Managing a business, overseeing all necessary functions, helping it grow positively as well as assessing the faults, weaknesses, and strengths, all these important factors combined in appropriate quantities help bring in laurels to any Company. However, no Company is whole, without a finite number of Assets.
Assets can be anything from property to equipment, that you lease or rent for business operations. You can alternately view assets as a means of stabilizing goodwill or customer relations.
In any given business, the range of Assets can be varied, from Office equipment like Computers and Tablets to raw materials and cash or the reputation of your Company. Assets are broadly categorized as:
- Current Assets: They come with a short life span and can be easily dissolved to give quick cash, like cheque or investments
- Fixed Assets: Are used in the long-term and not likely intended to be cash material, like property or tools
- Tangible Assets: They are physical resources or financial resources for your business
- Intangible Assets: They hold large business value, like patents or trade secrets
What role do Assets play in the growth or success of a Company?
To understand the role of Assets in a Company’s success, one must first realize the importance of said Asset. A good understanding of which assets furnish potential savings and which can be used in the long-run or for backup, allows you to accordingly set your asset priorities.
In general, Assets help a Company to:
- increase the business value
- generate cash-flow
- facilitate business operations
Keeping in mind the efficiency of business operations, you can either transfer or sell Company assets and manage tax bills or aim to reduce them.
Safeguarding the Company Assets
Assets are deeply linked to a business and any harm to them is eventually going to reflect on the overall growth of your Company, which is why safeguarding them is equally essential. The main aim behind protecting assets is to reduce the risks to the Business.
- Any faults or malfunctions with the production machinery in Manufacturing Companies lead to inefficiency of production, wasted resources, lost production time as well as raising safety risks within the manufacturing unit.
- Ensure to protect your hard-earned patents and trademarks by any infringement attempts.
- For small businesses, the operating resources like premises or equipment make the majority of assets and must be maintained and protected.
How do Assets Determine a Business Value?
Assets that represent a significant portion of any business, end up on the Balance sheet, presenting a facet of the financial position of the Company. Thus, managing them efficiently during their life-cycle becomes fundamental, as a single error in evaluation leads to incorrect Tax reporting. To sum it up, developing a good habit of maintaining precise asset records leads to hassle-free benefits for the Company, such as
- attracting investors and assuring shareholders
- increasing a positive outlook towards your Business
- giving you an accurate record of profits and losses
- giving you objective and clear views of your Company’s finance and Profitability factor
What is the Purpose of Asset Management?
Asset management, as a result, furnishes the best methods to plan and maximize the Investment returns as well as minimize the potential losses. Focusing on the details of Asset Management, we realize that several smaller goals lead to a bigger purpose. These smaller goals help in efficiently implementing the Asset management procedure.
- Identifying Waste
Idle time between process sequences, Over-production, Inefficient workflows, Excess inventory is some potential causes of waste production. Visibly identifying these drawbacks helps corporations to better update the value of an asset and make informed decisions.
- Improving utilization, efficiency, and performance
Being able to view your Capital investments objectively, gives you the advantage of re-configuring workloads to extend the asset lifespan and appropriate distribution of assets to balance and speed up the processes between idle assets and maxed-out assets.
- Facilitation of Data Collection
Asset management negates the overload of data while simultaneously furnishing the right amount for informed decision making. Decisions made after a comprehensive comparison between different factors, like asset performance under suitable conditions, conducive environment for longer shelf-life of assets or identifying quality control of assets, over time point to a significant list of sound investments.
- Maximizing Investment Returns
Asset management involves streamlined processes that boost the bottom line of business. Regular maintenance allows longer and efficient use of expensive assets; workflows become more balanced and the monitored scheduling of assets that can be shared between departments eliminates the need to invest in excess duplicate assets.
What are the Benefits of Asset Management?
Asset Management at its core can be considered a set of the best possible management practices adopted by a community to assure the delivery of the most cost-effective solutions by utilizing the optimum level of services available. Adopting these practices as a whole allows corporations and communities to find relief in the form of funding for further investments while employing the assets for their entire life-cycles but at minimal risk.
Additional benefits include:
- Better Financial returns
- Increased reliability with shareholders
- Ease of trace of decisions
- Knowledge management
- Higher Customer satisfaction
- Federal Funding eligibility
- Develop good business practices
- Cost-effective savings
- Compliance with legislation’s and reliability with regulations
- Long-term stability production
- Increasing goodwill and reputation with stakeholders
- Use of assets for their full life-cycle
- Better management of risks
- System integrity in the long-run
Not a One-Solution-Fits-All Approach
Asset Management is a combination of mutual processes, like operations, control, finance, risk management, Human Resources and more. Far from being an isolated activity, Asset Management can function optimally only if the various processes integrate well with each other.
That said, the module for Asset Management differs from organizations to corporations. Some of the main factors to consider would be the size of your Company, the risk limit of the Company operations and stakeholders as well as the overall complexity of your finite assets.
How does Asset Management Software help to keep proper records of Assets?
Maintaining assets is easier said than done and the capability to keep track of all the Assets in a Company is a pre-requisite for its success. Having Asset management policies in place is a starting step but effectively following it requires a definite system that can handle all the intricacies of implementation.
This is where the Fixed Asset Management Software (FAM) comes in. Essentially made to handle all operations related to maintenance and management of assets, the FAM Software helps you get the most out of the asset’s entire life-cycle by accurately tracking their depreciation values.
What is a Fixed Asset Management Software?
A tried and trusted program that helps boost the efficiency of businesses and aids the ease of use of a code-based Asset Management system, is represented by the Fixed/Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Software.
Available in different Software categories for different types of Companies, Software solutions are offered with Comprehensive FAM with the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS).
Features of the Asset Management Software System
Routine upkeep of your Fixed assets becomes an essential factor in reducing potential repair or malfunction costs. Simply ensuring something as simple as the maintenance of a machine can give you large-scale benefits like increased reliability on the asset, increased production, savings in the operational budget and reduced downtime on the asset.
Employing a handy tool like the FAM Software allows you to realize long-term goals while keeping the assets secure. With the wide range of features that come with a reliable FAM Software, investing in one is the practical way forward.
Asset Life-cycle Management
The main feature of every FAM Software, the Asset Life-cycle Management feature utilizes a barcoding technology to track assets, acquiring real-time data of costs or pick-ups as well as identifying issues and accordingly making changes to the maintenance plans for immediate use or long-term need.
- Asset documents, photos, videos
- Purchase/Lease/Rent Information
- Expiration Date/ Service Contract Information
- GPS Pin Drop/Mobile Audit
- Asset Transactions
- Status Updates
- Life-cycle monitoring/Depreciation
- Repair Tracking
- Maintenance Scheduling
- Bulk Material Allocation
Inventory Management
Through the Barcoding system, the Software seamlessly manages the tracking of supplies, billing of tools and other extra parts and maintaining a complete ledger of resources available.
- Inventory Management of Multiple-sites
- Serialization and Lot control
- Inventory Transfers, Allocations, and Substitutions
- Automated Reorder
- Material Billing
- Supplier Information Management
- Cycle Counting
- Stock Level Metrics
Predictive and Preventive Maintenance
Predictive Maintenance translates to taking a proactive approach on maintenance. Majority of companies have started realizing the potential of detecting asset issues beforehand in reducing the overall maintenance and repair costs while at the same time seeking out optimum functioning from them.
- Management of Parts and Components
- Large Inventory Pool
- Condition Maintenance and Consumption levels
- Reverse Logistics
- Warranties and Preventive Maintenance
- Regulatory Compliance Management
- Vehicle Maintenance Repair Standards
- Management of Faults
- Creation of Templates
Mobile Access and Software Integration
Integrating Mobile devices with Business operations is the need of the hour for the seamless efficiency of businesses. The advantage of being connected with your business from anywhere with your Mobile device is the ease of access to information about your Assets. Since any issue with your assets can arise at any time of the day, the Mobile Access feature becomes an invaluable feature to have in any FAM Software.
- Data Export/Import
- Apple and Android Compatible
- Mobile Integration and Security
- Bar-code Scanning capability with Mobile device
- Report Generation
- Human Capital Management
- Business Process Integration’s
- Perform Custom Actions from Mobile App
Benefits of Fixed Asset Management Software System
- Improved Security
The FAM Software makes it very easy to keep track and record of all asset data accurately. This, in turn, reduces the likelihood of human error and if any such incident were to occur, you would have the data on hand to learn from your mistakes. Every Log-in/Log-out action by personnel is recorded and active security ensures that only recognized and authorized personnel can access sensitive information.
- Cost Reduction, Budgeting, and ROI
Operations that make a business more efficient are always in high demand and the FAM Software does exactly that. Features that help with accurate budgeting track Asset depreciation by Predictive Maintenance. Notifications are sent when an asset is about to reach the end of its life-cycle, thereby giving you advanced time to decide whether to replace the unit or purchase a new one.
Cost Reduction can be taken care of by the Inventory tracking feature that allows you to take note of excess inventory and where which component is stored, instead of wasting revenue, time and manpower on unnecessary actions.
- Accuracy and Transparency Guaranteed
Since FAM Software is completely automated without much human interference, the likelihood of manual errors is greatly reduced. The data for regular Report making is obtained by precise tracking of all transactions, inventory stocks, personnel wages and other factors instead of maintaining tedious spreadsheets.
With added pressure from Regulatory agencies and Government bodies to furnish accurate Business reports, the transparency aspect of all operations is taken care of by the reliable FAM Software features.
How do you know If your Company requires the FAM Software Services?
Although investing in the Fixed Asset Management Software is an added advantage to any Business, small businesses usually do not require the advanced features of the Software. They can manage well with the resources at their disposal since they have a small number and often very limited assets.
If at all the Business is planning to expand or add new assets in the year to come, consider perusing through the different Software’s and assess which Software might be suitable for your business and if you require the services.
Big Businesses, however, may feel the need for the FAM Software, especially those that have numerous fixed assets in multiple locations or properties. The maintenance procedure is verily made easy and the Business will surely see long-term profits with this worthy investment.
Just as Asset Management policies differ from Company to Company, Asset Management Software Services also differ depending on the requirement of the Business. The only way to be sure you have invested in the right Software is to spend considerable time doing your research and finding the compatibility factor of the features of the Software with your Business specifications.