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These are some exception reports / managing by exception processes that I think are particularly worth taking the time to carry out:
SAM
PO/Invoice reconciliation
Simply put, this process involves ensuring that an invoice is received for every software and maintenance purchase order raised. The reason we focus on invoices is because they are legal proof that the contract [...]

As you’re probably well aware, effective processes are at the core of IT Asset management. If our processes aren’t working properly we will find that our data is inaccurate and we make poor decisions, we make mistakes and spend time and money fixing them up, and we take longer and spend more money on accomplishing tasks [...]

I blithely promised, in the post I made about process, that I would discuss exception reporting in my next post.
Ha! What a joke! I have two draft posts written already, neither of which I am happy to publish yet. I’ve realised managing by exception is a much bigger subject than I initially thought it was [...]

I was thinking about ITAM tools today, triggered by a conversation with someone who ran an ITAM user group. She mentioned that she regularly held user-group get togethers where they would discuss ITAM related topics, and although she tried to encourage policy and process related discussions, the talk always seemed to come around to the [...]

Let’s cover some of the reasons why we track ‘assets’ even though Finance doesn’t particularly care about them.
As asset managers working in an IT department, we actually should be concentrating on keeping systems up and running, and enabling the organisation or business to grow and be successful.
We need to focus on providing accurate data to help [...]

You’ve made the decision to buy an asset! Congratulations! But what do we mean by an ‘asset’, and why do we make a distinction between assets and other things?
Baldly, an asset is something that, if your company went bust and was wound up, would be sold to repay your creditors and shareholders. Sound shocking? Probably because [...]

You will see the concept of a ‘lifecycle’ in many different contexts, and in ITAM both hardware and software go through their own distinct lifecycles. In this post I’m going to focus on hardware lifecycles, but we’ll look at software lifecycles in another post – it’s actually quite a complex subject.
As for hardware lifecycle management… it’s [...]

Knowing how your machines are used is pretty important, but a lot of companies aren’t really that fussed about it. I would argue this is a mistake, and that there are lots of reasons to categorise individual machines by use.
Depending on the way your business uses technology, you will have machines that are used by [...]

I started this blog with the intention of writing about IT asset management, and have so far a total of 6 posts about data management! So far so boring.
I didn’t intentionally plan to do it that way, but I guess it was a case of ‘begin at the beginning’… and ITAM is fundamentally about data. [...]

So we have a rule, which is that data should be stored only in one place.
We identified one exception to this rule, which is that we sometimes need to store data in more than one place if it helps link databases together. Are there any other exceptions?
Yes, of course! There are always exceptions!
The other exceptions [...]