Part Three – Manage

Up to this point, we’ve talked at great lengths about identifying and tracking your assets and inventory. Once you have completed these phases, you will find that you have gathered plenty of data to use. Now we can finally discuss the final piece of the process that boosts your efficiency and productivity: manage.

The plethora of data you’ve collected enables you to make decisions on how to use or where to send items. Our Gary Randall, VP of sales and marketing, puts it as simply as “data equals decisions.”

Like tracking, managing is a broad topic, and how you manage your assets and inventory will depend on your business; however, let’s cover a few of the basics.

Why it is Critical to Manage

To Mike Stryczek, AB&R’s president and CEO, managing your assets and inventory is all about making your operations more productive and efficient. Here are a few examples of how.

It Gives Insight into your Inventory, Making Customers Happier

To keep your customers happy in this era of online shopping and same-day shipping, you no longer simply have to know where your items are. You need to forecast their demand and understand what you have available at all times.

“Managing helps you pick product off the shelf,” Mike says. “It keeps your inventory accurate because it deducts [the product] from inventory when it is scanned out.”

If you’ve read parts one and two, you likely already have a clear idea of what you’d like to identify and understand the benefits of tracking them. Using the data you collected through the tracking component enables you to establish purchasing patterns and plan accordingly.

With this data gathered during the identifying and tracking phases, you’ll know exactly what you have in stock and the quantity. In an age where more people are shopping online, this is priceless. Companies with an online shop may use that information to update their customers on whether an item is in stock, increasing communication.

“It also makes for a happier customer,” Mike continues. “They’re getting complete orders, as opposed to going back and forth with partial shipments.”

It Reduces Downtime by Reporting Asset Health

It’s difficult to monitor your assets’ performance. When you work with equipment daily, its gradual performance decline can go unnoticed until it becomes a serious problem. Asset management software helps you keep track by notifying you when an asset needs attention.

An asset management software is capable of setting alerts for events like a low battery or change of asset location. You can configure these settings to your preferences by asset group. If your assets require a certain room temperature, for example, you might instruct the software to notify you when the room temperature rises above or drops below the ideal temperature. This use case is perfect for companies who need to keep assets or inventory within certain conditions, like a cannabis grower or medical lab.

Monitoring your equipment’s status is essential. After all, you can track a tool all you want, but if that tool isn’t working, your operations are at a standstill.

Keeping your Workers Safe

In some workplaces, it’s not necessary for your employees to have access to every room onsite. As an example, it just doesn’t make sense for a hospital accountant to have access to an operating room, let alone safe.

Worker tracking and managing software makes limiting access easy via RFID-embedded badges. In the software, configuring employee permissions reduces the risk of work-related injury. For example, you could prevent an employee from using certain equipment, because they do not have clearance.

“We Pull it all Together”

You’ve Finished the Series

Thank you for reading our deep dive into Identify. Track. Manage. We hope this was insightful!  Revisit the previous chapters by clicking the buttons below:

Next Steps

Are you ready to take the next steps toward managing your assets and inventory? We’re here to help! Give us a call or fill in our secure form below.