9 Reasons Why Fixed Asset Management Is Important For Business

How can a robust asset register be effectively created and managed? There are ten good reasons to switch to a specialist asset management system.

1. Corporate governance (sigh!)

Red-tape, red-tape and more red-tape! It’s everywhere these days. With companies of all sizes subject to increased scrutiny by government agencies, regulatory boards and investors, accountability and transparency is key. With Crystal Africa Consulting’s eyes on your organisation, why risk the integrity of your financial data by relying solely on spreadsheets or fixed asset modules of legacy systems?

2. A robust audit trail and overall security

Talking of Crystal Africa Consulting – a specialist fixed asset management system will track and record every detail of every action ever made by any user. Scary stuff for some but a complete triumph when justifying the security and integrity of your business’ data! Add to this, permission-based access and you have a system that ensures confidential information can be viewed only by those that need to see it and safely hidden from those who don’t.

3. Inaccurate depreciation calculations

There really is no accounting for human error or creaking legacy systems. If the data is inputted incorrectly or the system is throwing out less than useful information, calculations will go awry and depreciation values will be way out.

4. The technical stuff!

The ability to link ‘parent/child’ assets (e.g. PC as parent, license and child) is key in order to establish hierarchical relationships and dependencies. Without a specialist fixed asset management system, it is hard to accommodate ‘parent/child’ asset relationships in this way, making it difficult to accurately track and manage these important hierarchical dependencies.

5. It’s a small world after all

For businesses operating across the globe, a specialist system will have multi-book capabilities to allow core asset information to be shared across any number of books with different sets of figures, enabling compliance with both local and group depreciation policies.

6. Reporting for duty

Composing reports and forecasts can be a complicated and daunting process for even the hardiest financial bod, especially without the right tools for the job! A specialist fixed asset management system will incorporate standard and customised reporting and forecasting templates to allow quick access too and extraction of data. Quite the blessing at a busy month end!

7. Lack of confidence in data integrity

How can you be 100% confident in the integrity of your data? A specialist system comes with strict security features in place to address issues of input errors and inaccuracies and automates the entire fixed asset management process. More time saved!

8. Let’s be clear

We’re all hearing that we need to ‘do more with less’, so when it comes to asset management, a central asset register accessible across multiple departments can provide information in a consistent and easy format. Communication and transparency = streamlined business processes.

9. Got it covered…?

We all complain about escalating insurance premiums, however, in reality, the majority of businesses are actually over insured, with less than 40% of assets on the register easily identified during a physical audit and an estimated 20% no longer in existence. Endemic failure to maintain accurate asset registers results in the majority of companies insuring assets they no longer own

HOW CAN ICTS DRIVE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?

There is no disputing that information and communication technologies (ICT) will fuel the global economy of the next few decades. But what role will ICTs play in helping the United Nations achieve its new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which follow and expand on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030?

ITU, as the UN’s specialized agency for ICTs, is forging a path forward on this critical issue. And ITU leadership was on display at the 2015 World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Symposium (WTIS‑15), held in Hiroshima, Japan.

“SDGs are about problems. ICTs are about solutions. None of the SDGs can be achieved without ICTs,” said Brahima Sanou, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. “ICTs are about people. Our mission is to bring the power of ICTs to ordinary people wherever they live. It is a very noble mission. Let us not miss the opportunity.”

Distinguished government officials as well as leaders from the private sector, international organizations, and academia did not miss the opportunity in Hiroshima. They jumped straight into key ICT development issues in panel discussions, bilateral meetings, and ad hoc hallway discussions. They networked to share challenges, successes, failures — and how to take best practices back home to improve their day-to-day work so that the value of the Symposium could live on throughout the year.

Indeed, Japanese Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications, Sanae Takaichi, stated that the discussions held at the Symposium would be reflected in the ICT Ministers’ Meeting at the G7 Summitin Takamatsu, Japan, 29-30 April 2016.

Framing the challenges

At a ministerial round-table discussion on Day 1 of WTIS-15, ministers and deputy ministers shared the ICT challenges and successes of their countries. Many mentioned the cost of ICT services as perhaps the most critical limitation to connecting larger segments of their respective populations.

“In order for ICTs to play a very important role in SDGs, we have to work on lowering the cost,” said Joao Bernardo Vieira, Guinea-Bissau’s Minister of Transport and Communications. He added that Goal No. 1 of the SDGs (No Poverty) could be strongly advanced if basic digital financial services could reach the extreme poor — and that Goal No. 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) could be greatly facilitated through mobile data applications. Dr Vieira also stressed the importance of the government’s role in fostering ICT innovation. He said governments should create incentives, help mobilize capital, and limit regulation for ICT innovators.

Tonga’s Deputy Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni laid out some of the challenges he faces in a Pacific Small Island Developing State. “Providing central services is difficult. Which one is most important? Roads, health — or ICTs?” asked Mr Sovaleni. “ICT development competes with other more basic and pressing development needs.”

This was a familiar challenge for many in attendance. But Mr Sovaleni offered some advice: “It’s very important to link the ICT indicators to the other development goals,” he said. “Having the link to SDGs will help us [government officials] tap into those development resources.”

Zambia’s Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, James Kapyanga, said his government had to create a seat at the president’s office to deal specifically with ICTs in order for ICTs to vie for funding amid the other pressing development needs. “If you don’t create that seat, ICTs only get lip service,” he said.

Sharing successes — and failures

The Philippines has found success by making ICTs a key part of broader development efforts, said Mario G. Montejo, Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology. “In all our initiatives, ICTs are embedded either directly or indirectly,” he said, giving two useful examples: One was a “Smart Agriculture” programme that guides farmers when to plant, fertilize and harvest, based on site-specific weather data. The results were that less water and fertilizers were needed and that farmers could lower their costs, improving productivity and efficiency. The other example was disaster preparedness put in place since the deadly 2013 typhoon. Hundreds of data centres were used to gather and analyse data. “Because of the improvement in early warning, we suffered zero casualties despite many recent disasters,” said Mr Montejo.

Underscoring the value of countries sharing best practices, Mr Sovaleni said that Tonga had learned from Japan’s experience on disaster management and put early-warning sirens in place, which had helped save countless lives in the disaster-prone area.

But sharing successes isn’t always enough.

“It’s important to share best practices, but also information about failures” so that we can all make progress, said Areewan Haorangsi, Secretary General of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT). Participants around the conference hall nodded their heads in agreement.

Jaume Salvat Font, CEO of the Aggaros ICT consultancy and former CEO of Andorra Telecom, said that governments need to focus more on end-user services and business needs in order to create more successful policies. “If we want to be happy with the results, we have to do something different,” said Mr Salvat. “The experience of the user is the most important thing. Policy and regulation need to keep pace with technological change. This is why many countries’ policies have failed.” For instance, he continued: “If an operator is interested in investing in rural areas, they should get an advantage in heavily populated areas — to compensate for the added business risk.”

The Secretary-General of Malaysia’s Ministry of Communications and Multimedia, Dr Sharifah Zarah Syed Ahmad, reinforced the need to put the end user first when designing ICT policies. That’s why Malaysia has introduced “citizen-centric” data collection, which aims to work with people on the ground to co-create and co-produce the data. Dr Syed cited Malaysia’s “Connecting the Unconnected” programme, which solicited early feedback from rural populations before launching. She said they are always asking the question: “To what extent do we engage the people who are the users of ICTs?”

Malaysia’s demand-driven approach to ICT development also includes fostering ICT entrepreneurship, something many countries are striving to do.

How to foster ICT innovation

The need for homegrown ICT innovation to boost development goals was widely discussed at WTIS.

During a panel discussion on the topic, Sarah Sung Ju Eo, Senior Researcher for the Korea Association for ICT Promotion (KAIT), presented the Republic of Korea’s approach to innovation, including the country’s more than 20 USD million investment in ICT startup consulting and seventeen“Centres for Creative Economy and Innovation” nationwide. She shared an example of a “Smart Farm” that was able to significantly decrease management time and expenses thanks to services provided by KT that allow a farmer to, for instance, control the temperature and humidity inside a greenhouse and water crops remotely with a smartphone.

Google’s Public Policy Manager for Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Andrew Ure, spoke from a different perspective, saying that innovation today is “disbursed, disaggregated, connected and at scale” — and that the key was to unlock people-centered innovation through scalable platforms that best enabled it.

As for the stumbling blocks to innovation, Mr Ure and others pointed to specific regulatory and tax policies, but they also emphasized the need to create a culture where innovation and entrepreneurship can thrive. “Tolerance for failure is right at the top of the list” of what’s needed to create that culture, said Mr Ure.

There was keen interest in ITU’s efforts to help foster innovation, particularly after the panel discussion on that topic. One participant from the Republic of Korea recalled previous ITU announcements about its drive to push innovation for SMEs as part of its Connect 2020 agenda and asked what ITU is doing in that regard. A participant from Bahrain asked: “How can you benchmark innovation?” And another participant from Iran asked what the major obstacles to ICT-enabled innovation are.

Indeed, the strong demand for information on best practices for fostering ICT innovation indicates that ITU’s efforts to connect key public and private stakeholders around this topic will be highly valuable in coming months and years.