The management of IT assets, that is, software or information systems that have value for a company (Data Center) can increase the productivity, performance and experiences of customers (CX) and employees (EX) in the call center.
For this reason, the rationalization of internal processes and the elimination of friction points in all functions of the contact center is becoming a strategic advantage. And a major operational pain point is the effort required to manage the physical and digital elements that employees use to get their jobs done every day.
IT asset management (ITAM) serves to ensure that assets are accounted for, deployed, maintained, updated and disposed of in a timely manner. That is, to guarantee that the valuable elements, tangible and intangible, of an organization, have follow-up or use.
Why Enterprise IT Asset Management Is Important
Because investing time and energy to standardize improves efficiency and productivity, employee skills, and helps ensure an organization is equipped to deliver differentiated CX that meets or exceeds customer expectations.
Furthermore, standardizing the management of these elements helps transform them into an efficient and integrated component of business operations. This integration reduces friction and improves execution of all your team goals that contribute to a great customer experience.
What Are The Benefits of Standardizing Asset Management?
1) Up-to-date Information Ensures Fast Problem Resolution
If an organization has a structured information system with accurate and fully up-to-date hardware and software information, it is much easier and more efficient to manage employees. A single source of information for assets reduces friction points for faster problem resolution times, allowing agents to quickly return to their core responsibilities.
Similarly, including hardware contract management and digital assets (such as software licenses) in the system helps ensure that equipment and software applications are always compliant, under warranty, and in the best shape to help contact centers to serve customers.
Active license tracking also ensures that the software tools used to drive customer requests or extract data from different sources always work, and there is no risk of these tools causing operational difficulties due to compliance issues. This gives employees confidence that they are prepared to handle customer issues and queries.
2) Good Maintenance Reduces Downtime and Keeps Data Safer
In order to provide excellent customer service, it is imperative to ensure that your hardware devices are in optimal condition. Devices that are at high risk of malware infection, a component malfunction, or a lack of network communication can obstruct operations and eventually affect customers. Also, if such an incident occurs, you run the risk of losing critical data.
Implementing asset lifecycle management strategies for hardware helps maintain protocols for device maintenance and service. A complete system would include maintenance scheduling for critical hardware items according to guidelines and best practices established by the IT team.
Since these are significant IT investments, the team can also provide maintenance manuals, checklists, and asset maintenance guidelines, all of which can be centralized for easy access. Regular maintenance will improve its lifespan and eliminate any risk of unplanned downtime that could interrupt customer service or cause loss of important user data.
3) Standardized Processes Increase Efficiency
If an organization doesn’t create procedures for IT processes, employees are likely to spend a lot of time figuring out the processes on their own. Not only does this lead to errors, but it also keeps them tied up in IT issues and distracted from their core responsibilities.
To avoid this, you should use an effective system that includes standard processes for IT asset, endpoint security, configuration, and incident management. By offering standard procedures, employees will feel empowered to answer questions instead of waiting for an IT representative to help them. Standardized processes also help reduce your loss and theft, which lowers costs in the long run.
4) Unlocking Actionable Information
Tracking usage data of software and hardware items for compliance has an additional benefit: it forms the basis of actionable information. These include understanding which devices and software tools enable the best performance and customer service, which providers are most reliable, and which assets to purchase for longer life.
5) Maintaining Company and Employee Safety
Accurate tracking of software assets helps ensure compliance procedures are followed, thereby reducing the risk of external audits and cyber attacks. Disruption caused by an audit or cyber attack can slow down call center processes and, in the worst case, compromise users’ personally identifiable information.
Our Experience with Data Centers and Asset Management with Cloud Solutions: The Success Story Adam
At Enreach Spain we needed a partner that could offer us scalable and redundant data center solutions to expand capacity and locate infrastructure. Our biggest challenge was to be able to offer our clients a cloud communications model in a short period of time and in different geographical locations. This service required a very stable, redundant and scalable platform, capable of evolving at the same pace and in the same way that the market evolves.
So in less than a month, thanks to Adam, we implemented, on the one hand, a hosting solution for interconnection with operators, as well as redundant Internet connectivity, and, on the other hand, a customized cloud infrastructure solution that allowed us to allows us to grow at the pace required by our demand.