Assets / Assets

Assets: Application Overview

The Assets application provides comprehensive data on your asset portfolio for facilities, financial, IT and department managers as they work with assets. It provides the following consoles and tasks to facilitate your work.

Consoles

The Assets application offers several consoles for entering and managing your assets:

• Use the Asset Registration Console to maintain your inventory of property, buildings, equipment and furniture. A search feature enables you to verify if an asset already exists in inventory before entering it. You can enter a single asset, or you can enter multiple assets in one operation. An auto-numbering system facilitates entry of assets that use prefixes in their identifiers. You can also use this console at the loading dock to register your equipment and furniture asset into the system. You can attach a bar code reader to facilitate entry.
• The Equipment Systems Console presents your assets in a drill-down list that shows the dependencies between assets, and enables you to manage a large number of assets effectively. The console has two tabs:
  • the Asset Relationship Assignment for developing the inventory
  • the Asset Relationship Analysis tab from which you perform analysis that helps you evaluate which systems are affected by disruptions, such as repairs, moves, and renovations.
• The Asset Lifecycle Console enables you to:
  • Review and manage asset data
  • Manage assets throughout the lifecycle
  • Optimize assets
• Use the Asset Disposal Console.to evaluate assets for disposal, to mark the assets as disposed and update your inventory.
• The Telecom Console supports inventory data for equipment and connections, in both workplaces and telecom closets. The console records and displays all cable terminations, but does not display network cables. See

Typical workflow process

A typical workflow process for asset management includes the following steps.

1. Determine the inventory type. Decide whether you want to document your furniture and equipment assets with alphanumeric database records only, or to represent your furniture and equipment assets in CAD drawings, and link these representations to database records to form asset symbols. See Getting Started with the Assets Domain.
2. Develop background data. Develop background data, such as locations and standards for your equipment and furniture, depending on the inventories you have decided to develop. Standards are optional, but help you track and update your assets. See:
   • Background Data - Facilities & Finance
   • Background Data - Assets
   • Background Data - IT
3. Develop your asset inventory. There are several method to develop your inventory of assets (buildings, properties, equipment, and furniture).
   • Develop your assets in CAD.
   • Working from the Asset Lifecycle Console, add and edit assets from the Asset Registry tab. See Reviewing and Managing Asset Data from the Asset Lifecycle Console
   • Working from the Asset Registration Console, register assets as you receive them at the loading dock. From this console, you can bulk add assets, and use an auto-numbering system. See Asset Registration Console.
   • Alternately, to enter assets using a mobile device, use the Asset & Equipment Registration Mobile App.
4. Develop your telecom inventory. The Telecom console supports inventory data for equipment and connections, in both workplaces and telecom closets. The console records and displays all cable terminations, but does not display network cables. See Telecom Console Overview

5. Manage your assets throughout their lifecycle. Manage your entire portfolio of assets - properties, buildings, equipment, and furniture - throughout their lifecycle from asset acceptance, through use and disposal. The Asset Lifecycle Console facilitates access to asset data targeted to your role. You can access depreciation values, the current activities for an asset, and any transaction changes. This provides a comprehensive view of the asset to facilitate decision making and coordination with stakeholders throughout the enterprise. See Managing Assets throughout the Lifecycle.

6. Optimize your assets. Make informed decisions about assets by reviewing financial analysis and risk mitigation metrics, and mission criticality for equipment. See Optimizing your Assets.
7. Evaluate assets for disposal. When working from the Assets or Enterprise Assets applications, you can evaluate assets for disposal, determine how to dispose of the asset, and update your inventory accordingly using the Asset Disposal Console.
8. Use mobile app to maintain your inventory. Maintain your inventory over time as conditions change in the field. Users with the Asset & Equipment Survey mobile app can periodically survey their facility and update the inventory accordingly. See:
   • Asset & Equipment Survey Mobile App
   • Manage Asset & Equipment Surveys task -- If you are using the mobile app to do surveys, a facility or other manager can create the surveys and manage them using this Web Central task.
9. Review reports. Throughout the above outlined process, you can examine many useful reports directly from a console's Reports button. See Reports for Enterprise Assets and Assets.

Alternate workflow process: develop inventory with the Asset Portal

When working from the Assets or the Enterprise Assets applications, you have the option of using the Asset Portal to develop your equipment, furniture, and software inventory. In this case, the Asset Portal tasks for equipment and furniture are accessed from the Reports button on the Project Proposal Console (Enterprise Assets only), Asset Lifecycle, and Asset Disposal Consoles.

See Reports for Enterprise Assets and Assets for a list of these Asset Portal tasks and a link to the Help topic.

Note the following about the different ways of developing data:

• Working from the Asset Lifecycle and Asset Disposal consoles, you can develop properties, buildings, furniture, and equipment, while the Asset Portal task focuses on equipment and furniture only.
• When developing a telecom inventory, the Asset Portal tasks are not as complete as the tasks available from the Telecom Console, but they are included as an alternative way of accessing a subset of the telecom tasks supported from the Telecom Console. See Using the Equipment Assets Console.
• Software and depreciation tasks are accessed from the tasks for those processes. This is described in the following procedure.

Follow these steps when using Asset Portal tasks:

1. Create an equipment and telecom inventory. Create an equipment and telecom inventory. You can create either an alphanumeric inventory or an inventory that includes floor plan drawings. See Equipment Process Overview
   • Review and track your equipment using reports such as, Equipment by Department, Equipment by Rooms, Equipment by Warranty, the Equipment Standards Book, (if you have developed standards and assigned them to your equipment), or Equipment Plan (if you have drawn your equipment on CAD floor plans.) See Equipment Reports.
2. Create a software inventory. Optionally, once you develop an inventory of your data equipment, you may want to document the software installed on each machine, as well as the software that each machine can access through the network. See Software Process Overview.
   • Review your software license records. See View and Edit Software Information.
   • Or, review your software by standards, and each equipment item using the software having this standard. See Software by Standards Report.
3. Create a furniture inventory. Decide whether you want to develop a tagged furniture or furniture standards inventory. See Choosing a Furniture Inventory Method.
   • Create the furniture inventory. For a tagged furniture inventory, you can work from either the Smart Client or Web Central. For a furniture standards inventory, you work from the Smart Client. See Furniture Process Overview.
   • Generate the furniture standards Inventory reports, or tagged furniture reports to review, analyze, and print your data. You can review the count of furniture by standard to assess your inventory, or the count of standards by division and department to assess how you have allocated your furniture.
4. Calculate depreciation. Once you develop an equipment or furniture inventory, you can add cost information and calculate depreciation for it using the Depreciation process. See Depreciation Process Overview.