Best IT Asset Management Software

Managing IT assets can feel like quite a cumbersome task, especially when the said assets also involve those other business units depend on. Therefore, choosing a system to do this is a task that requires quite a bit of dedicated attention.

Our intention with the information that we provide is to ensure you know what you should be thinking about before you choose. The list below is exactly what you need to start that journey of making the most optimal choice.

A Look at the Top IT Asset Management Software Systems

Now, you have had a great first look at the top IT asset management system options available on the market. As you browse your initial thoughts, you can move forward and explore the rest of the information we’ve put together for you.

How We Created the List of the Top Systems

First, we catalog the top 100 products from multiple ranking services. Next, we capture key metadata and read multiple user and expert reviews on each. A review then takes place of recorded demos, and we also use trial versions of the available systems.

Expert user experience analysts then review usability and design. Finally, we capture the trend, social listening, and product data from each system. With all that, we then assign a score and a rank to each product.

The List Verdict

Pinning down their best IT asset management software system requires a unique understanding of business objectives. Naturally, there are features out there that are likely going to have an appeal across the board.

Your intention, however, is to balance these with the challenges that your specific team or company is having. This means that the optimal selection for you would differ from that for another organization.

That’s why we use the ranking system we did, as it allows us to capture the best set of collective options on the market. Recall that this is a collation after reviewing the best of 100 different competing products. 

Therefore, each solution presented can be of tremendous use, depending on what your use case demands from the product. We cannot stress the individual need enough, and that’s why we recommend that you take a couple of extra steps before making your eventual selection.

The most paramount of these is testing every IT asset management system you can to do a bit of a dry run and experience what its use would feel like for you and your team members. Software vendors often offer limited trials or curated demos, and we recommend taking advantage of both.

The former provides you with hands-on experience that tells you if the program appeals to your current workflow or not. On the other hand, the vendor can provide internal expertise during the demo and answer any potential queries you may have.

Now, it’s time for us to shift our focus to more of a deep dive into the specific elements that represent the best IT asset management software option.

IT Asset Management Software Overview

Remember that asset management consists of a collection of different functions that come together to create a whole system. With that in mind, the information that we provide below is going to be based on an adequate coverage of not only watch these elements are, but also the kind of value that bringing all of them together can create for the business.

What is the Best IT Asset Management Software?

The key factor here is the use of the word “best.” The IT asset management system you implement in your business must undoubtedly be the top solution you can get your hands on when you weigh all your decision-making points.

Doing this effectively means understanding features that directly relate to the challenges that you are having; for example, imagine that your current situation sees you always reordering late. 

Maybe end users rely on the IT department for peripherals, and the team seems to always realize that none are available when a user requests one and the inventory is empty.

In this case, a reorder notification feature may be the most important element of the system for you. Therefore, you would want to ensure that any program you evaluate can provide these notifications in a way that is engaging enough to alert the team.

This is a single example, but you want to apply it to every IT management problem you face.

What Problem Does IT Asset Management Software Solve? 

The first users of an IT asset management system are the IT staff members doing the dissemination. Second, there is the IT coordinator if one is present. Third, if the program allows for it, users may use the system to make requests for items they need.

Considering all three use cases, here are a few of the things that such a system can bring to the company:

• Proactive reordering – It’s inconvenient enough that you are only finding out that items need to be reordered when they are requested and have finished. Furthermore, the fact that an order must be made and there is a waiting period makes it even more inconvenient. Knowing when reorder is necessary is a huge plus.

• Quantity knowledge – Since your system keeps a record of how much of each asset is present, you can evaluate your current stock position without having to do a physical manual check.

• Accounting – It becomes that much easier to know who has what, and when the person may have received it.

IT Asset Management Software Meaning

An IT asset management system allows for effective management and monitoring of the company’s assets.

It optimizes several key processes including purchase, deployment, utilization, maintenance, and disposal of items, allowing the team that has this portfolio to act efficiently and have a greater capacity for other focal areas.

Main Features of IT Asset Management Software

In your quest to find the best IT asset management software option, you must account for several base features, alongside the ones that are essential to your unique needs. Here is a look at three of the most fundamental features of these systems:

• Notifications – Maintaining a database of crucial information is one thing. However, when that information translates to key decision-making insights, it should be communicated in the form of alerts or notifications. 

• Asset Tracking – Your team must be able to maintain a comprehensive overview of all IT assets until they are written off for disposal.

• Real-time information – When and how your system updates is also another consideration. You must always have the latest details at your fingertips, with potentially the ability to view the series of events leading to the current state.

Benefits of Using IT Asset Management Software

Before you select your IT asset management system, a cost-benefit analysis may be completed. If so, a part of the process is naturally going to be evaluating what kind of benefits you can derive from implementing the program into your workflow.

Gain a Comprehensive View of Your IT Assets

This is the primary use case you are hoping to achieve with your purchase. Though the word “view” is used, what you want to achieve is a lot more complex than simply being able to see a few data points about your assets.

What you want is the ability to combine the data with other functionality to be able to manage inventory effectively while being able to report on its state accurately and easily enough.

Unnecessary Purchase Cost Avoidance

Late reorders represent one side of the coin whenever asset management is not effectively handled. The other side of that coin is early reordering. Typically, effective asset management means reordering when a certain minimum quantity is reached.

Unfortunately, improper management often sees over-ordering because of a lack of proper information on what asset quantity looks like at any given time. 

Therefore, when your new system begins to demonstrate its value, you only order when you need to. While it may appear that you are only deriving small savings from this change, with continuous use of the system as expected, the savings are going to add up for the business

Asset Database Maintenance

This is the core benefit that you want to derive from capitalizing on an IT asset solution. At any time, there should be a current database containing all assets that fall under your portfolio.

The information should be complete with important insights, including the status of each item and notes you may want to bear in mind.

Report extraction should also be a key feature to consider here. Being able to search for insights is one thing, but informative and exportable dashboards are always desirable.

You never know when upper management may request asset-based information or even when the department may need to act based on a report. 

Streamlined Categorization

Depending on the company you work for, the size of your team, and the intended business units to benefit from the assets you manage, there can be a lot of items to catalog. However, with a proper system in the mix, it should no longer feel like an overbearing task.

That’s because there should be a customizable categorization option that allows you to adequately group items based on a specific property. With this in place, you get the benefits of modular management, being able to break down a complete inventory into more straightforward segments.

Audit Process Improvements

IT teams often dread asset auditing, and much of that feeling comes from the amount of misinformation present and a potential lack of insights overall. Audits aim to ensure that inventory is flowing through the business and being maintained effectively.

If that represents the truth, then there are no concerns. Therefore, if you have a program that is helping to keep all audit points on track, then collecting the information you need and satisfying the requirements of the audit is no inconvenience at all.

Which Companies Should Buy IT Asset Management Software

There is certainly value in an effective asset overview for any organization that uses IT assets. However, not all of them may necessarily need a whole application dedicated to doing that.

Small businesses, for example, don’t need one unless the firm is a managed IT service provider. Apart from that, only medium-sized businesses and enterprises should be looking at acquiring one of these solutions.

Managed IT Service Providers

A managed IT service provider can be a business of any size. The nature of the business revolves around providing IT services in the form of an outsourcing agreement to other organizations.

In some cases, this also means managing the IT assets for customers. If so, then it’s certainly recommended to purchase a system.

Medium-Sized Businesses

Medium-sized businesses have a series of teams that likely depend on IT resources to get their jobs done. In this case, it would present a bit of a daunting task to expect the technology team to effectively manage all the assets through a manual process.

The intent of purchasing the software system here is to relieve the IT operatives so they can focus on other tasks.

Enterprises

Enterprises are large and the lack of proper IT asset management is undoubtedly going to lead to exorbitant, unnecessary spending and an absolute lack of understanding and knowledge of where assets are, as well as what state they are in.

Therefore, it is paramount that large-scale enterprises invest in top-quality solutions to maximize their operational efficiency.

What Does IT Asset Management Software Cost? 

These systems tend to be offered in a tiered, pay per user, or pay per node model using subscription-based pricing.

The tiered model pricing tends to start at around $25 per managed user per month. It increases as more features are requested.

The pay per user model can run anywhere between $9 and $99 per user per month. Finally, there is the pay per node model that may see you pay as little as $2 per node or several thousand dollars for unlimited nodes.

Note that enterprise-grade pricing often differs and requires you to request a specific quote, which you are provided after a salesperson scopes your business.

Types of IT Asset Management Software

Since there are different categories of these systems, the best IT asset management software option for you means understanding which is most applicable to your needs. Therefore, here is a quick look at the three broad categories that these solutions tend to fall under.

Comprehensive Asset Management

This is the general overarching category that is commonly used by organizations. That’s because it has lifecycle, contract, inventory, and financial elements embedded in the design.

You find that teams that need to improve IT service management to a variety of end-users benefit the most from these designs. That’s because they must constantly be monitoring each piece of inventory through its lifecycle, ensuring that the business’ operations are never affected negatively.

Software Asset and Licensing Management

Licensing agreements have become a lot more cumbersome, especially since perpetual licensing continues to be on the decline. Businesses that capitalize on a series of software systems need to manage multiple such agreements, especially when renewals need to be handled as soon as possible. 

Apart from that, you get insights that communicate when the business might be out of compliance with vendor licensing requirements.

Digital Asset Management

Digital asset management is rooted in the business’s intellectual property. This can include videos, photos, and other digital data that the business may produce and own an exclusive license to.

Ensuring that there are no violations of the said intellectual property and agreements with users are managed and updated correctly would be the main reasons for a digital asset management system.

Trends in IT Asset Management Software

You don’t want to make your purchase decision in a vacuum. In other words, you always want to be paying attention to what the future may have to say about your decision. The IT asset management system you choose today should respond well to current trends, including the following:

• Cloud adoption – Systems that rely on on-premises data centers, while not obsolete, are no longer desirable. With greater uptime and less overhead management, cloud adoption is the order of the day.

• Integration – The IT department likely uses other pieces of software alongside the one providing IT asset management capabilities. To this end, you want to capitalize on the fact that there is an increasing number of systems being built to integrate with existing APIs.

• Asset class evolution – Some time ago, licensing management software wasn’t even a category. Similarly, the kind of assets that you need to manage are going to evolve. Ensure that your system allows you to define and customize asset classes.

Which is the Best IT Asset Management Software?

Selecting the best IT asset management software system is a difficult decision because of the moving parts and specifics that may apply to your business. The best way to be assured in your decision is to start with the list we provided and capitalize on the many trial versions available.

How to Choose the Right IT Asset Management Software

Our main intention is to help you since the organization requires that you be decisive. Though we have advised you to take advantage of demos and trial setups, there is a little more that you want to keep in mind.

Support is a big part of understanding these systems and restoring uptime when there are failures. Get clarification that a team is available around the clock to help with any challenges you may have.

Additionally, understand the extent to which the vendor is going to assist in configuration.

Summary

Selecting your IT asset management system has a lot of implicit considerations that we covered above. The main takeaways here are to keep your unique needs at the center of your decision and to spend time exploring the systems available, starting with those on our list.