Situation:
An international engineering organization sought assistance in establishing an IT Asset Management (ITAM) framework and practice. To move forward, they invested in the ITAM Accelerate Process Kit—a comprehensive toolkit designed to drive ITAM best-practice adoption. In the engineering sector, reducing operational costs through an ITAM framework, especially one aligned to a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), can significantly improve profit margins.
At this point, ITAM Accelerate had limited knowledge of the client, knowing only what had been advertised on TV. Typically, clients who purchase the Process Kit are well-staffed and equipped with the necessary tools to implement ITAM best practices independently.
Our Approach:
Our involvement was minimal by design. The Process Kit included five hours of off-site consultancy, which we reminded the purchaser about, but they chose to proceed on their own. We did not intervene further.
In a typical engagement, we would begin with a maturity assessment to evaluate which ITAM practices are already functional, and which require improvement to meet ISO 19770-1 standards. From there, we would map out a plan to address gaps, recommend relevant artifacts and processes, and collaborate with stakeholders to customize and implement the templates in the Process Kit, ensuring high-quality outcomes.
Key Outcomes:
Several months later, I met the individual who led the Process Kit purchase at an IT conference in London. She shared the remarkable results her company achieved by implementing just a few of the Hardware Asset Management (HAM) processes from the kit:
- Identified theft and fraud by a third-party IT provider managing Mac laptops, leading to a £2.5M cost saving.
- Introduced due diligence gates in Service Management. Previously, when users called the helpdesk to report a locked device, this alone was enough to authorize an unlock. Now, stricter controls were put in place to prevent unauthorized actions.
When I asked if Mac devices made up a large portion of their desktop estate, she said they only accounted for 2-3% of the total.
Conclusion:
Hearing these results left me feeling elated! I even tracked down Kylie Fowler, a co-author of the Process Kit who was also at the conference, and had the client share these success points with her.
One takeaway that struck me afterward: if the company saved £2.5M with just 2-3% of their devices (the Mac laptops), extrapolating that success across their entire desktop estate could have led to potential savings of £125M or more. This highlights the tremendous value that best-practice processes can bring to an organization with a large IT infrastructure.
