What is IT asset management? How it extends the value of your tech

Enterprise companies don’t run on caffeine alone—they run on tech. Hardware, software, and cloud-based tools power everything from individual tasks to massive cross-functional operations.

Each piece of tech belongs to the company, so it makes sense that someone, somewhere in the organization, would be responsible for overseeing these vital assets. Yet, all too often IT asset management (ITAM) is low on leaders’ priority lists. That’s a crying shame, because when ITAM is clearly defined, the company technology lasts longer, performs better, and delivers value at every stage.

This guide explores IT asset management in detail, including its 6 core processes, examples, and how to manage your entire IT asset inventory in monday service.

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Key takeaways

• IT asset management increases the lifespan and performance of your technology by giving teams the visibility and structure they need to manage every stage of the asset lifecycle.
• AI elevates ITAM by automating repetitive tasks, predicting failures, and guiding faster decisions, so IT teams avoid issues instead of reacting to them.
• monday service connects your entire ITAM workflow, from procurement to disposal, into one platform, making it easier to collaborate across departments and optimize your tech investments.

What is IT asset management? 

IT asset management is the ongoing process of keeping tabs on every tech asset your business owns or uses from purchase until retirement. By doing so, ITAM allows your teams to work better with the assets they rely on every day.

When we talk about asset management in IT, we mean any technology-related resource that helps your organization to function. That might be a company laptop, a cloud storage subscription, or sensitive customer data that needs to be stored and protected. Typically, these assets fall into 4 broad categories:

• Hardware asset management is the physical, tangible tech equipment used by the organization. This includes everything from end-user devices such as laptops and phones to infrastructure like servers, routers, and switches.
• Software asset management oversees software applications. SAM deals with license compliance, usage rights, entitlements, installations, and updates.
• Cloud services and infrastructure management addresses cloud-native environments and services, such as Internet-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service. It answers questions like: “What are we running or subscribing to in the cloud, and are we optimizing cost and usage?”
• Information and data asset management handles the organization’s data sets, documents, intellectual property, and customer records. It involves classification, storage, access controls, and data lifecycle policies and is critical for compliance-heavy industries.

6 vital processes in the IT asset management lifecycle

Here’s how each of ITAM core processes plays a role in helping businesses stay in control of their technology landscape.

1. Planning

Planning is where teams identify the assets they need. This vital phase allows businesses to anticipate how upcoming changes will impact technology demand, so they never end up buying reactively.

Example: An enterprise healthcare company is preparing to open a new branch office in another region. During the planning phase, the IT team works with department heads to forecast the number of employees, determine the hardware and software they’ll require, and align those needs with licensing agreements and budget cycles.

2. Procurement

Procurement is where plans start to take shape. It’s the stage where teams go out and actually acquire the IT assets they need, whether placing orders or negotiating with vendors. This stage often involves getting approvals in place and making sure everything arrives on time; unfortunately, 56% of procurement teams experience delays due to manual workflows and inefficient systems.

Example: A global logistics firm plans to upgrade its network infrastructure across 3 regional offices. The IT team submits procurement requests for new routers and switches, but because the approvals are tied to a legacy system with multiple handoffs, the final sign-off takes several weeks. By the time the order is placed, pricing has changed, and one supplier is out of stock, causing delays that impact employee productivity.

3. Deployment

IT assets don’t add value to your business unless your people can use and access them. Deployment covers everything from imaging laptops and provisioning user access to installing software and confirming all assets are correctly logged in your ITAM system. The result?

Smooth deployment reduces friction for new hires and prevents hardware or software from sitting idle. It also sets the tone for good asset management habits, such as keeping accurate records and assigning clear ownership.

Example: A financial services firm brings on a cohort of 25 new analysts, all starting remotely. The IT team uses a standardized deployment process to ship pre-configured laptops to each hire, with software already installed and accounts provisioned. Each device is registered in the company’s ITAM platform before leaving the warehouse. On day one, new hires power up and log in without a service ticket in sight.

4. Maintenance

Keeping your assets in good working order can lengthen their lifespan and save the company money. Maintenance includes everything from routine software updates and security patches to hardware repairs, license renewals, and performance monitoring. This stage becomes more complex in hybrid and remote environments, where IT teams may not have physical access to the devices they support.

Example: A law firm manages hundreds of laptops across multiple practices and remote staff. Its IT team uses an asset management platform to monitor device health and send automated reminders for scheduled maintenance. But when one legal practice’s machines start showing signs of performance degradation, IT is alerted before users even notice, and replacement drives are dispatched proactively to avoid outages.

5. Retirement

Eventually, every asset reaches the end of its useful life. Retirement is the stage where outdated or underperforming assets are removed from active use, ideally before they start creating more problems than they solve.

This process presents an opportunity to capture insights about the asset’s performance, usage, and lifecycle cost. It’s crucial data that helps IT teams plan better for future purchases.

Example: An architecture firm conducts a quarterly review of its workstation fleet and identifies several devices that no longer meet the performance requirements for design software. Rather than waiting for complaints, IT flags them for retirement and arranges replacements. Before decommissioning, the team backs up local data, clears credentials, and updates the ITAM records to reflect the asset’s status change, closing the loop with minimal disruption.

6. Disposal

Disposal is the final step in the IT asset lifecycle and one of the most overlooked. Once an asset has been retired, it needs to be securely decommissioned, wiped of sensitive data, and disposed of in a way that meets both environmental and regulatory standards.

Unfortunately, companies don’t take the eco-friendly disposal of IT assets seriously enough. Only 22.3% of e-waste was properly collected and recycled in 2022, and is expected to reach 82 million tonnes by 2030. IT asset management teams can take the lead by building responsible disposal into their workflows so assets are retired sustainably and with full traceability.

Example: An international consultancy retires a large batch of outdated laptops after a company-wide hardware refresh. The IT team uses its asset management system to log each device, ensure secure data wiping, and issue disposal certificates through a certified e-waste recycling partner. The entire process is tracked and audited in line with internal compliance policies, enabling the company to hit its sustainability targets and avoid liability.

What is the purpose of IT asset management? 

Some leaders postpone ITAM because it doesn’t provide quick wins. When the focus is on delivering projects or putting out fires, the idea of documenting assets feels like unnecessary admin. Yet, companies that invest in building sturdy ITAM processes experience the following benefits:

Combining asset intel with IT service management

Assets are the foundation of IT service management. Without knowing what you own, and its location and condition, you can’t respond effectively when something breaks or goes missing. Service teams end up wasting time chasing information that should already exist. With ITAM in place, they can focus on solving the problem rather than searching for context.

Providing a single source of asset truth

It’s common for different teams to manage asset data in different places. Procurement might track purchases in one system while IT logs devices in another, and neither source is complete. ITAM brings everything into one view. It replaces guesswork with clarity, so your teams base their decisions about upgrades, support, and spending on facts, not assumptions.

Maximizing the value of your IT assets

Budgets don’t always grow on the same trajectory as business needs. So, squeezing every last drop out of your existing resources is essential. ITAM identifies underused assets and highlights tools that are no longer needed, making it easy to justify every new purchase.

What is an IT asset management policy? 

An IT asset management policy is a strategic blueprint technology leaders use to define how an organization manages its IT assets. This policy acts as a shared framework that brings consistency to how assets are handled and supports compliance with internal controls, licensing terms, and industry regulations. Most policies include:

• Scope: The categories of assets covered (hardware, software, cloud infrastructure, data).
• Roles and responsibilities: Who handles procurement, maintenance, auditing, and disposal.
• Process standards: The rules for onboarding new assets, logging them, monitoring usage, and managing lifecycle changes.
• Governance and compliance: How the organization handles software licenses, security protocols, and data protection.
• Auditing and reporting: Methods for tracking policy adherence, exceptions, and areas for improvement.

ISO standards align your ITAM policy with best practices

For organizations looking to strengthen their policy framework, the ISO/IEC 19770 standard offers a globally recognized reference point. It’s published by the International Organization for Standardization and breaks ITAM into five key areas:

• 19770-1: Best practices for building and maintaining an ITAM program, including controls, processes, and documentation.
• 19770-2: A standard for software identification tags, which make it easier to recognize and manage software across devices.
• 19770-3: Guidelines for handling software entitlements and measuring consumption to improve compliance and control.
• 19770-4: A reporting standard for resource usage, particularly helpful when managing complex licensing models or cloud-based infrastructure.
• 19770-5: A general overview of the standards, including shared terminology and how the different parts work together.

While full compliance with ISO/IEC 19770 isn’t mandatory, many teams use it to guide policy design and demonstrate a mature, well-documented approach to asset management.

monday service: IT asset management software connecting every part of your process 

monday service is built to simplify enterprise IT asset management from day one. With pre-built boards, AI-powered workflows, and real-time visibility across departments, it connects every part of your ITAM process into one seamless platform. There’s no heavy implementation or steep learning curve, just a flexible, no-code environment that adapts to the way your teams already work.

Here’s the value you’ll receive when you slide monday service into your ITAM workflows.

Centralize your IT asset data

Managing assets across a growing stack of tools, departments, and regions is a challenge without a unified view. monday service connects with over 72 enterprise systems, including CRMs, ERPs, and communication tools, to pull all your asset data into one central hub.

With customizable dashboards built from your choice of 27+ board views, 36+ columns, and 25+ widgets, you can track assets and monitor their usage in real time. Whether reviewing upcoming license renewals or locating idle equipment, everything you need is at your fingertips.

Eliminate siloes with collaborative boards

Asset management requires slick coordination between IT, procurement, finance, and operations. If you’ve been relying on disconnected conversations and ad hoc updates up until this point, monday service allows you to add approvers, assign roles, leave comments, and tag teammates, all in one place. Cross-department collaboration becomes a breeze, enabling you to make rapid, informed decisions about your assets in real time.

Improve efficiency with IT asset management automation

Instead of using stretched IT resources to complete the same repetitive asset tasks, monday service offers a workflow builder to automate everything from asset assignment to service escalation. For example, if you need to manage decommissioning, you can build automated asset retirement workflows and document the chain of custody throughout offboarding or hardware disposal.

Optimize your service management resources

When asset requests and service needs live in separate systems, allocating resources effectively is hard. monday service unifies ticketing and asset data together, so you have 360-degree visibility into what’s happening on the ground. You’ll use one dashboard to balance and spot capacity issues and make sure your IT service tickets move swiftly from “open” to “resolved.”

Review the latest asset incidents

Along with logging asset incidents, monday service allows you to learn lessons from them. The incidents board gives you a live view of recurring issues, including affected assets and users. This intel ties directly to your ticketing system, making it easy to investigate root causes and identify systemic problems.

You can also use monday service to generate post-mortem reports that combine timeline views, asset data, and internal commentary. These help your team close the loop and continuously improve.

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How does AI in IT asset management work? 

IT asset management is a process vastly eased and enhanced by artificial intelligence. Recent data reveals that 70% of ITAM executives, stakeholders, and practitioners believe AI will enhance the quality of their ITAM processes, and 56% expect it to boost efficiency.

Here are some of the core benefits you’ll experience when you integrate AI into your IT asset management workflows using monday service.

Auto-categorize and prioritize tickets

When an asset-related issue comes in via a WorkForm, email, or customer portal, AI steps in immediately. It scans the request, classifies the asset type, assigns a priority level, and routes it to the right team or individual. This removes the manual triage that normally slows things down and ensures nothing urgent gets buried in a queue.

Instead of agents sorting through tickets, they get straight to work with the context already in place.

Summarize issues and recommend next steps

AI excels at understanding patterns. Based on similar tickets and service history, monday service’s AI offering can summarize any asset problem and suggest the most likely resolution. It can also draft response messages for review, giving agents a strong head start without forcing them to write everything from scratch.

The more your system learns, the better it gets at recommending what to do next, freeing up time and reducing inconsistency in responses.

Predict asset failures or service trends

By analyzing historical data tied to tickets and asset usage, AI can flag signs of wear, repeated incidents, or underperformance before they become major problems. These insights show up directly on your boards, helping teams take action before an issue escalates into downtime or a full replacement.

You can also trigger automated reminders or workflows based on these predictions, so you’re ready whenever it’s time to repair, replace, or review an asset.

monday service supports every stage of the IT asset management lifecycle 

Effective IT asset management is a continuous cycle that needs support at every stage of an asset’s life.

Whether you’re dealing with unpredictable asset requests or trying to make sense of scattered inventory data, monday service brings structure to the chaos. Our platform connects every asset to its full context, so you’re not chasing spreadsheets or guessing at renewal timelines. Think of it as moving from firefighting to gardening.

Take control of your IT assets by getting a free trial of monday service to extend the life and value of every piece of technology in your organization.