Asset management gets complicated, quickly. But, you don’t need to track everything. The right asset management metrics help you reduce risk, control costs, and make smarter decisions about your IT environment before issues escalate into outages, compliance problems, or unplanned spending.
These are the top five asset management performance metrics, in priority order, that matter most for small to mid-sized IT teams.
Asset count and distribution by category
It starts with asset count and category distribution: the total number of assets you’re managing, grouped by hardware, software, licensed assets, and consumables.
This asset management performance metric is the foundation of your IT environment. You’ll be able to quickly see patterns: what assets you have the most and least of, and where you’re spending your budget.
Use this metric for data-driven decision-making during budgeting, forecasting, and planning. A good asset management system will show you exactly what you own, so you can make better decisions about what to invest in.
Status of asset assignments
Use your ITSM to show you which assets are currently assigned, who they’re assigned to, and which assets are gathering dust in inventory.
This asset management performance metric helps you distinguish between assets that actively support the business and those that are underutilized. You’ll have an easier time tracking who is responsible for what across different teams, departments, and locations. This improves planning and reaction time, so you’re never without a laptop for the new hire.
You’ll be able to cut spending and prevent loss.
Asset location visibility
Asset location visibility is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a live view of where your assets are at any given time. It shows you whether each asset is assigned to a specific user, tied to a particular location, or stored in a warehouse.
Without this, you’re likely to be wasting time searching for hardware or manually checking inventory. Let’s not get into the time you can spend on audits. Ensuring asset location visibility saves you time and helps you quickly identify discrepancies before they turn into bigger problems.
Asset-related tickets and incidents
Tying tickets and incidents to specific assets gives you the ability to be proactive instead of reactive. This metric shows how many service desk tickets are associated with specific assets or asset types.
This is one of the best ways to see how your assets are performing in real-time as they’re used. Repeated incidents associated with the same model or device can indicate aging hardware, configuration issues, outright lemons, or solutions that don’t fit your users. You can use this asset management performance metric to prevent problems by repairing or replacing assets that regularly cause issues.
License and compliance tracking
An essential asset management performance metric is license status. Your ITSM should show you which software assets are licensed, approaching renewal, or at risk of non-compliance.
The best way to manage resources is to track them in the same system, so that you can see licensed assets and your physical inventory together. This helps you keep your IT ecosystem in compliance, budget for renewals, and avoid disputes.
Whatever software you choose for IT service management, you’ll need a strong asset management module. Startly makes tracking asset management metrics simple in our fully integrated platform with a dashboard that provides asset management analytics alongside ticketing and performance analytics. You’ll get asset counts by category, assignment, and location status, ticket history tied to specific assets, and license tracking: a clear, real-time view of your assets at a glance.
Customer: IT for Schools & UniversitiesIT for Small to Mid-sized Businesses