Martin Spears, MBA, CSPO, CSM
We’ve seen it happen too often with our clients: too many people are keeping track of company assets in different platforms. Or they are still using spreadsheets to manage data related to company resources. This results in poor-quality data riddled with inaccuracies, which prevents teams from making quick, timely decisions that are needed to keep pace with today's fast-moving business landscape.
Unfortunately, low-quality data comes with a big price tag. According to a survey from Gartner, organizations attribute an average loss of $15 million per year to poor-quality data.
To avoid the high costs and negative impacts of low-quality data, organizations must define and implement an asset management strategy with the right technology. This involves understanding the big picture of how your IT processes work and configuring your software to support those processes.
Asset Management with Atlassian’s Assets
For businesses looking to improve how their asset management life cycle, Atlassian’s Assets tool offers a solution. When configured with the leading ITSM platform, Jira Service Management, Atlassian’s Assets helps teams seamlessly manage their assets and provides powerful insights that enable well-informed, real-time decision-making.
In this article, we share tips for improving your asset management life cycle so your teams can gain visibility into company assets and their interdependencies. We also explore a use case where Gingko Bioworks implemented Atlassian’s Assets with Jira Service Management to manage company assets, which saved the biotech company time and money.
1. Understand Your Company's Asset Data
When looking for any CMDB solution like Assets, you should consider what types of assets you need to track and what information applies to each type of asset. For example, tracking desktops can be different from tracking mobile devices. Some assets may come with serial numbers, model numbers, maintenance schedules, and warranty information, while others may not have any identifying information. In this case, you need to create your own identifiers. Here are some questions to ask yourself to get more familiar with your company's assets:
- How are the assets currently tracked?
- Do they have unique identifiers? If yes, what are they?
- Can your assets be grouped by other features?
- What data does your company need to access or report on when it comes to company assets?
2. Understand Your Asset Lifecycle
Typically, new assets are purchased when someone identifies a need. Some companies simply trust their employees to get whatever they need to do their jobs, no questions asked. Other organizations have a formal request process where they review the business justifications and the expected benefits, then approve or decline based on their thresholds for ROI. When thinking of the current life cycle of an asset at your company, here are some questions to consider:
- When procuring a new asset, what steps need to be followed? Is there a formal request process in place?
- Once the asset has been acquired, what happens next? How many teams are involved with managing the asset? What information does each team need to do their part?
- In your current process, how are assets referenced?
- What happens when an asset is no longer useful and gets replaced?
3. Improve & Scale Your Asset Management Strategy
Now that we have considered your current process for managing the asset life cycle, it’s time to start your continuous improvement and expansion phases.
- How can we improve asset tracking? What parts could be more efficient? What gaps need to be filled
- What manual processes can be automated?
- What does our ideal process look like and how can we get there?
- What similar processes are already in place that we can use as a baseline?
4. Configure Atlassian Assets
Atlassian Assets started as a database for asset and configuration management or a CMDB. So, how does Assets work? The asset data is stored in Object Schemas and you can have multiple Object Schemas to fit your needs. The hierarchy for each schema starts with Object Type at the top, and under each Object Type you have various sub-levels called Objects.
The individual assets typically live at the Object level and the Object Type is a parent level used to group the assets together. You can further define your Object Types and Objects by adding attributes with valuable data.
When integrated with Jira Service Management, Assets enables organizations to easily update asset information, providing teams and stakeholders with access to real-time, quality data that supports well-informed, timely decisions.
Assets In Action With Ginkgo Bioworks
Our client Ginkgo Bioworks managed and tracked assets in disparate systems like Excel spreadsheets and Slack. However, as the leading biotech company matured, they could no longer sustainably scale this way of working. Plus, they needed to find a way to reduce costs and time spent on managing company assets.
To support its Enterprise Service Management (ESM) strategy, Ginkgo needed a more comprehensive solution. They partnered with Praecipio to implement Assets with Jira Service Management to centralize support ticketing, standardize processes for purchasing capital equipment, and improve governance.
Watch this on-demand video from Team ‘23 to learn why Ginkgo Bioworks chose Assets to manage the asset lifecycle for laboratory equipment and how they configured Assets to improve productivity, collaboration, and big-picture visibility for teams. You will also learn the specific financial requirements and functionalities needed in a CMBD and how Assets exceeded the need.
Want to know more about Gingko Biowork's journey to become a more cloud-first enterprise? Read about their migration Atlassian Cloud migration.
Next Steps to Improving Your Asset Management Strategy
Having an asset management strategy and the technology to support it is critical for growing organizations that want to scale service management practices across the enterprise. When integrated with Jira Service Management, Assets helps your organization collect asset data in a centralized place–from computers to software licenses and office furniture.
If you want to say goodbye to your teams wasting time in spreadsheets and making unnecessary purchases based on inaccurate information, Praecipio can help. As an Atlassian Specialized Partner in ITSM, Praecipio has supported hundreds of organizations in driving collaboration and cultivating a customer-centric mindset among service teams with our Jira Service Management implementations.
Interested in learning more about the financial impact of Jira Service Management? Read our whitepaper, Build a Collaborative Ecosystem with Jira Service Management, or reach out to our team about modernizing the way your business works.
