IT asset management (ITAM) comprises practices and strategies for overseeing, managing and optimizing company-owned IT systems, hardware, processes and data. As part of an ITAM strategy, IT departments implement, track and maintain IT assets, and assess whether those IT assets require optimization, can be replaced with a less expensive option or be upgraded to a newer technology. Fostering these deeper insights into your organization’s IT assets helps IT executives visualize the ROI on IT assets and deliver data to other key stakeholders on how those assets directly benefit the company’s business goals.

A successful ITAM strategy requires a complete IT inventory that gives organizations a quick view of every IT asset within the company. That includes data centers, software, hardware, networks, employee or user workstations and any other business technology. The main goals of ITAM are to save money through asset tracking, have more control over the company’s IT environment, bring more organization to IT lifecycle management and reduce waste by managing the disposal of IT assets.

Companies have long tried to create centralized systems to manage IT assets, which include not only hardware, software, networks and services, but also employee and customer data. While it’s not feasible to have that level of control over your IT environment, proper ITAM can help your organization get close to that ideal and stay on top of IT investments by making it simpler to manage technology budgets, user data, analytics reports and any relevant information about the company’s IT assets.

The International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers (IAITAM) is the only organization that offers documentation on ITAM to help guide organizations through the process of asset management. The IAITAM defines  12 key process areas (KPAs) for ITAM in its IAITAM Best Practice Library (IBPL), including:

The goal of ITAM is to create a centralized location to oversee the organization’s entire inventory of IT assets, a difficult task that’s not fully feasible for most companies given the scope and size of most organization’s IT inventory. Third-party services, however, can help your organization get as close as possible to realizing centralized-IT asset control.

Popular ITAM software includes:

In addition to best practices, the IAITAM offers a certification scheme for ITAM. Certification courses cover the “lifecycle of IT hardware assets beyond the scope of the cradle to grave analogy and discusses the business practices that can best be used to manage those assets efficiently and cost-effectively,” according to the IAITAM.

Courses cover topics such as policy management, vendor management, de-manufacturing, hardware asset management, planning and implementing change, measuring success, IT asset lifecycles and datacenter power consumption and green initiatives.

There are currently seven ITAM certifications available through the IAITAM:

IT asset management requires trained and knowledgeable staff who can understand the complexities of a modern IT environment. ITAM jobs require a wide range of skills, including IT security, analytical thinking, problem solving, project and inventory management skills, IT hardware and software knowledge, critical thinking, strong verbal communication and industry-specific IT knowledge. You’ll need to have a broad understanding of IT systems, hardware, software, networks and services given that IT assets can include anything from employee hardware, to cloud services hosting sensitive customer data, to the organization’s complex system of networks.

IT asset managers earn an average salary of $76,000 per year, according to data from Glassdoor. Respondents also report an average additional cash compensation of $14,000 per year.

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This story, "IT asset management (ITAM): A centralized approach to managing IT systems and assets" was originally published by CIO.