Established in the Southeast, Kolter Group is a prestigious name in the real estate industry all across Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Kolter Group specializes in purchasing land, building houses, and selling them as communities. The thing that makes them stand out is their commitment to building valued residences and enhancing lifestyles through state-of-the-art energy efficient homes. 

With over 1600 employees on Kolter’s payroll and over a 1000 employees requiring IT assets to do their jobs, Kolter relies on AssetSonar to manage their IT asset tracking needs.  

Siloed data, disparate systems 

Before AssetSonar, Kolter’s IT team was tracking all their hardware devices through Excel spreadsheets. We talked to Michael Anton of The Kolter Group who walked us through the IT asset management workflows that were previously in place. Michael is responsible for the procurement and management of these IT assets for all employees and he ensures that the company’s employees are all well equipped with the required assets at all times. 

He explained to us that in the past, whenever they purchased new equipment, they had to manually tag all new devices. They also had to copy those new serial numbers onto the spreadsheets. This process was time consuming and had a high risk of manual errors. They were managing multiple spreadsheets for various different purposes and the information was almost never accurate. 

‘There were too many manual steps involved while tagging and saving information on new assets. Every time we made a purchase, we had to get the asset, tag it, scan the device, populate the information in the spreadsheet and then save it. It was very tedious,’ explained Michael. 

While discussing the limitations of using spreadsheets for IT asset tracking, Michael shared that inaccurate data was one of their main pain points. If an asset was assigned to a user but was later moved to another location or if someone else borrowed it, there was no defined process for tracking this information. Not only that, but sometimes asset names also missed an alphabet or a number, resulting in duplicated information, deeming these spreadsheets more redundant. Michael shared that every time an asset went missing, instead of color coding its information, the team used to delete it which resulted in missing information. Michael explained that in such cases, he had to repopulate these sheets which inevitably resulted in multiple entries and versions of the same asset and caused even more confusion.

‘When we implemented AssetSonar and imported our Excel spreadsheet to AssetSonar database, our data was only about 25% accurate,’ Michael explained to help us understand the gravity of the situation. 

Implementing AssetSonar to drive efficiency 

To improve their situation in the asset management domain, Kolter’s IT executives decided to implement AssetSonar as they believed it to be software most suited to their needs. Michael shared his feedback on our onboarding process which went smoothly and was straightforward. They found AssetSonar to be quite user-friendly and easy-to-use. 

‘Our onboarding went very smoothly and the training was excellent,’ remarked Michael. 

Prior to implementing AssetSonar, Kolter’s IT team were just tracking IT assets but now they could make use of AssetSonar’s automated workflows for different use cases. 

• Purchase Orders (POs): Michael uses AssetSonar’s purchase order forms to double check the invoices they have sent to the vendors. These purchase orders contain crucial information like pricing and vendor details, asset’s make and model, and procurement date etc. This information gets saved in Kolter’s AssetSonar account for future reference. 
• Tracking by Location: Kolter’s IT team has assigned cox codes to all their locations for better asset tracking. This way, whenever they are ordering new devices, they can put in the cox codes to know exactly where to deploy and gather these devices from. Assigning location codes also helps Michael in deploying hardware devices to the company’s 1000+ users. 
• Tracking diverse range of assets: Since AssetSonar helps track various types of IT and non-IT assets, Kolter’s team uses these abilities to manage laptops, TV sets, iPads, monitors, printers, and mobile boosters. Michael explained that every time they buy a specialty item, they put an asset tag on it and register it in AssetSonar’s database for accurate tracking. 
• Software asset management (SAM): Kolter’s IT team leverages AssetSonar’s software asset management module to track their software licenses. They utilize SAM capabilities to ensure that their licenses are being renewed on time to eliminate any risk of non-compliance. 

Leveraging Custom Reports to streamline operations

Kolter’s IT team takes advantage of AssetSonar’s reporting capabilities to study trends in asset usage and enable better decision making. Michael gave us a rundown of the reports he generates and elaborated on how these custom reports help him and other departments with actionable decisions. He generates reports on current available inventory, asset checkouts, and assets per location. These essential reports enable him and Kolter’s finance department to conduct monthly internal audits, eliminating the risk of discrepancies in the system. 

In addition, AssetSonar’s custom reports also help Michael analyze the trends on asset usage and preference. This helps them evaluate the type of devices users prefer so they can decide what to buy for the next procurement cycle. 

These custom reports also give Michael crucial information on service and repair history of different devices. They check historical data on such devices to determine the lifecycle stage of the device and if the device is near retirement, Michael and his team notifies the concerned department so the faulty devices can be replaced with new ones, without any operational disruption. 

Another one of Michael’s favorite reports is the purchase order (POs) report by location. During the accounting audits, the company likes to run these reports to see how many times purchases have been made from certain locations and what assets have been procured for them. All these reports can be generated with just a few clicks, saving Michael time and resources. 

Delivering excellent support with Zendesk 

One of the major wins for Kolter while implementing AssetSonar was its integration with Zendesk. Catering to the needs of over 1000 users can be very time consuming and impacts efficiency. With AssetSonar’s console on Zendesk’s help desk, Kolter’s agents don’t have to constantly switch between applications to get relevant information. Thanks to AssetSonar and Zendesk’s integration, the consolidated data is readily available for the agents to save them time and minimize errors. For example, whenever a user submits a ticket regarding their faulty asset, the agent knows exactly what asset needs repair, enabling them to take actions quicker. This eliminates the need to go into AssetSonar, search for the relevant asset manually, and then troubleshoot it. 

Michael explained that as a bottomline, using the integration has positively impacted his team’s productivity and their resolution rates have improved. They can now resolve more tickets in less time while their productivity has improved by at least 30%. 

‘Our agents don’t wait for answers now. With AssetSonar, they have all the information they need to make decisions. This integration has made everything streamlined for our agents,’ said Michael. 

Michael shared that this integration comes in handy while procuring new assets for the company. He now finds it easier to create a purchase order whenever a request for new hardware is made. He explained that previously, he had to go into Zendesk to jot down the order, place the order on the vendor’s website, and then update the information in various forms and spreadsheets. This has cut down the entire procurement process significantly. Now it takes Michael just 5 business days to procure new hardware whereas previously this entire process took at least 3 weeks. 

‘We have an easier workflow to go around now. I know the exact steps to follow to get the work done without having to get distracted with tedious tasks,’ explained Michael. 

A winning future with AssetSonar

With AssetSonar in place, Kolter is now better positioned to explore new capabilities and features to drive more efficiency. At the top of their to-do list is to enable AssetSonar’s Azure integration and utilize Single Sign-on (SSO) capability to make things more secure on their end. 

Michael shared his delightful experience with AssetSonar’s customer success team and looks forward to collaborating with them to explore more features and areas of interest in the future.