Growth Pains: Standardizing Process and Procedures for a Robust IT Asset Management Program

Welcome to another episode of Hithiker's Guide to IT Podcast. Broad to you by Device forty two On this show, we explore the ins and outs of modern IT management and the infinite expanse of its universe. Whether you're an expert in the data center or cloud or just someone interested in the latest trends in IT technology. Hitchhiker's Guide to IT is your go to source for all things IT. So buckle up and get ready to explore the ever changing landscape of modern IT management. Hello and welcome to the hitchhiker's Guide to IT a podcast to you by device forty two. I'm your host Michelle Dawn Mooney. And today we're talking about growth pains standardizing process and procedures for a robust IT ASIT Management PROGRAM. AND I am pleased to bring on our SPECIAL GUESS TODAY. IN SILVER IS THE IT ASSIT MANAGER FOR FLIN Group OF COMPANIES And IAN, thank you for being with me today. My pleasure. Looking forward to our conversation before we get into that, can I ask you to give a brief bio for our audience, please? Well, having been an IT for as long as I am, that's a that's a challenge. But I've been doing this for I I can't believe it forty years now. A variety of industries and a a variety of roles. Always looking at the thread that ties it all together is always looking for ways to make things a little easier for the folks who have to work with this technology every day. So, started off doing programming, worked as a database administrator, system integrator, project program manager, and over the years, I found myself here now doing asset management and building out the asset management practice AT THE FLIM GROUP Group OF COMPANIES. SO LET'S START WITH THIS, WHAT EXACTLY DOESIT MANAGEMENT INTIL? Wow, SO I CAN GIVE YOU the formal definition. Right? It's a we're responsible for managing technology assets. So it's looking after cradle to grave of all of the assets, whether those are hardware, software services, and really it's it's both looking after the operational aspects, making sure that things are up and running, and also tracking the value proposition, so optimizing cost, and the value of those assets throughout their life cycle. So from the time we get involved from procurement, selecting the assets, getting them up and running into production, looking after refresh frequencies, opportunities for optimization, and then how do we bring things to the end of their life cycle and retire and dispose of assets. A LOT of moving parts there. So a lot, and we'd need a couple of podcasts probably to talk about everything that it really entails. And as you said kind of like a high level definition there, but what would you say are the primary challenges or obstacles when it comes to really building out a robust IT asset management practice. I think it's gonna differ for everyone depending on where you're coming from, how you're approaching this, one of the biggest challenges facing us, and and I've seen this in in a number of the place is where I've worked, is there's a lot of tribal knowledge about how to do things when we don't have a formal practice and standard process and procedures in place, I like to refer to it as success through heroic efforts. Really talented people who are very dedicated to success work very hard to make sure things get done, and they develop ways of of staying on top of things. What ends up happening is that information is fragmented and siloed across the organization, and then if if somebody leaves, then you really start to understand just how dependent you are on this this fragile web of of these these heroic users who are were keeping things afloat. And so the challenge is how do you move from that to something that's standardized, repeatable, and can be then used by anyone across the organization with the proper you know, set of training. SO, we've identified what the challenges are, and you said, you know, the process and a lot of challenges built in there. So What's the first step to take? What is the first thing that needs to be done when it really comes to start improving our IT asset management practice? For me, the the very first step and it seems obvious is ask yourself what's the problem we're trying to solve. Because it's not gonna be the same specific problem for every organization. And there's the general problem. We need to make ITS at management better. Sure. But that's like trying to boil the ocean. So, what is it that that's really causing you pain today? And for example, for us, we really had challenges around managing our hardware, both our and our inventory of end user machines, laptops that, you know, we burn through those things fast. They wear out, because they get heavy duty use or they just get old and need to be replaced. So we've gotta track those. We've got lots of servers and other network infrastructure that ages over time and has to be replaced, and we have to be able to manage that. So for us, that was the the first problem. We need to get a better handle on our hardware and how do we go about getting that data together. You've identified what the problem is because you said how can you really solve a problem if you don't know what it is. So we know what it is now. How do we go about tackling whatever that problem is? And as you said, it's going to be different depending on which company and which issues that you're having in that specific company. Right. And so that I think the next part of it And again, ideal world, in a green field where you're starting from scratch, take the time to talk through What do you want what processes and procedures do you wanna put in place to manage this stuff? Because that's gonna really help you clarify this is the problem I'm trying to solve. This is the general approach to how I wanna solve it. And then from that, you can move on to say, Oh, look, there's tool a, there's tool b, there's tool c, and I can measure these things against what am I specifically trying to accomplish. In our case, we got a little card ahead of the horse there, maybe. And we had a tool in place that was starting to collect a whole bunch of data and then after the fact, we're now trying to map that to these processes and procedures. That'll work fine as well The challenge there is that you can get easily distracted by lots of shiny things in the tools that you that you deploy, that maybe aren't part of the core problem you're trying to solve. And so you can end up off on a tangent here or there working on things that really aren't helping you move a forward on on what your core vision is. So I think if you've got a tool in place and then you're building out your process, and practices. Keep coming back to that process and practice question to keep your efforts focused in the tool on Ignore this stuff. It's cool. We can come back and look at that later, but right now we need to solve this problem. So let's talk about results because the perf is in the pudding, we've all heard of the saying, So, what benchmarks can we look for to see if these approaches that we are taking are actually working? I think there's there's a lot of things to say there and one is it's a it's a journey, so you have to establish interim milestones, and then your how do we know when we're done kinda milestones. And those interim milestones are things like when we need to do remediation. So we've got gaps. We've got gaps between everything that's deployed in our thirty some locations across North America, and what we know about in our centralized inventory. So how do we close those gaps? So we we start building out some reporting that says, hey, our gap is ten thousand mistaken or mismatched devices, and then we can start reporting on reducing that number and and the progress we're making on that. The other part is is starting to build out the process and procedure changes, and being able to do some reporting on the amount of work that's now going in through the standard procedures, so that we're not recreating the gaps that we had to do the remediation on in the first place. Right? It doesn't doesn't help us if we just remediate the gaps and we don't change the things that we were doing that led to those gaps in the first place. So those two have to go hand in hand, and in general, you know, with anything, reporting is the way that we pull the data and turn that data into information that we can communicate about our progress. There's a lot of ground to cover here. And you are clearly trying to make it as simple as possible and making it almost sound easy although we know it's not because it's very layered, but What are a few things, maybe some key points that people can keep in mind if they're looking to improve IT Asset Management without kind of going down the rabbit hole AND KIND OF KEEPING THE BLINDERS ON TO GET TO THE BEST SUCCESS. RIGHT, WELL, I THINK we've touched on on a number of things. One is, and first and foremost, and it it it sounds obvious, but I think it bears repeating. Which is know what the problem is you're trying to solve. Remembering that the tools that you select are there to support objectives that you've already identified, not the reverse. Don't you know, don't look to the tools to tell you what you should be doing. They can sort of inform you, you know, you may not realize, oh, I could do this with my with my hardware. I could actually tie this back to purchasing and software and So, they may inform some of that, but don't, they shouldn't drive it. The the problem that you're trying to solve, you need to get really clear about that. And then how do you know when you solved it, and then use the tools to support that. The second part is I I made the comment earlier about, you know, it's a boil the ocean kinda problem. And if you try to do it all at once, you will fail. So, you have to take little pieces at a time, and you have to measure those little successes you know, take time to identify those incremental wins because they will add up to something. They're also I used to use the analogy of someone learning to play an instrument, playing piano like play guitar. If you if you record yourself every day and listen to what you did yesterday, you'll never notice any improvement. Because you don't get better that much better from one day to the next. You gotta wait a little bit of time and then look back. And so taking time to identify those incremental wins and be patient around the progress that you're making. Take the time to look back that, oh, yeah, we haven't done much in the last couple of weeks. But let's look back to three months ago, we've made a whole ton of progress. And then the final thing is recognize that Some things are gonna from a productivity standpoint, some things are gonna get worse before they get better. You know, you're introducing a whole lot of new stuff people have to learn new ways, they have to learn a new tool, they have to learn new procedures, and so things that the folks who knew this stuff and were succeeding with those heroic efforts that they could do boom boom boom, boom, they can't do that way. And so, some of your current experts will become less productive in the short term as you start to introduce these new standardized ways of doing things, and you need to be okay with that. And the phrase I like to use is go slow now to go faster later. You know, be willing make sure that you've got buy in from the top down to take the hit on productivity now to successfully make the transition to the standard repeatable process approach that everybody is gonna wanna see down the road. Yeah. And that is a great analogy with the piano lessons, and I'll I'll think about that because you, I'm sure, are a master. I tried a couple lessons and and that's where I ended. So if I if I start up again, I and I'm not gonna do any recordings a day after and expect any big improvements, but I think we live in this fast food mentality of a society now. We just, we are used to getting everything we want. JUST RIGHT AWAY AND IT'S HARD TO TRUST THE PROCESS. AND CLEARLY THAT IS A KEY POINT THAT YOU'VE MADE IN THIS CONVERSATION. Great conversation, EIN. If people are out there and they're saying, you know what, this is all great. I need some help. I have some questions. I'd like more information. Where can they find it? Can they reach out to you? Sure. Absolutely. I've you can find my profile on LinkedIn. It's just my name. Last name and then first name, so Silverayan or because back in the day, I I first got a website in nineteen ninety six. I was I was one of the first subscribers to Amazon and and probably one of the first people around with with their own custom domain. So we used to refer to it as Silvarian because it sounded very internet y. So it's my last name and my first name, And that's how you can find me on LinkedIn, and I'd be happy to talk to anyone about any questions you have. Perfect. IAN Silver ITS manager for a full in group of companies, and great conversation, as I said before, I am a lot of things that people need help with out there and hopefully this let a little bit of light on where they can start, but it definitely is the process. And I love how you said you're trusting that process in being patient. So Thank you so much for your time today. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to have you. And I want to thank all of you for tuning and listening to the hitchhiker's Guide to IT as podcast brought to you by device forty two. Of course, you can go to device forty two dot com for more information on device forty two. And we would encourage you to subscribe to the podcast to hear more great conversations like the one you heard today. I'm your host Michelle Don Mooney, once again, thanks for joining us, and we hope to see you on another podcast sometime soon.