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On 12/14/2011 9:04 AM, Kyle Leslie wrote: > As I know many of you manage a lot of the equipment and things that go > through your office I was wondering if anyone could assist. > > Currently at my company we do an awful job of managing everything from > software to machines we hand out to users. I suggested to one of my > managers that we should really review our Asset management, well they > decided to play a sick joke and put me in charge of it. Does anyone know > of any resources that I could leverage to at least get started on this. > Books or anything at all would be useful. I feel your pain. A few years ago, when I was a programmer at NYNEX, I made the mistake of opening the boxes that arrived with our new computers inside them, and I was instantly appointed as "the computer guy" and forced to carry them on a cord around my neck forever. > I know the first problem always starts with getting the people to do the > right thing but we are a small team and I am sure bad habits can be > changed. Oh, you innocent child. You are about to get a rude lesson in human nature. They won't change. They won't tell you that they won't change, but they still won't change. > As an example of a bad process (I think), we currently name our end-user > machines after the person receiving it. Ie. BOS-KLESLIE, we run in to > trouble with this in many areas but its just something I think is not a > good way of doing things, for various reasons. 1 Major one is If we have to > deploy a new machine to them (many/most remotely) we have to name the > second machine BOS-KLESLIE2 then retrieve the old machine remove it from > the domain and rename the newly deployed. Well, when I came to this > company we have machine names like BOS-KLESLIE5. Quite frustrating when > you don't know if 1-5 have returned. That's not going to work. There is a reason that /people/ have social-security numbers: /people/ have very redundant and confusing names. /Computers/ need unique identifiers too, which must not be associated with any one person. It's sometimes handy to have location-specific names, but if your company has a central maintenance facility or other swap shop, the id codes should be generic: when you put someone's name on a device, you award them ownership and make that device a part of their status. A random number won't be associated with anything but what it /is/, and that's a tool that anyone can use, no different than the copy machine or the fax machine or the phone that looks like every other phone. > Any suggestions at all would be useful. We currently have software to do > this (Track-IT) but if people have good suggestions I am open to those as > well. In no particular order, my suggestions: 1. Keep your sense of humor. You'll find that laptops, printers, cell phones, etc., will wander across the corporate culture according to social and professional affiliations that you can only guess at: the "does everything" expensive laptop will wind up in the hands of a low-level staffer, who traded her limited-function workstation to the boss, because the boss wanted something lighter to carry on the plane. The multi-color laser that was "spozed to be" in use in the graphics department will mysteriously wind up next to the Vice-President's secretary, and the graphics department will be putting in requisitions for more and more ink cartridges no matter how much you think they should get the laser back. Employees will trade cell phones at dizzying speed, every time they want to ditch a boyfriend or lose their spouse for a day. 2. Simplify everything you can, as much as you can. If you have a single brand for all computers, e.g., "Dell", then you can use Dell's software to keep track of the machines. Even if not, most computer BIOS chips allow you to add asset tags that can be locked out from changes, so that you can keep track of them either locally or remotely, depending on which inventory package you have available. 3. Be very careful how much data you gather. If you keep, as I once did, the records of logins by machine and location, you will find some amazing and disturbing coincidences that can start you wondering how the middle-managers in your company manage to stay either married or out of jail. Trust me: sometimes, ignorance /is/ bliss: so long as you're reasonably sure that a given machine is still in the hands of a corporate employee, you've done your job. 4. Remember that you're fulfilling a corporate need, and that is that managers want someone to be accountable. Be sure that portable devices have good spill/drop/theft insurance, that source CD's are always accounted for (I always burned copies and gave them out instead of the originals), and that you have a "no big deal" speech on hand when someone arrives in a panic because their laptop is on it's way to Jamaica-the-country instead of Jamaica-in-Queens. Your most important asset is your attitude, and you must project a takes-it-in-stride sensibility that keeps your boss happy about picking you in the first place. FWIW. YMMV. Bill -- Bill Horne 339-364-8487
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