Streamlining Asset Onboarding and Offboarding

Modern businesses handle multiple spinning plates. It is all too easy to let some of those plates fall and break or even forget that they should be spinning in the first place. One of those plates is your Information Technology (IT) Asset Management. Without an organized, accurate, and updated IT inventory and management, businesses can lose significant value. One of the most prominent ways this can occur is through asset onboarding and offboarding. Companies can lose track of their assets, and subsequently, they cannot provide employees with the tools they need and their customers with efficient support or meet their business management obligations. However, with the right asset management tools, firms can streamline the onboarding and offboarding process. 

Let’s find out more about that process below, how problems occur, and how you ensure it runs efficiently within your own firm. In this way, you will be able to avoid serious issues and unnecessary risks. 

What Is Asset Onboarding and Offboarding?

Asset onboarding is the process of introducing an asset to a company, department, location, or assignee. Originally, it involved asset acquisition or creation, characteristics data entry, and ownership. Data entry and ownership information may need to be updated regularly, as assets change hands throughout their lifecycle. 

Asset offboarding is the process of removing the asset from circulation. Likewise, asset offboarding could be separating an asset from an employee and post. In either case, offboarding demands continuous assessments, repairs or updates, risk analyses, and value determinations throughout its lifecycle. At the end of the lifecycle, the asset may be separated from the firm in one or more ways. Its data can be used to inform future asset acquisition or business processes. 

What Issues Occur Within Asset Onboarding and Offboarding?

For past businesses and information technology/tech departments, IT asset management was a nightmare. Asset onboarding demanded creating a new file or continuously pulling the asset file and updating the information. Asset offboarding required compiling the relevant data on the asset, analyzing that information or sending it to another professional, and filing the asset into a separate system. Onboarding and offboarding were challenging, due to the fact that individuals needed to remember to update the asset constantly so that appropriate and accurate data was available. 

Failure to update an asset was all too common. It may have required too much manual labor, or too much time, or it simply slipped employees’ minds due to the rapid movements of the business world. After all, the data needs to be updated in any of these frequently-occuring situations:

• New asset purchase, creation, integration, or repurpose
• New employees receive hardware, software, or consumables
• Current employees change departments, jobs, or working locations for any length of time
• Employees begin working remotely
• Hardware or accessories need maintenance or repairs
• Hardware or accessories break 
• Software needs updates
• Software becomes obsolete
• Assets are being disposed of, repurposed, or reallocated. 

If asset onboarding, management, and offboarding are not performed correctly, businesses can run into these issues:

• Employees do not receive the equipment they need in a timely manner 
• Employees do not receive all the equipment they need to perform their jobs properly 
• No assets found in the system.
• Hardware does not receive regular maintenance or prompt repairs
• Hardware breaks down quickly due to improper maintenance
• Software does not receive regular updates 
• Software licenses expire 
• Businesses fail IT asset audits
• Businesses have significant privacy or security risks
• Poor decision-making for current and future asset acquisition 
• Reactive asset purchases rather than strategic asset purchases
• Lost or stolen equipment 
• Unauthorized users gain access to assets and information 
• Businesses do not find ways to repurpose or sell decommissioned hardware or accessories 
• Businesses dispose of assets improperly, leading to sensitive information leaks, security breaches, increased risks, and regulatory fines.

How Can You Streamline Asset Onboarding and Offboarding?

One of the best ways to ensure an efficent asset onboarding and offboarding process is through IT asset management software. DevSamurai’s AssetIT – IT Asset Management for Jira makes it easy for you to inventory and track hardware assets, accessories, software licenses, components, and consumables. Say goodbye to complicated, time-consuming manual data entry and filing. You now have all your original information, updated data, lifecycle analysis, asset booking, and insightful reports all in one accessible place.  

With AssetIT, you will not only help your business avoid the dire problems found in improper IT asset onboarding, management, and offboarding. You will also enhance certain elements and components of your firm, including:

• New employees and moving employees are productive right away because they have access to all the tools they need promptly.
• Customers are happy because customer support, management, and service delivery are quick. 
• Accurate inventory and inventory data can be pulled from before making new asset purchases. 
• Scheduling asset bookings can ensure asset availability for employees and teams. 
• Maximum lifespan and value extraction from IT assets as businesses do maintenance, repairs, and upgrades properly and on time.
• Redeployed, repaired, refurbished, retired, or repurposed assets after employees leave the firm or no longer require the asset.
• Uninstalling assets from devices or authorizations is easier when employees leave the company or no longer require the asset. 
• IT department and management always know where an asset is, who has it, and who has access to it improving security.

Start OnBoarding on the Right Foot with AssetIT 

Onboarding and offboarding assets can be challenging procedures for many businesses. It requires a great amount of vigilance and care. It becomes more difficult as they see company growth whether by acquiring more assets, increasing their team sizes, or expanding into different locations. Accordingly, these achievements increase the need for a clean and organized IT asset inventory with updated, and continuously updated, data. AssetIT – IT Asset Management for Jira streamlines the onboarding and offboarding process making it a breeze for assets to change hands properly and efficiently. Try the app today for free!