Asset Management

As a part of your supply chain, inventory management includes aspects such as controlling and overseeing purchases — from suppliers as well as customers — maintaining the storage of stock, controlling the amount of product for sale, and order fulfillment.

Organizations with a large number of physical assets can answer those questions only if they have the right asset inventory management system and process in place. Setting that up plays an important role in lowering your asset management cost and improving overall business productivity.

To be able to do that, you first need to understand what asset inventory management entails and which tools you can use to streamline and optimize this process.

The difference between asset management and inventory management
Asset inventory management is, in a sense, a lovechild of asset management and inventory management. So, to understand asset inventory management, we first need to explain the overarching concepts.

What is an asset?
Assets are resources that a company uses to run its business: produce items or deliver a service.

Most commonly, the word asset is used to refer to physical assets like machinery, vehicles, fixtures, computer equipment, furniture, and similar.

In a broader sense of the word, an asset can also mean intellectual property (like patents) and digital assets (like important documents, webinars, videos, whitepapers…).

What is inventory?
The word inventory refers to a broad category of materials and items that are used to build a product, as well as for finished goods the company plans to sell.