Early Inventories
My first experience taking an inventory actually happened when I was a child – at Halloween.
After a long night of trick or treating, my brother and I would head home and dump out our haul for review. We couldn’t eat any of it until Mom inspected everything.
She’d carefully check every piece, muttering about the world going someplace in a handbasket.
I couldn’t hear where the world was going, and I didn’t know what a handbasket was, but I understood that in this modern age (the 70s), she had to check to make sure that no razors made their way into our candy.
Once my Mom gave us the go-ahead, we would carefully assess everything from our little plastic pumpkins.
We were allowed two pieces of candy that night – so selection was critical. After we picked our pieces, we knew exactly how many Snickers, Kit Kat bars, M&M bags, etc. (the good stuff) remained.
In the morning, we did another inventory because….Dad.
And, well, you guessed it – the inventory in the little plastic pumpkin had changed overnight, and valuable parts of the inventory were gone.
Critical Inventories Today
These days, I help teams with fixed asset inventory issues through our mobilePLUS solution. These teams are usually seeking help for one (or more) of these reasons:
Data Accuracy – they want confidence in the accuracy of their asset data before they issue reports or make strategic decisions for things like budgets or operations.
Asset Status – they require a physical review of their assets to ensure they have what they need, where they need it, and in the right condition for use.
Easier Approach – they need a faster, easier way to conduct inventories.
Asset inventories are one of those things that don’t seem to become critical until there is an issue.
Once something is lost, bad inventory data ripples out into bad business decisions, or motivating your staff to get it done takes more effort than you have time to give – it then becomes critical.
The fact is that things do get moved or damaged – or their records just get outdated.
It may not be for reasons as sinister as Dad raiding your pumpkin.
Things just happen – and tracking asset inventories usually doesn’t fall high on a list of priorities until there is a problem.
So if you are in the middle of trying to solve a problem with your inventories and their data – or if you’re trying to head off an issue before it develops, know that there are solutions available that won’t break the bank, disrupt your staff or give your IT administrators ongoing headaches.
I can help. I couldn’t save your Twix bar from your Dad – but I can help you here.
