ISO 20000 Asset Management Process Template
What is Asset Management?
Asset management is the systematic process of identifying, evaluating, and handling organizational assets. Asset management aims to ensure that an organization's assets are optimally utilized to support its strategic objectives.
An asset is anything that has value to an organization. Physical assets include buildings, land, equipment, and vehicles. Financial assets include cash, investments, and accounts receivable. Human assets include employees, contractors, and volunteers.
The first step in asset management is to inventory all the organization's assets. Once all purchases have been identified, they must be classified according to their importance to the organization.
After classified assets, a plan must be developed for managing them. This plan should include strategies for acquiring, maintaining, and disposing of assets.
Asset management is an ongoing process that should be revisited regularly. As the needs of the organization change, so should the asset management plan.
ISO 20000 is an international standard for IT service management. It provides a framework for asset management in ISO 20000-compliant organizations. The standard includes requirements for identifying, tracking, and managing assets throughout their lifecycle. It also has provisions for reporting on the status of assets and for auditing the asset management system.
Asset management is a process that helps organizations to manage their assets effectively and efficiently.
Some of the key activities involved in asset management are:
- Identifying the assets in the organization
- Tracking the location of the assets
- Recording the details of the assets
- Maintaining the inventory of the assets
- Monitoring the health of the assets
- Managing the lifecycle of the assets.
Why is asset management critical?
Asset management is essential in ISO 20000 for several reasons.
- Firstly, it ensures that all assets are correctly counted for and managed throughout their life cycle. This includes tracking and managing changes to acquisitions and ensuring that they are maintained and retired when no longer needed.
- Secondly, asset management helps ensure service delivery is uninterrupted and within agreed SLAs. This is because all assets involved in service delivery must be managed correctly for services to be delivered as expected.
- Thirdly, effective asset management helps to improve cost efficiency by ensuring that assets are used most efficiently and effectively. This includes ensuring that assets are utilized to their fullest potential and that they are not unnecessarily replaced or upgraded.
- Lastly, good asset management practices help to ensure compliance with various laws, regulations, and standards. This is because many of these require proper asset management to be met.
The Key Stages of Asset Management Lifecycle :
The following explains the key stages of the asset management lifecycle in ISO 20000.
- Asset identification - All assets within the ISO 20000 are identified in this stage. This includes Hardware, Software, Documentation, Data, and people. In addition, all purchases must be identified and their ownership confirmed.
- Asset classification - In this stage, all assets are classified according to their criticality and sensitivity. This ensures that the right level of control is applied to each purchase.
- Asset inventory - In this stage, a comprehensive list of all assets is maintained. This inventory must be kept up-to-date and accessible to all authorized personnel.
- Asset tagging - All assets are given a unique identifier at this stage. This identifier is used to track and manage the investment throughout its lifecycle.
- Asset tracking - All assets are tracked and monitored at this stage. This includes monitoring asset location, utilization, and performance.
- Asset maintenance - All assets are regularly maintained and updated at this stage. This includes applying patches and updates and performing regularly scheduled maintenance.
- Asset disposal - InAll assets are disposed of safely and securely in this stage, including destroying all data stored on the support and physically disposing of the purchase.
Types of Asset Management :
1. Configuration Management:
Configuration Management is a process that ensures that all the configuration items within an IT service are identified, controlled, and monitored throughout their lifecycle. Configuration Management is an integral part of Asset Management in ISO 20000, as it ensures that only authorized changes are made to CIs and that all changes are appropriately documented and tracked.
2. Software Asset Management:
Software Asset Management is the process of managing software licenses and installation media. It includes keeping track of which software licenses are owned by the organization, ensuring that software is installed and used by license agreements, and maintaining records of software license keys.
3. Hardware Asset Management:
Hardware Asset Management is managing the physical hardware components of an IT infrastructure. This includes keeping track of hardware inventory, ensuring that hardware is properly maintained and serviced, and keeping records of serial numbers and other essential hardware information.
4. Data Asset Management:
Data Asset Management manages the data stored within an organization’s IT infrastructure. This includes ensuring that data is backed up and recoverable, that data security and privacy controls are in place, and that data is appropriately classified and labeled.
The benefits of Asset Management
- Asset management ensures that an organization’s assets are optimally utilized and meet the organization’s business requirements.
- It provides visibility of the organization’s assets and utilization, allowing for effective decision-making on future investments.
- It enables the organization to track and manage assets throughout their lifecycle, from acquisition to disposal.
- Asset management provides a framework for managing risks associated with assets, including financial, reputation, and operational ri
- It can help to reduce the costs of ownership of assets by ensuring that they are effectively maintained and fit for purpose.
- It can also improve customer satisfaction by ensuring that assets are available when and where they are needed.
- Good asset management practices can also help to improve organizational resilience by ensuring that assets are recovered quickly in the event of an incident.