Every company has equipment. It's something essential that every employee needs, whether it's equipment, keys, a smartphone, a car or anything else. All these things, the company can eventually provide to have an autonomous employee with good working conditions.
The allocation of IT equipment is becoming more and more important in companies, and managing the flow is a headache.
When an employee leaves the company, it's hard to remember all the equipment they've been lent, and that's where the logistics come in 🤯!
Who's got what? It's a question we all ask ourselves, but the answer isn't quite so simple.
(Un)coordination
Stock management is difficult, especially if logistics are chaotic. Between breakage, loss, oversights, orders... It's difficult to manage stock rotation well, especially if inventories are not carried out regularly.
Management costs pile up, and the company and its employees lose out.
Communication and rigor are the keys to smooth operation, but these are not always present, even unintentionally.
So you can manage your equipment on a good old Excel file.
That said, there are still a number of small problems:
- Can anyone get involved?
- Do we need to appoint a person to be in charge, and if so, how do we inform him/her if he/she is not available at the time of pick-up? By e-mail, or in a note?
- Will the information be taken into account?
So many questions that pose a problem.
The other complex aspect is to define the important fields without making the file too complex.
You'll need to retrieve information such as ID, material type, description, part number, supplier, purchase date, material revision date (if relevant), replenishment date, quantity allocated, total quantity and therefore remaining quantity, defective stock, etc.
This table must then be shared with HR so that they are in a position to demand the return of the equipment at the time of departure.
It's easy to see that this is a complex document to produce, as it requires a global view, a view by user and a view by hardware.
Management can't be done by hand for very long, as the logistics are really complex. What's more, some information is difficult to manage with an Excel file:
- equipment obsolescence
- overuse of equipment
- under-utilization of equipment
- data on battery, RAM and storage status
- data on software updates to be carried out
- restocking
Account creation
Following the hardware allocation stage comes the creation, modification, suspension and deletion of user accounts.
Yes, we're talking about hardware, but it's an empty shell if the accounts aren't managed.
Whether you're allocating physical stock or software and applications, time is of the essence: when new employees arrive, they need their equipment and access on day 1!
This is a real headache for the company, which has to master the supply chain, the relevant allocation of equipment, product maintenance, the tracking of each person's needs and the lifecycle of user accounts.
When a company is not organized around a well-structured IT department, the management of inventory, allocations and access reaches levels of complexity that impact on the company's profitability.
Equipment? Yes, but for whom?
This enables HR and IT departments, as well as managers and administrators, to distribute materials. Of course, an internal protocol is needed to know who can validate the material request and who can allocate the material.
For example, a manager may be the one to accept a request for a laptop, and an administrator in charge of equipment may hand over the computer to the employee who has requested it (as long as he sees that the request has been approved).
Another essential point to consider is whether the loan of equipment is consistent with the person's job? For example, if in your company you provide a marketing manager with a low-powered computer and the capacity is quickly reached, medium- and long-term performance will be degraded.
The person may have a bad image of a company that doesn't provide them with equipment adapted to their needs due to slowdowns.
In this case, we can see that optimizing equipment has a strong impact on the cost of renewing it.
Procedures must be put in place to assess the person's needs in terms of the power they require and the software and applications they will be running.
A company likes to talk about ROI. Optimal inventory management is all about :
- extended asset life,
- supervision of technical data,
- appropriate device allocation according to use,
- knowledge of the fleet, with management of the number of active and inactive devices,
- license management,
and save real money.
Make an inventory of your IT and business-related equipment
If you've never started to take stock of the hardware in your IT environment, you've got your work cut out for you!
If you already had a base, build on it 😉
What needs to be counted?
- fixed workstations, CPUs + everything that goes with them (keyboard, mouse, etc.)
- mobile equipment: computers, tablets, smartphones
- peripherals: printers, scanners, etc.
- the network: everything that enables the company's internal connection and all the protection features (modems, servers, wi-fi terminals, etc.)
Then let's move on to the bigger picture: equipment to be listed relating to the life of the company (and also to its safety when leaving!).
- company cars
- access badges
- keys
- canteen cards
Be sure to note the age of your equipment, as there's a life cycle to be respected if you want to avoid recurring breakdowns and slowdowns.
From purchasing to recycling
Since January 1ᵉʳ, 2018, companies with more than 20 employees have been obliged to sort and recycle IT equipment.
Since April 12, 2023, the French government and local authorities have had an obligation to recycle(re-use and re-purpose used IT equipment) to reach 50% by 2025.
Optimizing this management is therefore a real challenge.
There are several possibilities:
- call on a certified professional
- bring the equipment yourself to a collection point
- partner with an association to give your equipment a second life
→ IT expenditure represents a major item on which the company has the greatest room for maneuver.
→ The environmental impact of equipment is very strong, but it's also a variable on which we have the greatest room for maneuver.
= for a company, taking care of its fleet is an economic and ecological challenge.
I invite you to take stock at this stage of the article!
- purchases must be finely negotiated to avoid blowing your budget → do you have an in-house purchasing specialist or do you assign the task to someone whose main job is not purchasing?
- stock-outs, restocking, software licenses need to be managed
- material stock allocation must be controlled
- user accounts (which are a different skill from stock management) must be created on time and tracked throughout the employee's presence and departure.
- equipment should be recycled and its service life extended as much as possible
- ROI must be measured
What are the solutions?
So what do we do? An Excel file shows its limitations and is not suitable.
You need an inventory management solution and an access management solution. Pfffiou, that's a lot.
Good news, there is a solution (and here I appear as the hero 😁)!
Rzilient is a French SaaS solution that perfectly meets customers' needs.
Several offers allow you to modulate the delegation of your fleet (partially or completely), and you have access to a dashboard giving you a wealth of information.
No more fog:
- connect your MDM to Rzilient to automate inventory management
- you track your entire fleet
- you have a precise view of all the employees in your company at any given time (trainees of less than 2 months' duration, service providers, temporary staff in addition to traditional permanent contracts, fixed-term contracts and trainees) and the assets linked to them
- you answer the question of who has what and where
- you have a wide, negotiated choice of materials
- a technical view of your hardware, including RAM, battery, storage and update status
- you have a support
- you don't have to buy the equipment, you can rent it!
- you delegate the collection of used equipment and Rzilient takes care of optimizing it as much as possible. If it is still viable in a private setting, it can be donated to associations, otherwise it goes for recycling.
- you don't have to worry about creating, modifying, suspending or deleting accounts, Rzilient takes care of that.
How is this miracle possible?
Youzer manages the account management part (and yes, that's a bit of our specialty 😎 ) and automates your HRIS with all your applications (SaaS, on premise).
We interface with all your organization's HR sources (HRIS, Excel files, user creation forms) and synchronize this information to automate user account management.
In simple terms, we automate arrivals and departures, so you have the right information at the right time, and your users have their accounts on time without any action on your part. At the moment of departure, accounts are suspended, thus avoiding security breaches.
Rzilient has integrated Youzer into its solution.
So you get the best of both worlds: an inventory manager and an identity and access manager in a single tool. 🎉
