The uncertainty caused by COVID-19 made 2020 a tough year for many businesses, especially those with complex IT environments and a lack of integrated ITAM software.
Companies that are heavily reliant on IT learned that they need to be attentive to the evolving demands of ITAM operating models, integrations with the technology workforce, and flexibility to scale and drive change successfully.
IT asset management challenges in 2020
Due to the unpredictable situation caused by COVID-19 and companies shifting to remote work, major IT asset management challenges were highlighted.
One of these was that the lack of cloud-based ITAM software can result in major operational inefficiencies and fragmented databases. Due to the “Work from Home” policies, it quickly became clear that IT-reliant companies should achieve adequate levels of automation to avoid communication issues.
5 ITAM software trends to expect in 2021
2021 will open up a whole new horizon for ITAM practices and trends so your business can stay on top of its game at all times. According to a Mordor Intelligence report, the IT asset management market is expected to reach $2,086.59 million by 2025.
To discuss the future of IT asset management and what ITAM software practices would be followed in 2021, we have come up with the foreseeable ITAM trends for the coming year.
1. Easily adaptable ITAM software
According to a predictive analysis report, 25–30% of the workforce will be working from home until the end of 2021. This means on-premise software and fragmented technologies could seriously impact business efficiency.
The disruptive impact of COVID-19 and a constantly shifting workforce model has challenged legacy IT infrastructures, highlighting the need for robust ITAM solution. IT-reliant businesses would need to shift their culture to support a remote working environment with cloud-based ITAM software.
However, most businesses would be looking for ITAM software that can address every core capability across the organization. For example, an ideal ITAM solution should have software licensing management, hardware asset management, asset lifecycle management, real-time asset tracking, and so on.
So, flexible and ever-responsive ITAM tools would be on the rise in the upcoming year. Implementing such an IT asset tracking software will put IT asset insights and analyses at the very center of your business.
2. Improved IT asset lifecycle visibility
2021 will be the year where businesses will strive to improve their productivity to make up for the disruption caused by COVID-19. To achieve the optimum level of productivity, it will be critical for all the IT assets to be in their ideal condition.
This is why organizations will develop a keen interest in acquiring complete visibility into the life cycles of their IT assets. An ideal ITAM software will help monitor, detect, and track uncharacteristic phases of an asset lifecycle across the hardware and software infrastructure of an IT organization.
A reliable ITAM software will enable you to track an asset from its procurement to its retirement, along with its maintenance details, usage, and more.
Such user-centric ITAM software will make a huge difference in getting the IT operations running at high speed and will allow you to monitor phases of the IT asset lifecycle across the transaction flow.
3. ITAM software with preventive capabilities
The pandemic was particularly challenging for IT-intensive organizations that were not ready for immediate disruption and had inadequate backup plans in place.
In 2021, there’s expected to be a steady move to cloud-based ITAM software. This will significantly reduce disruptions in IT operations, lower costs, and improve compliance and data safety.
In terms of preventive maintenance, ITAM software that offers robust detailed asset maintenance features, checklists, and reminders will add the most value. This shall keep businesses notified at all times, manage crises, reduce asset downtime, and optimize asset utilization when needed.
4. Focus on real-time data
For clean, uniform, and seamless IT asset management operations, the next decade will focus on an ITAM tool that offers comprehensive, visible, organization-wide data in real-time.
Even though companies realize that real-time IT asset data is critical to efficient IT operations, more companies are still far behind on data strategies. According to research by MicroStrategy, only 57% of IT companies think that their data strategies are up to date.
ITAM software that is data-centric will provide capabilities to have more vendor information, licensing details, asset lifecycle management details, and the like in real-time.
This would easily facilitate the remote working model as employees would be able to check-in and check-out assets easily. You would also be able to generate custom reports based on this data.
5. ITSM integration
Effective ITAM integration with ITSM tools in your business enhances productivity, helps with incident management and knowledge management, and makes operations run more smoothly.
Siloed systems that don’t talk to each other reduce efficiency across the whole organization. Instead opt for interconnected systems with comprehensive data available on a single, scalable platform in 2021.
With such an integration, you will be able to go beyond just logging devices and tracking your software and hardware assets, but instead, you will be analyzing devices and software on a more granular level in relation to incident management, organizational change management, knowledge base management, ticket management, and other ITIL defined processes.
With an ITAM software integrated with an ITSM tool, you will be able to empower more users with asset-aware self-service, proactively manage IT assets remotely, and would gain complete lifecycle visibility.
Invest in ITAM software built to resolve upcoming IT asset management challenges
With the ongoing pandemic, it’s clear that a lot more needs to be done in terms of IT asset management than basic tracking, maintenance plans, and asset lifecycle management.
The next generation of ITAM tools need to be empowered with capabilities like asset procurement planning, digitization of servicing and maintenance processes, internal auditing, smart knowledge base management, and real-time monitoring of not only the status and location but usage of IT assets as well.
IT asset management is predicted to see a surge of upgrades and changes in the upcoming year. In order for your IT-reliant business to thrive in the coming environment, you must foster an IT culture and infrastructure that is agile and flexible enough to embrace constantly upgrading ITAM software capabilities.
Read more: How an ITAM solution can improve IT Asset Lifecycle Management
About AssetSonar
AssetSonar is the leading IT asset management tool used by IT-intensive organizations and businesses all over the globe.
Sign up today for a free 15-day trial.
For more assistance, drop us an email at support@ezo.io. You can also visit our blog for detailed support posts.
Join the Conversation: Twitter | Facebook
