A Guide to Efficient Asset Management

Assets are an integral part of any business. This is because assets constitute a financial investment out of which your business will generate turnover. The more efficiently you are able to utilise your assets, the more likely it is that your business will see profits. Asset management should, therefore, be an integral part of any good business strategy.

Identifying Your Business Assets

Business assets can take many forms. Sometimes assets are monetary, and sometimes they are physical. Assets can either be used in the daily running of a business, as in the case of tools or equipment, or they can be items which are to be sold to customers, i.e. products. Anything which can be described as having economic value, constitutes a asset.

Calculating the Value of Your Assets

The monetary value of an asset is rarely fixed. The price of shares can fluctuate, interest rates rarely stay the same, and even physical items will depreciate over time. This means that, if you intend to remain aware of the value of your assets, you will need to track their value over time, against a number of different factors.

Assets can even lose value, in which case you will need to know how to dispose of them properly. This loss of value can occur because the asset in question becomes unusable; if it breaks, for example. Depending on the asset, its loss can constitute a tax ‘write-off’. In this case, you will need to provide details of the assets original value, as well as to what extent the asset has depreciated over time.

Managing Your Assets

Asset management includes keeping a track of the monetary worth of the asset in question. However, in the case of physical objects, it also refers to the allocation, use and physical location of the assets in question. This refers to both the way in which your assets are used, as well as your inventory turnover.

Inventory turnover is perhaps the most important aspect of asset management. Keeping a track of your inventory will allow you to identify which assets need to be invested in, and which have become financially counter-productive.

The Benefits of Proper Asset Management

Asset management is primarily concerned with maximising the efficiency of your assets. This can be enormously beneficial to any company. Asset management will enable you to optimise the internal infrastructure of your organisation, in order to maximise the potential of each asset and fully capitalise upon your investment. This means reducing spending on assets which have become obsolete, as well as making sure that assets are allocated and used properly, in accordance with company guidelines.

The process of asset management will, however, become increasingly more complicated as your business grows, which is why it’s advisable that you invest in comprehensive asset management software, of the sort provided by Assetware.co.uk.

Because asset management software stores all details about your assets on a computerised system which can be easily accessed and updated, it will exponentially streamline your entire asset management process. Not only that, but physical assets can be actively tracked and monitored using optional GPS tags, which can be easily attached to assets and monitored from a central location. This will safeguard your assets against theft or unauthorised use, as well as enabling you to make sure they are deployed properly.

Asset management software will also make it much easier for you to bring your asset deployment into line with the company mission, by more clearly defining the benefits, and potential benefits, of each asset. In this sense, asset management software is much more about simply tracking assets – instead, it is a vital tool for ensuring the positive growth of your business.