BACK TO RESOURCES
When you work in a government agency, you care about improving the level of service you provide to the community and protecting tax dollars.
Government asset management software can help you achieve both goals at once.
Looking after valuable government assets can be a complicated and time-consuming process. It takes away time that could be better spent serving the community and — when not done properly — puts taxpayer money (in the form of government assets) at risk of being lost or stolen.
In this article, we’ll show you how government asset management software overcomes the common problems associated with asset tracking, how you can tell whether you need to invest in asset management software, and what to look for during the procurement process.
What is government asset management software?
Government asset management software is a cloud-based platform that helps government agencies take control of their valuable assets, replacing outdated manual spreadsheets so agencies have an accurate record of all the assets they own.
It streamlines how government agencies manage physical, digital, and even financial resources by offering a centralized inventory control, tracking, maintenance, and scheduling platform.
Government asset management software comes with various features to help agencies achieve these goals, including role-based access, automatic and detailed histories, custom fields, secure data storage, and offline functionality.
Asset management software also uses advanced analytics and reports to help government workers use real-time data to create forecasts and make decisions that maximize resources.
Government agencies can use the software with an asset tracking tool (like a barcode or RFID tag) and a scanning device to easily inventory, track, and monitor all their assets — whether heavy machinery or laptops.
Signs your agency needs government asset management software
If your government agency suffers from one or more of the problems below, it could be a sign that it needs government asset management software.
You rely on manual methods like pen and paper to track assets
Manual asset management methods are incredibly time-consuming, meaning government staff waste time tracking down information when they could be adding value to the community. That’s a big problem, especially when government budget cuts continue to pinch, impacting an agency’s ability to fulfill basic duties.
Worse, manual methods are highly susceptible to individual error. Government agencies face stringent regulatory requirements and annual audits that demand accurate data. Asset management software is the only way to ensure your organization has accurate records to meet these requirements (without wasting all of your employees’ time double-checking and triple-checking everything).
Asset management software also lets government workers achieve more than they can with paper and pen. For example, They can use built-in reporting capabilities to generate insights on things like asset cost and usage that can be used to improve future decision-making.
You lose or misplace assets
Frequently losing or misplacing assets is a common issue with the manual tracking methods described above. Poor asset visibility makes it hard to keep track of assets, causes problems with reporting, and makes it hard to comply with regulations. The software makes it easy to know where assets are at all times.
A comprehensive digital system is the only way to guarantee asset visibility and stop misplacing assets. RedBeam, for example, provides a cloud-based single source of truth everyone can access from almost anywhere and even works offline. With every asset recorded and every edit automatically tracked, losing assets becomes a thing of the past.
Your assets frequently break down
If you want your agency to run efficiently, your physical assets must remain in good shape. Otherwise, unplanned downtime can lead to inefficiency and drops in performance. But if you aren’t properly tracking your assets (and you don’t even know where some of them are), how can you ensure assets are running at peak performance?
You can’t. That’s why you need asset tracking software to centralize information and make tracking the state of assets easy. Maintenance can occur in a timely fashion when information is updated regularly. Better still, government workers can use analytics and reports built into the software to predict when maintenance will be needed in the future. The result? Unplanned downtime is consigned to history.
What can you do with government asset management software?
You can achieve a lot with the right government asset management software in place. This includes improving productivity, increasing asset visibility, extending asset life, and simplifying the audit process.
Boost productivity
The accuracy of information within a government agency is vital, but this can be time and people-intensive. The good news is that agencies can use government asset management software to automate processes and create a single source of easy-to-use and easy-to-edit truth available across multiple locations. As a result, agency workers no longer have to search hard to find the information they need to do their jobs. They can also use automation built into asset management software to streamline their workflow and spend time focusing on the bigger picture.
Increase visibility
If you don’t know where your physical assets are or who is in charge of them, asset management software can help. The software can centralize asset information, making it quick and easy to complete an inventory of all your assets first and then allowing workers to make edits and updates on the fly — even if they aren’t connected to the internet.
As a result, staff don’t have to waste time finding the assets they need, the time and effort it takes to complete future inventories and audits decreases, and so do instances of theft.
Extend asset life
It’s difficult to make assets work harder for your organization if you don’t always have eyes on them. But when you have greater visibility, you can ensure assets remain in optimal condition.
For example, the data you collect in asset management software can be used to determine which assets are most likely to require repairs ahead of schedule and when they are most likely to need that maintenance.
Improve planning
It’s vital to make tax dollars work as hard as possible. But that’s hard when you don’t have accurate or up-to-date information to work with. Government asset management software fixes that by providing stakeholders with a stream of real-time data and using reports to turn it into insights they can use to accurately predict the future health of assets, improve long-term planning, and create more accurate budget forecasts.
Simplify audits
Annual audits can be a time-consuming process for government agencies. However, government asset management software can streamline the process by automatically generating audit trails. For example, the date, time, and person updating assets in the RedBeam system are automatically recorded. This frees workers from recording this information themselves so they can be more productive and ensures that information gets recorded in the first place.
Reduce costs
Ultimately, these benefits will help your agency become more cost-efficient. Staff can better utilize their time, allowing you to get more done with less; less theft and loss means fewer replacements, and better budgeting means you’re less likely to waste money moving forward.
Government asset management software supports workers at every level
Government asset management software can help everyone in a government agency manage equipment, tools, and documents.
Leaders and stakeholders
Government asset management software makes it easy for the C-suite, stakeholders, and other leaders to confirm their commitment to sensible public spending and reduce wastage. By increasing asset visibility, leaders can make more informed decisions about critical asset usage, condition, and availability.
Software can also help them take steps to make their team more productive, streamlining their workflows by doing away with labor-intensive manual processes.
Finally, asset management software can help stakeholders meet their regulatory requirements and ensure a thorough audit trail is automatically created.
Managers
Stakeholders may be on the hook, but it’s managers who interact with assets on a day-to-day basis. Government asset management software offers a user-friendly dashboard that makes it easy to manage the assets managers are responsible for and increase their employees' productivity. With the right software in place, employees will spend less time taking inventory of assets or finding one asset in particular and more time doing their job.
Frontline workers
The work of frontline employees is hampered when they can’t find the necessary tools. Government asset management software takes that scenario out of the equation, ensuring there is always up-to-date information on the location and condition of mission-critical tools and equipment.
The result? Frontline employees can get to work faster and spend more time focusing on the job they were hired to do.
What features should agencies look for in government asset management software?
Not just any asset management software will do for government agencies. Given these organizations' unique needs and demands, it’s important to choose software with the following features.
Easy asset tagging and custom fields. Choosing a barcode-based system that lets users quickly create and update assets is smart. Barcode tracking also simplifies the record-keeping process, increasing data integrity and reducing errors. Custom fields also allow government workers to add all the information they need.
Detailed histories. Given the auditory demands facing government agencies, it is essential to choose software that automatically records a detailed history of every change made to the asset in the system, including the date and time that change was made and which user made it.
Role-based access. However, not every user should be able to change asset information. A role-based security system ensures that different levels of access can be given to different government employees.
Web-based with offline functionality. Asset information should always be available to everyone in a government organization. A web-based system means data can be accessed online without installing a program. But the software should also have offline functionality, allowing frontline workers to access information and change the system even when they aren’t connected to Wi-Fi.
Secure and compliant. Ensuring security and compliance is vital for government agencies, and this is an area where the right asset management software can shine. For example, RedBeam’s solution automatically improves your agency’s compliance measures by creating accurate records for every asset. This makes it easy to comply with stringent regulations and clears the way for easy investigations into potential fraud cases.
Improve government asset tracking with RedBeam
Effective and accurate asset management is vital to your government agency’s success. It helps you increase visibility into valuable assets, extends their life, boosts your team's productivity, and simplifies the annual audit process.
Improve your asset management with RedBeam. We are a trusted leader in government asset tracking management software, providing a comprehensive solution that centralizes, automates, and streamlines many tasks required to monitor and maintain your assets. Our cloud-based platform connects the entire asset management lifecycle and provides your agency with a single source of truth.
Learn more about how RedBeam helps government agencies do asset tracking right, or try our software free for 30 days.
