How Asset Infinity solved the issue of multi-location Asset Management for a Financial Institution

Overview

‍Financial companies have lots of assets that are valuable and these assets such as laptops, mobiles etc. contain crucial information that is crucial for business continuity and for maintaining SLAs and TATs.

Not too surprisingly, even financial sector entities such as banking institutions, lending services, brokerage firms face several issues due to mismanagement of assets. As a result, they suffer from asset misplacement, asset theft, decreased productivity, and unknown asset movement. All these factors result in business loss.  

Problem Statement

Our client, a prestigious financial institution, has thousands of assets located in more than six hundred locations. As we know, a giant financial institution has several branches across the globe & their assets are circulated at different locations as per hiring requirements, staffing changes and branch requirements. Our client also kept circulating their assets. Mostly these assets were laptops, computers, mobile phones, etc. The organization noticed that there were regular complaints of asset misplacement, asset recovery and asset identification. But they were not able to find how assets were going missing & root cause was not identified. The main reason that they were unable to know the exact asset location was they were using manual methods such as spreadsheet utilization, pen, and paper method, etc. In this case, the collected asset data was neither accurate nor up to date.  

They were facing business continuity and loss of business issues as they did not know the accurate location of assets as these assets were frequently circulated from one location to another.

The questions were plenty-

‍Who is using their assets?

Were all the assets accounted for?

Were the assets in good condition?

How would they find an asset that an exiting employee had handed over 6 months back?

Did this employee return all company owned assets issued to him/her?

What is the problem with using spreadsheets and manual entries?

Spreadsheets can be used when you have limited assets and inventory, however when the number of assets increases it becomes more chaotic, hectic, and complex. When you enter data manually human error can occur. Human error can lead to serious consequences. According to Rahman Ravelli, “Fraud and human error are costing businesses and organizations in the UK an estimated £98.6 billion a year”. Moreover, when multiple users access spreadsheets at the same time there are chances of data can be changed unintentionally. Most importantly, there is also the risk of data redundancy and version controls. The data on spreadsheets is not always centrally visible and up to date. It means that accuracy is also compromised and exactly this is the problem faced by our financial institution client. Due to inaccurate data, assets were missing or unaccounted for. What seemed like a good solution, started creating business and operational confusion in the long run, and started to impact business.  

How did our financial institution client overcome these issues using Asset Infinity’s Asset Management Software?

The approach was 3 pronged:

Asset Register:

Creating a central tracker and repository of all assets along with their owners

Asset Tracking:

Asset Infinity was used to assign, return, exchange, track assets allocated to individuals, branches, locations, regions.

Asset Audits:

Timely and recurring audits were done on assets at an individual, branch and regional level

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With Asset Infinity’s asset management software now their asset managers could keep track of every asset at their fingertips & could see every asset movement in real time. Since the process is automated, human intervention was minimized and human errors were minimized as well. Spreadsheet utilization was eliminated.  

In order to keep track of assets, it is important to verify them physically, hence audit was performed so that asset physical verification can be done thoroughly. With our software, the organization did audits by two methods- self-audit & aided audit.  

In self-audit, employees (who have the organization’s assets) receive an email where they confirm & verify assets by themselves. In the aided audit, an audit was assigned to a user who was sent to the location & he or she checked and verified assets physically and marked each asset as a present, not present, present with incorrect details.

With this software, employees were able to distinguish assets as self-owned, partner owned, or rented assets. Moreover, users could add important asset information such as asset model number, serial number, asset purchasing date, and other details.  With check-in & check-out employees could maintain a precise asset trail movement on the basis of location, department. This feature of Asset Infinity assisted the organization in getting full control over their assets.

What are the other benefits our financial institution client achieved with Asset Infinity’s Asset Management software?

Asset location & movement can be seen anytime –

Within the Asset Infinity app or web app employees could see all the asset movement. It is one of the advantages that keeps assets safe and lets them know the exact asset location. Furthermore, they could also check the asset movement history of all or any specific asset. If they wanted to see movement specifically of an asset, they could filter assets as per the requirements based on category, departments, etc. Now if assets are moved from one location to another, managers know as they receive mail alerts. A trail was maintained of asset movement that helped in finding current asset location. Now our client knows all assets in numbers and location and all the information related to each asset.

Stock availability -‍

It is important to know if all employees have all the required resources such as a laptop or computer to do their work efficiently and if all those assets are being used efficiently and are accounted for. Our software enabled employees to check stock availability in real-time and whenever stock is below the optimal level, it alerted the person responsible so that stock can be refilled. When an employee resigned, the system ensured that all assets are taken back in stock and the status of the asset is changed accordingly.

Real-time information –

‍The client has real-time information such as where assets are located, who is using them, and how many assets are available, how many assets are available in stock, what is the current condition of all assets. Now they could see all their assets in a single place and download data as well. Whenever a new asset was added, discarded, or transferred or any movement occurred the data was updated accordingly.  

Approval for asset transfer & workflow -

Head of operations (COO/HOO), or asset managers kept track of asset movement with Asset Infinity software. For instance, if they wanted to move an asset from city A to City B then City A’s HOO approved the asset movement and only then asset was sent to City B. Similarly, City B’s HOO received the asset and signed an acknowledgment on the system. The asset management system kept track of all assets and asset locations were identified easily. Workflow is a multiple approval hierarchy for asset-related transactions. Whenever an asset is added, moved, or discarded it occurs step by step so that work is done in an authorized way.  

User restriction -

With this software management can restrict “user” so that employees can only see limited information. For example, the IT maintenance team of location “A” can only see assets of location A, not any other location. Therefore, management can make roles and restrict them to their location only. On the other hand, the top-level user can access all the data & information. Similarly, they can restrict “user” on the basis of data accessibility! For instance, to make changes in the data or can only view data, and so on.  

Identify assets as owned or rented –

This financial institution has lots of assets, some of them are their own, and some are taken on lease. With this software, they can categorize each asset into “own assets” or “leased assets”. It is helpful to identify assets easily and assets on lease are returned on time and penalties are avoided. This feature also helps identify rent due on borrowed or rented assets as well as throws up prompts and timely notifications for maintenance and servicing.

Easy configuration -

Asset Infinity enabled the organization to configure forms as per their internal processes and requirements, to suit it best to their business operations. The data could be input and exported as per requirements of internal stakeholders such as operations, procurement & finance teams. All this helped with fast and quick actions. Customized reports could be downloaded easily.

Benefits the client achieved by using Asset Infinity:

1. Better utilization of assets  

2. Complete asset information on fingertips  

3. Make informed decisions with Reports assistance  

4. Enhanced productivity  

5. Fast & effective asset audit  

6. Improved Return on Investment (ROI)  

7. Alert & notification via mail  

Ending note-

here is no doubt that technology can make you more efficient. Now our client is always aware of asset location, and asset movement. They know who is using which asset as they have complete information in their hands. Our client utilizes Asset Infinity Software to prevent asset theft & misplacement and it has increased their efficiency and productivity.

About Asset Infinity -

Asset Infinity provides cloud-based asset management software that can help organizations in keeping track of their assets. It can be accessed via the web, android, and iOS mobile applications. Our software helps in asset tracking, asset management, asset auditing, inventory management, maintenance management (breakdown management, preventive maintenance), purchase, and requisition. Asset Infinity’s software has powerful features such as check-in & check-out, asset movement tracking, assets movement history, department, category, employee-wise tracking, alerts, and notifications, setting reorder levels, etc. Asset Infinity also provides asset tagging via barcode QR (Quick Response) code, RFID (Radio frequency Identification), GPS (Global Positioning System), BLE (Bluetooth low energy), NFC (Near field communication), IoT (Internet of Things). Overall, our software helps in all stages of an asset from procurement to disposal.

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