IT asset management (ITAM) involves the systematic tracking and management of physical IT assets like laptops, mobile devices, and equipment throughout their lifecycle. Today’s hybrid work environments and sprawling campuses pose new challenges, with misplaced devices and underutilized assets becoming costly concerns. Cisco Spaces leverages Wi-Fi technology to enable real-time asset tracking, offering enterprises a smarter, more efficient way to manage IT resources.
What Is IT Asset Management?
ITAM is the comprehensive process of tracking, managing, and optimizing all IT assets throughout their lifecycle — from procurement to decommissioning. These assets encompass everything an organization uses to support its IT infrastructure and operations. ITAM ensures that assets are used efficiently, remain secure, and are accounted for to minimize loss, waste, or inefficiency while maximizing their value.
IT assets can include:
- Physical hardware, such as laptops, desktops, servers, conference room devices, networking equipment, and employee-assigned devices.
- Software applications and licenses, ensuring proper usage and compliance with licensing agreements.
- Cloud-based services and subscriptions, such as SaaS products or cloud storage.
- Digital resources and intellectual property, like proprietary data, designs, and codebases.
While ITAM encompasses all these categories, this post will focus primarily on managing physical IT hardware, especially as hybrid work environments and mobile devices introduce new challenges in tracking and securing these critical assets.
Why is IT Asset Management Critical for Modern Enterprises?
ITAM is essential for organizations of all sizes. It provides the visibility, control, and optimization needed to manage their technology investments effectively. Misplaced or untracked IT assets, such as laptops, create significant risks. These include data breaches, regulatory compliance issues, and reduced employee productivity. Proper ITAM ensures that assets are accounted for, secured, and used efficiently across their lifecycle. This minimizes waste and maximizes return on investment.
Real-time location data takes ITAM to the next level by enabling companies to track devices instantly. This improves asset recovery, accelerates IT response during audits or incidents, and reduces downtime. Enterprises that adopt proactive ITAM strategies can avoid the operational and financial costs of reactive measures, ultimately ensuring better security, compliance, and overall business performance.
What Are the Core Benefits of IT Asset Management?
Real-Time Visibility Across Locations
Real-time tracking allows IT teams to pinpoint the exact location of devices, such as laptops or conference room equipment, at any given moment. This eliminates wasted time spent searching for misplaced or unreturned assets, ensuring resources are always available when needed. Centralized visibility becomes especially critical in large campuses or multi-building environments, where assets can easily get scattered. By providing IT teams with up-to-date location data, organizations can improve efficiency and reduce operational disruptions.
Loss Prevention & Asset Recovery
Location tracking enables teams to quickly identify when a device has been removed from a designated area or left behind, allowing immediate action to prevent loss or theft. This capability speeds up the recovery of lost or stolen assets, significantly reducing replacement costs and minimizing downtime. Solutions like Wi-Fi-based tracking with Cisco Spaces provide zone-level accuracy without requiring additional beacon hardware, making it a seamless and cost-effective way to enhance asset security and recovery efforts.
Faster IT Response & Support
Asset tracking enables IT teams to quickly locate devices requiring maintenance, updates, or technical support, significantly improving response times. Knowing the exact physical location of a device allows IT to address issues faster, reducing the time between issue reporting and resolution. This streamlined process not only boosts IT service performance but also enhances employee satisfaction, as users experience less downtime and faster support for their IT needs.
Smarter Asset Utilization
Historical location data helps organizations identify underused or idle devices, enabling IT teams to reallocate these resources where they are needed most. By analyzing usage patterns, businesses can make data-driven decisions to avoid over-purchasing and ensure optimal utilization of existing assets. This proactive approach leads to more efficient hardware investment decisions, reducing unnecessary spending while maximizing the value of technology assets.
Operational Oversight & Accountability
Tracking assets assigned to specific users or departments promotes accountability by enforcing responsibility for proper usage and return of equipment. Detailed location logs provide valuable data for compliance reporting, audits, and internal reviews, ensuring transparency and adherence to organizational policies. Cisco Spaces offers role-based access and location reporting, allowing enterprises to manage device visibility securely while meeting oversight and regulatory requirements.
Common Pain Points & Challenges of IT Asset Management
Inconsistent Asset Visibility
IT teams often struggle to track the precise location of devices in real time, relying on manual systems or spreadsheets that quickly become outdated as assets move between users or locations. These visibility gaps are further exacerbated in hybrid work and multi-site environments, where devices frequently transition across offices, homes, and other locations. This lack of accurate tracking can lead to inefficiencies, misplaced assets, and higher operational costs.
Lost, Misplaced, or Abandoned Devices
Mobile assets are often left behind in meeting rooms, common areas, or remote offices, making them difficult to recover without a system that tracks their real-time location or last known movement. Lost or unaccounted-for equipment creates significant financial risks due to replacement costs and potential downtime, as well as security risks if sensitive data is stored on the devices. A robust tracking system is essential to mitigate these challenges.
Time-Consuming Manual Processes
Many organizations still depend on manual inventory audits or check-in/check-out forms to track devices, creating a cumbersome and time-intensive process for IT staff. These methods are not scalable and often result in outdated records, hindering real-time visibility. The lack of automation slows incident response, leaving organizations vulnerable to inefficiencies and delays in managing their assets effectively.
Security & Compliance Gaps
When IT teams are unable to locate an asset, they cannot verify whether it is being used securely or in compliance with organizational policies, increasing the risk of sensitive data exposure — especially on employee-assigned laptops. This lack of visibility creates vulnerabilities that may lead to data breaches or non-compliance with regulatory standards. Location tracking helps mitigate these risks by ensuring assets adhere to internal access policies and supporting audit and compliance requirements.
Key Steps in the IT Asset Management Process
Step 1: Inventory All IT Assets
Begin by identifying and cataloging movable, high-value, or frequently misplaced IT assets, such as laptops, tablets, or conferencing equipment. Examples include shared devices in meeting rooms, employee-assigned laptops distributed across campus buildings, or portable gear used in hybrid work environments. Focus on assets where real-time visibility will enhance operational efficiency, improve security, or enable faster issue resolution.
Step 2: Confirm Your Network Infrastructure Supports Tracking
Most real-time asset tracking systems leverage existing wireless infrastructure, such as Wi-Fi, to pinpoint asset locations. For organizations using Cisco Meraki or Catalyst devices, Cisco Spaces enables asset tracking through access points without requiring additional BLE tags or IoT hardware. By utilizing your existing network, you can reduce setup time and minimize costs, making implementation more seamless.
Step 3: Configure the Tracking System
Use your asset tracking platform to register devices, assign tags, and categorize assets by location, department, or user. Set up virtual zones or geofences, such as buildings, specific floors, or restricted areas, to monitor movement and location events effectively. With Cisco Spaces, these zones and asset groupings can be created directly in the Detect & Locate app in the Spaces dashboard for streamlined organization.
Step 4: Set Up Alerts & Monitor Activity
Configure real-time alerts to track movement, excessive dwell times, or unauthorized access to restricted areas. Dashboards and live maps allow teams to monitor asset status continuously and respond to issues quickly. Cisco Spaces simplifies this process by providing customizable alerts and live location data visualization, all without requiring any additional hardware.
Step 5: Analyze Asset Usage & Optimize
Leverage reporting tools to identify underutilized or overused assets, allowing for smarter resource allocation. Usage trends can help optimize device planning, eliminate unnecessary purchases, and reduce downtime. Platforms like Cisco Spaces also provide historical usage data to support audits, facilitate equipment redeployment, and inform long-term asset management strategies.
How to Manage IT Assets Across Their Full Lifecycle
Planning & Procurement
Lifecycle management begins by understanding what devices are needed, where they’ll be used, and why. Standardizing device types and procurement channels simplifies inventory control and tracking across the organization. With Wi-Fi-based asset tracking, monitoring can start as soon as a device is deployed, eliminating the need for additional tagging systems.
Deployment, Assignment, & Monitoring
Devices are configured, assigned to users or departments, and physically distributed across organizational locations. Documenting asset ownership, location zones, and intended usage is crucial for effective tracking and management. Cisco Spaces enables IT teams to map and monitor asset locations immediately after deployment for real-time visibility and control.
Monitoring & Usage
Ongoing tracking ensures IT knows where devices are, how they’re being used, and whether they’re active or idle. Live dashboards, alerts, and movement history help IT teams proactively manage devices, reducing risks of loss or inefficiency. Cisco Spaces’ zone-based location monitoring supports these capabilities at scale, providing a clear view of device activity across the organization.
Maintenance & Optimization
Active-use assets require updates, repairs, or reassignment, and tracking tools help prioritize and streamline support requests. Usage patterns can highlight underutilized devices that may be redistributed to higher-demand areas. Cisco Spaces surfaces these insights through its historical location and utilization data, enabling smarter resource allocation and operational efficiency.
End-of-Life & Decommissioning
Tracking systems support secure and documented asset retirement processes, such as wiping sensitive data and confirming device locations for collection. Locating devices quickly is the first step to ensuring responsible decommissioning. Cisco Spaces helps IT teams identify aging or misplaced assets nearing retirement, supporting compliance and proper disposal practices.
Best Practices For A Successful ITAM Program
Introduce proven strategies that organizations can implement to maximize the effectiveness of their ITAM programs.
1. Automate Asset Discovery & Monitoring
Automation tools eliminate the need for manual recordkeeping, reducing errors and freeing up valuable IT resources. Setting up real-time alerts for location changes, inactivity, or movement outside approved zones ensures prompt responses to anomalies. Cisco Spaces enables continuous tracking of Wi-Fi-connected assets without requiring manual updates or additional tagging hardware, enhancing accuracy and efficiency.
2. Integrate Asset Tracking With IT Support Workflows
Integrating asset tracking with incident, change, or service request management tools creates a seamless workflow. Real-time location data speeds up tasks like troubleshooting, device retrieval, or reassignment in critical situations. Cisco Spaces supports these workflows by providing instant access to current asset locations, improving IT’s ability to resolve incidents efficiently.
3. Define Clear Policies & Ownership
Assigning assets to specific departments or users fosters accountability and reduces the risk of mismanagement over time. Organizations should establish clear usage policies and escalation procedures for when assets are inactive, missing, or out of designated zones. Consistent check-in/check-out processes and access controls also help prevent asset sprawl and ensure proper usage oversight.
4. Use Data to Continuously Improve
Leverage historical location data to identify underutilized assets, optimize resource allocation, and plan device refresh cycles more effectively. Regularly reviewing asset movement reports — monthly or quarterly — can uncover inefficiencies and patterns of loss. Cisco Spaces provides detailed location history and usage trends, empowering IT teams to make smarter, data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.
How Real-Time Monitoring & Automation Improves IT Asset Security & Efficiency
Real-Time Alerts & Location Monitoring
Real-time monitoring empowers IT teams with alerts when assets leave a designated area, remain idle for an extended period, or reappear after being reported missing. These proactive notifications help reduce theft risks, prevent asset abandonment, and enable faster recovery of misplaced devices. Cisco Spaces makes this possible with zone-based alerting and live maps, leveraging existing Wi-Fi infrastructure without the need for additional sensors or tagging systems.
Access Control & Policy Enforcement
Asset tracking enhances role-based access and physical security policies by monitoring where and when devices are accessed or relocated. This is particularly critical for shared devices, equipment used in sensitive departments, or assets deployed off-site. Setting up alerts for unauthorized movement outside policy-defined areas or unapproved handovers helps enforce compliance and safeguard valuable assets.
Audit Readiness & Compliance Support
Location and usage logs create comprehensive audit trails, aiding in incident investigations and verifying compliance with regulatory or internal policies. Automated tracking ensures asset data is always current, minimizing errors and simplifying the preparation for internal governance reviews or external audits. Cisco Spaces enhances this process by providing searchable location history and detailed event records to support thorough and accurate documentation.
Operational Efficiency Through Automation
Automation streamlines processes by eliminating manual asset checks, inventory audits, and delays in help desk responses, saving time and resources. Real-time data enables IT teams to proactively identify underused assets and optimize allocations, avoiding unnecessary purchases. Cisco Spaces simplifies scaling asset tracking across buildings or campuses, reducing IT workload while maintaining operational efficiency.
How To Evaluate & Choose The Right ITAM Tools For Your Organization
Key Features To Consider
When selecting IT Asset Management tools, prioritize solutions that leverage existing infrastructure, such as Wi-Fi access points, for real-time location tracking to avoid costly hardware upgrades. Key features to consider include live dashboards for at-a-glance views, asset-level reporting to track utilization, zone-based alerts to identify unauthorized movement or idle time, and historical usage logs for compliance and performance insights. Tools should also offer automated discovery capabilities to minimize manual input, location-based alerts for improved asset security, centralized dashboards for organization-wide visibility, cloud access for remote management, and integration options for seamless compatibility with Cisco networks and ITAM platforms.
Cisco Spaces, for example, fulfills these criteria by offering scalable, real-time monitoring across buildings and campuses, using existing infrastructure without increasing IT workload. Its ability to enhance visibility, automate discovery, and enable zone-based alerting makes it an effective choice for organizations looking to improve efficiency and security while maintaining compliance.
Comparing On-Premises Vs. Cloud Asset Management
On-premises tracking platforms offer increased control and security, but they require higher upfront costs, system maintenance, and scalability limitations. In contrast, cloud-based asset management solutions are ideal for multi-location environments due to their scalability, ease of updates, and centralized visibility from any location. Cisco Spaces is a cloud-native solution designed for organizations needing efficient, real-time asset tracking, and it integrates seamlessly with Meraki or Catalyst networks to support scalability and simplified management across distributed environments.
Drive Better Outcomes With An Unified Strategy with Cisco Spaces
Cisco Spaces leverages real-time, Wi-Fi-based tracking to help organizations manage their mobile IT assets, such as laptops, tablets, and shared devices. By integrating seamlessly with your existing Cisco infrastructure (e.g., Catalyst, Meraki access points), it eliminates the need for additional IoT gateways. With BLE tags and indoor location services, Cisco Spaces enables businesses to visualize asset locations on live maps and receive proactive alerts for unauthorized movements or idle devices, reducing downtime and streamlining operations.
Replacing manual audits, siloed records, and reactive workflows with live dashboards and automated notifications drives greater operational efficiency. Cisco Spaces transforms IT asset management by offering centralized visibility across buildings, floors, and campuses, empowering IT teams with actionable insights through location meta-data, historical usage logs, and zone-based alerts. These features collectively reduce bottlenecks in auditing, improve accountability for shared devices, and ensure timely asset recovery, leading to cost savings and better decision-making.
Cisco Spaces provides a scalable, efficient way for organizations to track and manage IT assets across multiple locations without the complexity of deploying new hardware. By using your existing Cisco infrastructure, this cloud-native solution reduces overall costs while enabling IT teams to move from reactive tracking to a proactive, strategic approach to IT asset management.
Visit Cisco Spaces IoT Services to learn more about asset tracking and explore how Cisco Spaces supports streamlined ITAM strategies. Take the next step in transforming your IT asset management strategy by exploring the Cisco Spaces Product Tour today.
