviced can also be assessed for continued suitability for purpose.

Retire

The final stage of IT asset lifecycle management is retirement. When devices reach what’s called “end of life”, they may need to be retired or replaced.

As a certified B Corporation, Dial A Geek prefers to refurbish old devices rather than recycle them. We have partnered with the award-winning charity DigiLocal to donate refurbished devices for the education of young minds.
End-of-Life Policies and Program
End-of-life is the final phase of a piece of hardware’s service life. An end-of-life product may no longer be supported by the original manufacturer, making upgrades impossible and repairs progressively more expensive.

On top of this, end-of-life devices may not be receiving updates, making them potential security vulnerabilities. They may also no longer support the latest software or run slowly, impairing your team’s productivity.

This all makes removing equipment that has reached its end-of-life stage from your asset management system critical. Equipment that you are saying goodbye to should also be completely scrubbed clean of all previous data during the process. We make sure yours is.

As part of our managed services, we will help you create an effective and sustainable end-of-life policy for your physical technology assets. Hardware end-of-life management should be a natural end to your overall asset management process.

With our focus on sustainability, we always prefer to refurbish rather than recycle. As well as being good for the environment, this can also help you meet your key Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) pledges.

Reap the rewards of smart hardware asset management
Get on top of your hardware asset management if you want to minimise costs, maximise productivity, and save yourself from sudden budgetary shocks caused by unexpected needs to replace failing technology.

Smart management of your physical technology assets ensures yours are always working for your business, empowering your team rather than being a drag on the things they need to get done every day.

It also lets you plan for the future. Because your business is growing. Its hardware needs are likely to expand and change with it. Make sure you know what to expect, so you can build it into your growth plans.

Contact us today to book a cost and commitment-free consultation with one of our experts – the team that has already helped over 1000 businesses in the past 17 years get the best from their use of tech.