In addition to financial concerns, a plethora of other issues arise when laboratories, and universities don’t maintain solid records of their assets. The following issues could easily be rectified with a robust asset tracking system in place at these institutions:

a) Without software to track and manage IT assets, Enterprises are only left with the option of manually recording and handling inventory using spreadsheets or even regular text documents. Unfortunately, manual asset tracking results in a decrease in both productivity and efficiency across the entire establishment. For example, manually entering and tracking assets uses up lots of time, as does doing audits by hand instead of automating them with asset software. Such time could be saved and put to better use in advancing the laboratory institution’s goals and needs if employees were freed up from manual asset management.

b)As previously mentioned, not tracking assets with a flexible management system often results in items going missing, or being lost entirely. Even with a good emergency or backup fund in place, many Enterprises don’t have enough money to cover replacements for all their missing assets (especially when those numbers reach as high as $250,000 per facility).

c) Both decreased productivity and cost increases can combine to create the additional issue of operational setbacks. For example, any error in manual tracking can lead to confusion about who last touched or used a particular asset, which can then lead to the asset going missing entirely. Enterprises must then figure out how to make do without that asset until it’s replaced (if it ever is).

d) One of the biggest issues which arises for Data Centers companies without reliable asset management technology is a lack of accountability. Without asset tracking software that can easily be updated and accessed across the entire institution’s leadership and staff, how are any of them to know who was last in charge of or touched each asset?