It can be highly irritating to lose company equipment at any
time and expensive too.
In cases where the assets are essential to the continuing
running of your business’s operations, the impact can extend to quickly
outweighing the costs of replacement.
More frustration can come when it becomes hard to track how
the loss occurred and what prospects there are for the original assets
recovery.
While you may never be able to fully prevents items going
missing there are steps you can take to reduce this from happening and in the
cases were it does happen have a system that both aids your understand of how
the loss occurred and improves your chances of item recovery.
Using asset tracking can do all this and that’s why many
people have decided to undergo better asset tracking with asset labels to make
sure they know exactly where their equipment and assets are.
The Uses of Asset Labels
When an item goes missing that’s more or less the scope of
it. Unless it somehow shows up again having been accidentally taken home by an
employee or returned after it had been stolen, then there’s not a lot the
company can do to track it down again. Likewise if it’s damaged in a fire or
accident. It is quite simply lost.
The easiest way to ensure that this does not occur is, of
course, to keep careful track of where your equipment and who is responsible
for it.
In the absence of more sophisticated methods, such as
proximity alarms or GPS tracking, the most efficient is to carefully catalogue each
item, where it is and who is responsible for it.
By giving your company assets a visible and permanent
marking like an asset label, you can in addition demonstrably verify that an
item is most certainly yours. Many also come with individual serial numbers and
markers, which also allow each item to be clearly distinguished from each
other.
This is great if you buy equipment in bulk that then goes out on loan
either internally or externally.
Asset Tracking System
While asset labels on their own can show item ownership the
real powers comes when they are linked to an asset tracking system. Easy to
create an asset tracking system can be used to note down information about each
asset and in its simplest for can be a spreadsheet.
This has all sorts of value including:
·
Tracking item location
·
Tracking value, condition and lifetime cost to
the company
·
Tracking responsibility
This makes tracking down individual items much, much easier
than they would have been otherwise. It also provides a physical history of
where the asset has been, helping you to retrace it to its last known location.
As you can imagine systems like this are very popular with
insurers!
Easier Administration
Having unique numbers and codes also makes administration of
items easier in general.
If you can afford it, setting up an electronic logging
system can make the recording of items in your company inventory quick and
painless. This is not only time efficient, but more secure than physical copies
too. In the event that a log book or similar is lost, electronic tracking
allows for a digital copy to be kept and backed up on company computers
instead.
Theft Protection
Having your company assets marked with a tracking label also
provides something of a deterrent for thieves. This is not the same as
immunity, of course. Simply that anyone looking to steal the item will now know
that it’s capable of being tracked, as well as physically marked as belonging
to a company.
While it doesn’t mean much if it was stolen for the thief’s
own use, it does make resale difficult if not impossible and can often aid
recovery.
It’s worth investing in asset tracking using asset labels as
in the long run it will improve how you use and manage your assets plus save
you money.
