practical-itam.co.uk

I thought I might have a bit of a brainstorming session about what processes we actually need to put in place.
Where to begin? A good place is the beginning, I guess. Which for most people is when they join a company or organisation. We need to have processes in place to ensure that new joiners [...]

I thought I might do some thinking about what processes we need to implement to achieve good SAM, and I thought (just for fun!) that I would do this in the context of Critical Success Factors (CSFs)  and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). I’ve never expressly done this before, so if anyone feels they could improve [...]

So as promised, here are my top tricks for effective management of support, maintenance and subscriptions. They are in no particular order!
Storage
Support, maintenance and subscriptions are all types of contracts. You should scan them in for your own reference and as a back-up, and send the originals for storage by the legal department in their [...]

So, you’re an IT Asset Manager, and you have lots of people telling you how important IT Asset Management is, and how important your role is, while asking you to design and implement effective ITAM processes. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll keep bumping up against regular road-blocks and people who’s actions speak rather [...]

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 may have noticed, I firmly believe that managing by exception is your key to efficient, cost effective IT asset management…. not that I want to harp on the subject particularly….but….
Essentially, regular exception reporting allows us to begin managing by exception - so we can focus on correcting the small number of inaccuracies in our asset records [...]

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 [...]

Sorry to go all theoretical on you again, but I find it quite helpful to bear in mind the DIKW heirarchy when planning exception reporting.
We have data in abundance in IT, and exception reporting can be very powerful in moving us beyond data to create information – answering the “who”, “what”, “where” and “when” questions, and allowing [...]

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 [...]

Process! How boring! We want sexy discovery tools, exciting new gadgets! We want lively debates on tricky subjects like software licensing.
Well tough! If you want to do ITAM properly, you need to think very hard about process!
The twin drivers of ITAM are software compliance (so we don’t break the law) and configuration management (so we provide [...]