IT Asset Management

IT Asset Management is a fundamental discipline that enables improved operational service management, cost control and truer understanding of IT's business value. Minerva Enterprises helps organizations develop IT asset management programs that improve service management, optimize costs, improve procurement, and establish IT credibility throughout the enterprise.

Minerva Enterprises can work with you, as a client, to evolve your IT Asset Management program beyond base inventory and tracking responsibilities into a mature cross-organizational cost management and contract management function.

Whether your organization is currently planning to adopt ITIL principles or not, IT Asset Management is fundamental to “running IT like a business.” Forrester says Business Services Management initiatives will, “fail if organizations skip investing in building blocks like the development of an accurate IT asset management system.”

According to Gartner, “customers that commit a minimum of 3 percent of their annual operating budgets to ITAM programs and tools can expect a 25 percent reduction in their total cost of ownership.”

The delivery of quality IT Services depends upon effective and efficient management of assets. If your organization is planning an ITIL implementation, then IT Asset Management is fundamental to providing valuable information for evidence-based priority setting and decision making within many of the ITIL processes. IT Asset Management cross-references to many ITIL v.3 functions: Asset and Configuration Management; IT Financial Management; Availability Management, Service Catalog, Service Level Management, Supplier Management, Problem Management, and many others.

Direct IT Asset Management responsibilities:

• Asset life cycle management – ensuring that your organization’s considerable investment in IT assets are optimally deployed and retired in a controlled way.
• Inventory Management – often in collaboration with the configuration management system.
• Contract Management – managing and enforcing established contract terms and licensing.
• Software License Compliance
• Lease Management
• Cost Information – granular cost capture
• Coordinating cross-organizational cost information to support priority setting and evidence-based decision making for Continual Service Improvement, Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation processes.

Expanded IT Asset Management responsibilities that are similar to elements of other established programs; where process integration remains the key to Service Strategy and IT Financial Management success:

• Spending Management
• Procurement – vendor negotiations; cost analysis.
• Supplier Management – cost aspects of supplier relationships.
• Project Management – cost projections; cost elements of the ROI equation.
• Service Level Management – cost information.
• Demand Management
• Portfolio Management – Asset Portfolio Management helps manage the cost aspects of service portfolio management. Typically, asset costs account for 40% to 60% of the IT budget with associated labor on the assets accounting for two-thirds of the IT budget.
• Budgeting – supplies and analyzes cost information.
• Service Cost Analysis – aligning costs and trends with customer driving trends and the actionable catalog of services; chargeback, if desired.

Robert McNeill and Thomas Mendel, IT Asset Management, ITIL and the CMDB: Paving The Way For BSM, Forrester 2005

William R. Snyder, Establishing an IT Asset Management Identity, Gartner 2006