If there is a problem with IT asset audit, I will ask you whether you are afraid or not.

No one likes audits. As an IT manager, the thing he worries about most is probably not a database dirty read incident, but he is more likely to fall because of an IT asset audit that is "not thoughtful, not clear, and not clear." What's worse is that a negative IT audit is like a report card on management ability, which affects your position and future.

Why does IT asset management often go “wrong”?

There is no small matter in asset audit! For any enterprise or institution, if there is a small problem, it is fine, that is, rectification, but once a big problem occurs, it will be troublesome to leave a label of "asset loss". At the least, it will be punished, and at the most, it will be transferred to the relevant competent department, and even more serious, it will be directly sent to the law enforcement agency. Therefore, no leader of any unit dares to underestimate the audit work. However, in the asset audit work, the management of IT equipment is often the most prone to problems. Why do you say that?

Figure: IT asset management challenges

First of all, many users have not established a complete IT asset management system. In the management process, there is no clear division of labor among the various cross-management departments, and there is a lack of collaboration mechanism between them. Using a set of Excel spreadsheets to manage the entire network's software and hardware is not only prone to data errors and losses caused by human errors, but also unable to establish a dynamic detection mechanism, resulting in inconsistent and incomplete data and the inability to track historical data.

Secondly, IT asset inventory and review consumes a lot of manpower and material resources. If many people underestimate this responsibility, they often cause discrepancies between data and reality, which results in the situation of "internal audit is fine, but external audit is problematic". Successful ITAM depends to a large extent on the cooperation of everyone in the enterprise, and this cooperation can only be achieved under one condition, that is, on the basis of employees understanding their corresponding responsibilities, a more convenient IT asset management method can be achieved. A complete IT asset management solution can help users reduce this work pressure and effectively avoid risks.

In this regard, Beita Software said: "IT asset management provides the most basic object for IT management and IT governance. The quality of IT asset management is directly related to the management level of IT operation and maintenance. Therefore, enterprises must establish complete systems and processes to record the entire process from purchase to use and then to scrapping. Only by linking each link and conducting a comprehensive analysis can we help enterprises take a holistic view, make full use of assets, and thus meet the basic requirements of IT audit work."

Realize the full life cycle management of IT assets

The needs of IT asset management vary at different stages of operation and maintenance services. For example, in the initial stage of operation and maintenance, asset management basically adopts manual recording, and partially realizes electronic ledger management, but various types of information management are scattered, and data are cross-linked and inconsistent; in the stage of operation and maintenance management improvement, IT asset management has changed from the original manual electronic ledger to the development of an operation and maintenance platform, recording various types of assets in the database, and through process updates and centralized management, asset management has been greatly improved. However, the initial state of asset configuration still requires manual entry by the administrator, and routine asset maintenance requires a lot of manual intervention. In management, there are few IT operation and maintenance personnel, heavy workload, and high dependence on personnel. Therefore, with the continuous improvement of IT operation and maintenance level, the problem of slow IT asset management must be made up.

In response to the above needs, Betasoft officially launched Betasoft BTAM (Betasoft IT Asset Management). Betasoft BTAM integrates Betasoft's many years of practical experience, allowing IT operation and maintenance departments to have a clear understanding of the type, quantity, online time, maintenance information, location, responsible person, basic status and other information of all assets (focusing on IT assets), ensuring that all assets are "manageable, visible and trustworthy".

Beita BTAM realizes transparent management of the entire life cycle of IT assets, with the goal of achieving comprehensive improvement in asset reliability, efficiency, service life and life cycle cost, covering the entire process of asset planning, design, procurement, construction, operation, maintenance, scrapping and disposal. At the same time, the platform also avoids the problems of low efficiency and quality of manual management, and provides complete and detailed intelligent reporting functions. Under the premise of meeting safety, benefits and efficiency, it realizes "one object, one source, and responsibility to people" through three-dimensional and multi-dimensional data association.

Figure: BTAM functional architecture

Beita BTAM provides users with powerful and rich matching functions to achieve full life cycle management of IT assets, and establishes a complete asset management platform and operating mechanism from the four levels of "decision management, business application, customization management, and system management." First of all, Beita BTAM can comprehensively manage the hardware information, software information, personnel-related information, asset status, financial-related information, and relationships between assets of assets. Through business functions such as warehousing, out-of-warehouse, registration, transfer, offline, labeling, and inspection, it can uniformly track and query IT and non-IT assets to ensure the rational use and timely maintenance of assets.

In addition, BTAM also makes full use of the dynamic model in CMDB, and provides accurate asset configuration data for CMDB, sorting out the relationships between assets, between assets and businesses, and between assets and personnel, confirming which assets will affect key businesses, and who should be contacted to solve or communicate about which asset problems. Then , users can also use BTAM's reporting function (built-in reports, custom reports, database query reports) to regularly list assets, and keep abreast of asset trends, quantities, and usage levels, as well as changes in asset status such as additions and maintenance.

Generally speaking, IT asset audits have a set of control checklists, in which the first thing to be put is not specific issues such as equipment location and purchase time, but "system inspection". In this regard, Beita Software said: "In the logic of auditing, 'having laws to rely on' is an important step . If even basic management requirements do not exist, there is no question of effectiveness of implementation. Taking these factors into consideration, Beita Software can also combine the actual situation of the enterprise in project services to assist users in taking the first step and formulating scientific, effective and implementable systems and processes. At the same time, by using the intelligent association of related products such as BTRM, BTSO, and BTSM, high-quality IT asset management can be used to support the overall improvement of IT comprehensive governance level."