Asset Lifecycle Management

Asset lifecycle management treats each asset as an investment, from the moment someone identifies a need to the day it is retired. Handled properly it lowers what the asset costs overall, keeps it working longer, and ties capital spending to what the business is actually trying to do.

The stages

Planning, procurement, deployment, operation, maintenance, disposal. Each stage involves different people: finance, IT, facilities, operations.

Procurement decisions echo for years. Buy against lease, the warranty terms, whether you standardize on one model: all of it shows up later in maintenance cost and resale value.

• Plan: forecast demand and line it up with the budget
• Acquire: choose a vendor, capitalize it correctly
• Deploy: tag it, configure it, assign it to someone
• Operate: monitor usage, run preventive maintenance
• Retire: wipe the data, sell or scrap it, record the disposal

Maintenance

A preventive schedule based on time or usage prevents most catastrophic failures. Predictive maintenance using sensor data is worth the money on equipment you cannot afford to lose.

Maintenance history is also what settles a repair-or-replace argument, once repair costs start approaching replacement value.

What it really costs

Total cost of ownership covers purchase, installation, energy, maintenance, downtime and disposal. The cheapest option at purchase is often the most expensive across its life.

Standardizing on fewer models and vendors cuts your spare parts inventory and the training your technicians need.

Disposal

Wipe IT equipment securely, and dispose of hazardous material the way the regulations require.

Where an asset still has life in it, the secondary market recovers real value. Donations may carry a tax benefit depending on where you are.

Written by the team at Ambivo, a business platform that keeps CRM, accounting and ERP on one customer record. This article is general guidance on the topic rather than a description of Ambivo features.