Introduction
When you plan to start your business, the first thing that you have in mind is procuring different forms of assets for your company. The assets can be related to movable and immovable ones.
Immovable assets related to purchasing or leasing out a commercial property space where you want to develop your factory or shop premises. Movable assets relate to tangible assets like machinery and equipment, furniture pieces, digital devices, and so on.
These assets have to be procured immediately with the amount of seed capital that you may have earmarked for starting your business or factory outlet.
On this note, let us move on to dwell on some of the intricate aspects that are connected with asset management strategy and planning. Helping you get started here:
What is asset management strategy and planning?
Asset management strategy and planning refers to a detailed encompassing of activities that relate to planning the procurement of assets for a company and maintaining them until the end of their shelf lives there.
These are the set of activities that are involved in asset management strategy and planning:
- Identifying what type of assets you need for your business units
- Procurement of these assets
- Tracking how machinery, equipment, and other heavy-duty assets are used
- Overall maintenance of assets
- And their eventual disposal
A strategic asset management plan makes sure that the resources of the organization are utilized effectively and efficiently.
Therefore, a robust asset management plan not only reduces costs related to overhauling assets or re-purchasing units of assets but also helps you reduce risk factors that are involved in terms of accidents or unforeseen events these machinery can cause to workers or laborers who are working in the manufacturing hubs of your business enterprises.
In a crux, when you have a clear asset management system in place, you would be able to make well-informed decisions with respect to your organization. Plus, when you have a team that takes care of how the assets perform in the organization, you can divert other resources (Human Resources) to take care of other brand-building initiatives your company deserves.
When you fulfill asset management objectives in a promising manner, you can empower your organization to maximize the productivity of the company’s assets, gain a more competitive edge in the market place and above all ensure growth and sustainability.
Steps involved in the creation of an effective asset management strategy
These are the series of steps you can adopt towards maintaining an effective asset management plan. Helping you decipher what these processes are:
1. Identifying what your company’s current assets are
You would have to identify your company’s current assets. Only then, will you be able to further plan or strategize asset management policies concerning the same.
The company’s assets include machinery or heavy-duty equipment. Whereas, if you are running a software office, the assets can relate to hardware equipment, software, drives, licenses, and furniture sets. Therefore, you must perform a comprehensive check into the asset inventory that forms a part of your office or factory outlet.
To keep things more organized, you can document all the tangible assets that you have in your business organization.
2. Drawing up a plan or an outline for asset management
You must first outline what your company’s asset management objectives are. This is the first step of your asset management strategies. You can also call it the panning stage.
You then move on to bifurcate if these goals or objectives are tangible to achieve over a short-term, mid-term, or long-term basis. This is the step wherein you organize the strategy into achievable parlance.
You then categorize what kind of goals or tangibles align with your immediate business needs. This part of the asset management software policy or asset management factory equipment policy relates to finally implementing the goals or objectives as you have outlined them.
3. Analyzing the company’s requirements
At this particular juncture, you analyze if the company’s needs or requirements match with the organizational asset management policy that stands drawn up.
You must look if the organization’s goals or objectives align with the asset management policy’s goals and objectives. This way, you can ensure scalability and compliance concerning handling risk management too.
For instance, when you have an outdated piece of machinery that is not replaced with a new one, the old or damaged piece of machinery may harm employees or workers who overrun them or use them at their factory outlets. The usage of dilapidated machinery can also lead to medical emergency scenarios or accidents for factory workers.
Similarly, when you use outdated software licenses for your company, the outcomes for the service-oriented firms may not satisfy clients or stakeholders. Therefore, managing your enterprise with updated software requirements also is a mandated norm for a software firm as such.
Therefore, when you do not have proper asset management strategies in place, you may run your firm into risky situations that may turn unmanageable in the long run.
4. Drawing up processes into their implementation stages
Now that the paperwork is done concerning outlining processes and looking into whether the asset management strategies align with your business or not, now is the time to put everything together.
You may have to draw up real-time implementation programs that concise operations pertaining to:
- Purchase of assets
- Deployment
- Usage of assets in an effective manner
- Looking into the maintenance of assets and
- Finally getting rid of old or worn-out machinery or software units
5. Allocation of resources
To accentuate the asset performance and to follow up with a strategic approach concerning reducing the downtime of the asset lifecycle, you must diligently allocate your resources.
These are the set of processes you need to allocate resources in a streamlined manner:
- Allocation of budget to procure new assets or maintain the existing ones
- Appointing teams and personnel who can take care of asset maintenance
- And, above all, executing the other necessary steps as stated in the asset lifecycle plan.
6. Setting metrics
You define KRIs and metrics to define the success of your strategy implementation. The lifecycle of the asset maintenance management system is an ongoing one and the cycle isn’t going to stop anywhere.
The asset utilization teams also work towards preventive maintenance strategies to make sure things do not diffuse or go wrong somewhere down the line.
The asset management processes therefore work in tandem to optimize effective asset utilization and bring down maintenance costs thereby facilitating cost savings and increasing profitability. This way, the business objectives or data-driven goals are achieved seamlessly indeed.
7. Predictive maintenance measures
The asset management processes or the asset management teams that operate within the organization can also draw up predictive maintenance measures in terms of setting up emergency funds or staples to upgrade to a new set of machinery or upgrade your software to the latest ones.
This proactive maintenance team will mainly look at predicting expenses that may crop up in the future. Futuristic figures for repair costs can also be drawn up by the predictive management teams. This way, you pave the way to building data-driven insights in favor of your business enterprises as such.
8. Evaluating the overall cost and benefits of asset management strategy and planning
When you constantly monitor asset management practices, you get a whole lot of benefits in terms of cost savings for the company you grow. Instead of utilizing or refurbishing expensive assets randomly, it is always better you keep your asset management procedures in place so that you know what you are coming up with.
The benefits you get when you keep your assets well-maintained can be incredible as you process work orders with the latest state-of-the-art machinery while planning, strategizing, and implementing robust asset management policies.
This way, you allow your business goals to align with business objectives in a well-balanced manner.
What are the steps to improve an asset management strategy?
You may have created or gone ahead to develop an asset management strategy that is getting implemented successfully. However, when you get new policies rolled over, the existing setup of the management changes.
Therefore, you need to improvise the existing asset management policy and may need to include a new set of policies to mitigate the effects of policy changeovers. It might be a new company getting amalgamated with your business enterprise or you may hire new projects into your business enterprises.
In a crux, you may have to improvise by creating a strategic asset management system that complies with new policies that have rolled over. These are the outlined 5 steps to improve an existing asset management strategy.
Helping you get started with the same:
- Conducting periodic audits
You may have to conduct periodic reviews or audit meets to ensure if the existing asset management plan or asset management system is up to date or does the asset management objective indicate changes of late.
The review meets or audits reveal areas of improvement in an existing plan. Or helps you identify where the gaps are. This way, you can get valid cues to include a few more goals or strategies that align with your current business setup.
- Maintaining accurate or up-to-date asset data
As you are already aware of, the asset management objectives keep changing from time to time and the dynamism that revolves around the same is not something you should truly be afraid of.
Therefore, you must maintain accurate or latest data info that documents every asset that you own inside your business enterprise. Or, you must have asset management teams update new info from time to time.
It can relate to the latest asset management software rollout document or an effective asset management downtime performance report.
By maintaining data reports accurately, you can identify what are the scope of improvement in areas your business unit is lagging. This way, your business entity can facilitate better decision-making in terms of compliance or formulation of the latest rules and regulations for the company.
- Implementation of automation tools and software solutions
You can start implementing the latest automation tools into your software system or introduce newly developed software solutions into your existing database management systems.
While you do so, tracking newly introduced assets or newly developed processes can be well taken care of.
In a crux, you must understand that maintaining an effective asset management system implies better asset performance for the brand.
- Alignment and optimization of asset usage
Alignment and optimization of asset usage is by integrating the current set of processes within IT procurement systems or data management protocols. This is done to improvise asset performance even under changing conditions.
Good asset management or enterprise asset management policies must become a part of the improvised asset planning initiatives so that the asset value of a company stays high and you improve the longevity of asset life for years to come.
When you derive optimal strategies that enhances asset value or performance, you can derive better profit margins for your business entity or enterprise.
- Provide the required amount of training to employees
The requisite amount of training programs must be implemented for the existing and new employees of the business enterprise. This is done so that the strategies are implemented in sync with the changing goals or objectives of the business in sync with procedures that have already been established.
You can conduct workshops on how a computerized maintenance management system works or how can you evolve better decision-making processes for fulfilling the company’s goals and objectives.
By deploying good management practices, you can shape up your business organization on a heightened pedestal. You can allow a robust asset management system to shape your business goals or objectives incredibly.
Asset managers must therefore train their existing and new employees in pursuit of the above.
The Bottom Line
You must understand that the relevant procedures and policies are drawn up so that implementation of these policies is done keeping the organizational growth in mind.
Implementation of effective asset management processes can improve the profitability of your enterprise. Optimizing repair costs by defining asset investments or addressing asset disposal procedures helps reduce downtime costs and maintenance issues.
Understanding the risks associated with your assets is also an important thing that needs to garner the attention of business owners and enterprise creators. You must know what needs to be managed on a priority as you do not want to delay implementation procedures with respect to key performance indicators.
