This week, we’re experiencing the highest inflation we’ve seen in four decades. In fact, the Federal Reserve predicts that it may take us as long as three years to get things back to normal – whatever normal is. As a result, we see our expenditures carrying a heavier burden – and a greater urgency to manage them. Whether in material, labor, or lost opportunity, costs are higher today than last year – and are on track to continue to increase.
Managing Assets for an Easy Win
So what does this have to do with the fixed assets we already own? Well, in most organizations, the second-highest operating expense (after labor) is fixed assets. So maximizing your use and expenditures surrounding your assets can be a powerful effort – with significant financial returns.
Maybe improving asset management practices isn’t such a bad idea.
It’s Not Just the Assets
Optimizing our labor resource investment is also being heavily impacted by these inflationary times. Labor, typically our biggest operating expense, is increasing rapidly in cost and scarcity. So here too, we need to streamline how we leverage this precious resource – including adjusting our approach to the tools that our teams leverage to do their jobs. While we all want improvement in our productivity, these days, we just don’t have the luxury of throwing more effort at it.
If we don’t maximize our asset investments surrounding our labor, we may directly contribute to lost opportunities. These come from the value lost to unnecessary spending and increased effort to accomplish tasks – including your better asset management goal. An option available to streamline labor is to leverage automation when it is easy and cost-effective, especially when it offers rapid ROI.
Tools to Hedge Your Risk
Our mobilePLUS asset inventory and unique item tracking solution is a key component for improved asset management. Combined with mobile devices and Automated Identification Technology (barcodes, RFID, etc.), mobilePLUS can rapidly provide critical information on what you have, where it is, and its readiness.
Timely and trustworthy data regarding your investments is critical for strategic decisions. Coupling this data capture capability with optimized labor and effort provides a path with minimal overhead for achieving your goal of improved asset management.
Inflation is part of life, whether it comes every forty years or four years. Our challenge is to accept this reality and look to the best way to address it. With your improved asset and labor investment goals, we can assist in making sure you start with good data. Let us demonstrate for you how quickly and economically we can provide this value.
