I’ve written a few times on the value and importance of timely and trustworthy data for your organization. After all, when your data is bad, how beneficial is it in the first place? More than that – how m
uch damage is it doing?
In most organizations, asset investment is typically the second-highest operational cost (after employees). Your assets are also the tools-of-the-organization – so they can make or break operation inefficiencies. Maximizing your assets utilization and availability needs to be a priority.
So why then don’t we have the best data for our decisions?
Generally, it comes down to an understanding of the need for quality data – and the value placed on that need. We focus on those areas we deem important.
Data is also enormously impacted by how easy it is to gather. This is where automation can make a significant difference – for your team and your resulting data.
In most organizations, asset data is collected by employees – in addition to their regular job duties. As a result, it is often viewed as a burden or distraction – not a critical task.
Our team has focused on data collection practices in asset tracking and supply chain for over twenty years. In that time, we’ve found that these three areas will help you dramatically improve this task for your employees:
- Make it Easy – A process that guides them through the entire asset information harvesting process with clear instructions and guidelines can take away a lot of the anxiety and apprehension.
- Make it Fast – Keeping the task steps to a minimum – leveraging barcodes and RFID technology along with handy reference information enables the job to be done right – quickly – the first time.
- Make it Accurate – Start with the best data foundation possible. The more you know about your assets – the easier it is for the “harvester” team. This foundation will naturally build and improve with every inventory/audit shifting their work to confirming asset data instead of working to gather it all.
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” -John Wooden (& Irv Levy)
The goal is to gather accurate and timely asset information as easily as possible with the least disruption to your regular business operations. Putting the tools that ensure this into the employee’s hands is beneficial for everyone – minimal effort for maximum reward. The use of mobile technology & electronic capture methods (barcodes / RFID) can play a significant role in this challenge.
Our mobilePLUS solution for unique item inventories can provide you the tool to make your asset inventory job both easy and accurate. With deployments ranging from 3 – 2,000 users, with single locations to hundreds, it has proven its ability to meet this challenge time and time again.
We would welcome an opportunity to discuss how automation may make things easier for you and your team – and improve your organization’s data as a result.
