In the past few weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted day-to-day life in most countries across the globe. As governments impose lockdowns and calls for social distancing continue to rise, thousands of businesses are trying to figure out ways to remain functional in a virtual world.
To protect employees, customers, and their communities, businesses are quickly adopting a remote work policy. In-person meetings have been replaced by video conferences and there has been a global shift towards telecommunication options. This is a time for companies to test their survival skills by becoming more agile and responsive.
However, a sudden shift to a remote work policy can be a great challenge, especially for your IT teams. AssetSonar enables powerful remote management of your IT infrastructure, allowing you more agility and flexibility in this uncertain time.
Here are some key features of AssetSonar that can facilitate an effective remote work policy.
1. Cloud based ITAM software
At a time when businesses all around the world are going remote, cloud based software systems are the need of the hour. During emergency lockdowns, your IT teams cannot be physically present to ensure that on-premise data servers are functioning properly. A cloud based solution enables your IT teams to fetch data regarding IT assets from anywhere, at any time. A mobile application is even more convenient.
AssetSonar is built on the open-source cloud of Amazon Web Services (AWS). It facilitates data hosting on, and retrieval from, the cloud, while offering you premium cloud security of the AWS infrastructure. We also integrate with many other cloud based applications such as Jira Cloud, Jamf, G Suite and more, to support additional IT asset management workflows while you work from home.
2. Custody management of hardware
Preparing your business for remote work means that you need to check out IT assets to each of your employees. These may include costly and high-performance laptops and iMacs, Wi-Fi dongles for remote connectivity, noise-canceling headphones for crucial meetings with clients, mice, and adapters, etc.
Under emergency situations, IT teams need to carry out fast checkouts of hardware. AssetSonar integrates with multiple Barcode, QR Code and RFID tag scanners to accelerate your checkout processes. You can clock in IT asset details in a matter of seconds. This saves time spent on manually entering asset details.
You can even assign custody of devices to relevant employees as you check them out. This ensures accountability — employees will use the devices with care and can be held liable if a device goes missing, or is stolen.
Keeping custody logs also makes it easier for your employees to report issues with their devices, should they occur. The IT personnel can reach the concerned employee in time and fix their issue via online support.
3. Agent-based discovery
Most enterprises have been using network discovery to locate IT devices operating on their local network. But what happens if your IT assets move away from the local network? Keeping track of them can be painstakingly hard.
AssetSonar offers a pre-configured Agent that you can mass deploy in each of your organization’s devices before checking them out. The Agent helps detect all IT assets in which it was installed, even when they’re off company premises.
It instantly populates the discovered IT assets, including their hardware and software configuration details in your company’s AssetSonar account. This always keeps you updated on which devices are being used by your employees.
In addition to this, there is concern among managers that the office exodus may lower employee productivity without direct supervision. AssetSonar’s Agent-based discovery also tackles this. It conducts automatic sync and updates the IT asset information every 24 hours.
Any device not logged in shall not be synced. After the sync is done, you can run reports on all your IT devices and filter them by the ‘Last Sync Date’ and ‘Custodian’ to see which devices are not being used for work and who was supposed to be using them.
Thus, the AssetSonar Agent enables you to oversee the company resources that your employees are using and whether they’re using them productively.
4. Quick IT service management
When working remotely, the quick resolution of IT issues is crucial so your devices and teams are always functional. It is necessary to meet your Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and ensure that your customers are satisfied, even when your teams are away from the office.
AssetSonar integrates with many leading service desks like Zendesk and Jira so you can resolve hardware breakdowns instantly, should they occur. If an employee faces a laptop malfunction while working, they can generate a ticket in Zendesk or an issue in Jira. This sends out an alert to your IT team.
AssetSonar fetches details of the concerned IT assets and employees. This way, the IT team knows who to reach out to for online technical support.
We expedite your incident and problem management processes. You can also view checkout and reporting histories and flag recurring cases for advanced support.
5. Centralized software license management
As businesses move towards remote work, they’re investing more and more in software applications that enable instant chat, secure document sharing, and web conferencing. Similarly, cloud based project management and CRM applications are also in more demand.
When each of your employees is away from the office premises, it’s hard to figure out who is using which software applications and whether they have been licensed or not. Ensuring software compliance becomes even more grueling.
AssetSonar saves you the trouble with its software license management module. You can run detailed license reports on all your detected IT devices to locate instances of unlicensed software. This can help your organization steer clear of vendor penalties and true-up costs in already troubled times.
You can also ‘blacklist’ software that you don’t want your employees to use. We notify you if blacklisted software is running on any of your remote machines.
Furthermore, the system alerts you and your employees when critical software applications are about to expire so they can prompt license or warranty renewals, and make timely fee payments. This ensures continual use of key tools and precludes any business disruptions.
AssetSonar automatically reconciles all your software data after every 24 hours. It updates the number of installations, the licenses available, and the licenses already allocated. This ensures that you’re always compliant.
Working from home can’t stop you. AssetSonar enables your IT Admins to manage software and associated licenses from a single space i.e. their own laptops.
We’re in this together
The global COVID crisis is unfolding right now and it is hard to predict the outcome. However, it’s quite clear that businesses have an imperative to protect both their employees and stakeholders as they tackle this situation.
We understand your struggle and are here to support you through it. You can utilize our full range of functions to minimize business disruptions while observing the recommended safety measures.
Please reach out to our support@ezo.io if you have any questions. We are available to address your concerns and offer assistance so your business operations can run as smoothly as possible during these challenging times.
About AssetSonar
AssetSonar is the leading cloud based hardware asset management software built on AWS. It offers powerful and intuitive remote management of your IT assets.
Read more: On Premise Vs Cloud Based: Which IT Asset Management Software Should Your Enterprise Use?
