Keeping track of your business assets is essential as inventory management because you must know the location, status, maintenance schedule, and other details of your items. Improperly maintained or missing equipment can wreak havoc on profits and compliance, as you are responsible for replacing and finding any worn-out or missing physical assets. Although technology makes this work easier, it can be challenging to know where all your assets are at all times, particularly when they keep moving around. Read on for the top tips on how to keep track of your business assets to help you get the most from your business.
Keep Track of Your Business Assets as They Get In
Identifying all the things that need fixed asset tracking can be a daunting task. Probably, the simplest way to do this is to start tracking all assets as they get to your company, beginning with the first day of business. Including a new asset’s information in your tracking system before you start using it is crucial. By doing this, you ensure that the asset will not disappear before you acknowledge its presence. Although developing an asset tracking system requires you to tag and scan every item, once the system becomes a part of your company’s yearly, month, weekly, or daily rhythm, these tasks become more manageable and communication occurs instantaneously.
Use Distinctive Tracking Numbers instead of the Equipment’s Serial Number
There is a possibility that an asset serial number can be similar to that of another asset. If you use the serial number as the tracking number, the identical numbers will lead to confusion as you will have no way to differentiate between two assets. As a result, the integrity of your business data can be compromised, resulting in inaccurate inventory and customer balances, affecting customer satisfaction, and lowering your rental income. Using a unique asset tracking number rather than the serial number helps you avoid these problems. If the tracking number gets lost, you can still find the asset using its serial number and re-label it properly to maintain the asset’s history.
Understand Your Needed Sustainable Level of Service
Understanding your required sustainable service level will allow you to execute an asset management plan and inform the shareholders about your plans. Quantity, quality, environmental standards, and reliability are some of the factors that help define the level of service and your expected goals, both long-term and short-term. You can utilize information regarding consumer demand, information from utility boards or commissions, and data from other shareholders to identify your level of service requirements. You can update these requirements to account for changes due to regulatory requirements, growth, and technological advancements.
Differentiate between Inventory Tracking and Asset Tracking
Inventory tracking and asset tracking are two different things. Asset tracking involves knowing the location of internal resources required to ensure the continuity of business operations, tracing resources your business has lent out, and monitoring maintenance, depreciation, and warranty contracts. On the other hand, inventory tracking involves managing distributed, consumed, or sold goods, tracing the receipt, storage, outsourcing, and sale of goods, and checking inventory age, turns, and reorder levels. Your business assets depreciate in the long run and need management and frequent maintenance. You can rarely sell them, except perhaps when their life cycle ends. Conversely, your inventory moves quickly from the supply chain to your customers or back to the supply chain to meet consumer demand. However, they both need tracking.
Use CMMS Software to Manage Asset Data
Incorporating computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) software in your asset tracking efforts creates a database for all the information obtained from maintenance monitoring sensors across your company assets. CMMS software develops a framework for how you and your employees can organize this pertinent data and establishes a hierarchy of interoperability regarding how this data affects various business operations. From CMMS software, you can easily deduce how best to handle declining asset performance or a looming failure before it affects productivity. A CMMS software from a reputable asset reliability company like ABS Group helps improve your asset reliability, saving on repair costs.
The tips mentioned above will help you use and collect business data, avoid employee confusion, and give an accurate, real-time condition of each asset in your organization. Irrespective of whether your asset is performing its job from one location or is moving through the supply chain, tracking your business assets will help you avoid many business challenges and make the best use of the existing resources.
short url:
