What is IT asset management? A plain guide for Indian companies

IT asset management in one paragraph

Every company that gives laptops to its people already does some IT asset management, often in a spreadsheet. ITAM is doing it on purpose: one register for every device, kept current as things are bought, handed out, moved, repaired, returned and retired, so that at any moment you can answer three questions. What do we own? Where is it, and who has it? What is it worth?

The lifecycle of an IT asset

Most of the work, and most of the losses, happen at the hand-offs between these stages.

• Plan and buy: a request, an approval, a purchase order and a bill with GST
• Receive and tag: check the delivery, give each item a tag and record its serial number
• Assign: hand it to a person, who signs for it
• Move and maintain: transfers between offices, repairs, warranty and AMC
• Return: at exit or replacement, with its condition recorded and data wiped
• Retire: sale, donation or e-waste, removed from the register and the books

What to record for each asset

A useful register has the asset tag and serial number, the category and model, the office, the current holder and since when, the condition, and the purchase details: date, cost, vendor, invoice number and warranty end. Our free Excel template has exactly these columns.

ITAM, fixed asset register, and the rest

These terms overlap, and people use them loosely.

• Fixed asset register: kept by finance for the books, with cost and depreciation. Often has no idea who holds a laptop.
• IT asset management: follows each device and its holder; may include software licences.
• Employee asset tracking: the part of ITAM about people: hand-overs, signatures, and getting items back at exit.
• Software asset management: licences and installations, often found by scanning the network.
• Enterprise asset management: machines and facilities, with work orders and preventive maintenance.

Why Indian companies bother

Three reasons come up again and again. Laptops and phones that do not come back when people resign, often discovered only at the Full & Final. Year-end physical verification that takes a week because the register is wrong. And IT spend nobody can explain, because bills, assets and holders live in different places. Data protection adds a fourth: a device returned with someone’s files on it is a risk until it is wiped.

How to start this month

You do not need a big project. A small team can do this in a week.

• Put every device in one sheet with a tag, serial number and holder
• Label everything with a QR tag
• Make every new hand-over signed, against a short written policy
• Tie exits to HR, so resignations start the return the same day
• Count each office once, and fix the register from what you find