What ITAM isn't

When developing your ITAM plan and strategy, the first step is to understand what is not ITAM. Many companies make the mistake of assuming they have an effective ITAM program in place because they possess one or more of the following:

• Discovery tool: this is not an ITAM Tool. Having the ability to discover physical assets is not the same as being able to manage those assets. While ITAM does include a discovery process, it also adds tracking of the physical, financial, contractual, and software information relating to that asset as it changes throughout its entire lifecycle.
• Physical inventory repository: While your physical inventory database may start out recording accurate data, the information is always changing due to IMACD (installs, moves, adds, changes, and disposals) within your organization. Additionally, physical inventories tend to be narrow in their focus, usually relying only on hardware and software configuration information.
• Spreadsheets: Far too many enterprises have users that rely solely on spreadsheets for recording their asset-related information. Typically, when spreadsheets are used to track assets, the focus is on getting some transparency into budgeting, as well as, users addressing the concerns of dissatisfied with existing technology or lack thereof. There tends to be very little standardization in the formatting and naming conventions used in the spreadsheets. In addition, the data is not continually updated and can result in multiple versions with varying data.
• Fixed asset systems: Its relative tax implications helps make the fixed asset system the favorite of financial professionals. However, it has little connection to either the day-to-day IT world or the costs involved with an asset.