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Hardware Inventory Management Problems: 6 Ways to Overcome Them

April 18, 2022
July 17, 2023
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Hardware Inventory Management

Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko

Hardware asset management has always been an important consideration for IT managers, but the recent rise of remote work has made assigning and managing the hardware devices distributed to new employees an even greater logistical ordeal than ever before.

Remote work has transformed how many companies do business—often for the better. Research shows that employees who work from home report higher levels of satisfaction and productivity, but also a desire for greater IT support. 

Without the presence of IT professionals a mere office or desk away, some employees are finding working with company-issued hardware and software especially challenging. IT teams themselves, meanwhile—not to mention accounting and HR teams—are also facing unprecedented hurdles in distributing hardware to faraway team members and tracking and managing that hardware.

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To combat the challenges inherent to hardware assets management, many IT teams have turned to IT services firms that specialize in asset deployment and inventory. Having a strong hardware and software inventory management system not only allows businesses to make the onboarding and offboarding processes simpler, but also save time and reduce costs. 

The problems associated with computer inventory management are real, but they’re no match for following X management tools and strategies.

6 Ways to Overcome Hardware Inventory Management Problems

1. Track asset serial numbers 

Tracking the whereabouts of your IT assets is crucial from a financial standpoint, and a key aspect of hardware asset management. Tagging your assets with labels or serialized barcodes—which may be necessary for insurance purposes—from the jump ensures that assets are traceable from purchase to deployment to repossession. 

Keep an eye on your hardware through tagging and other measures like scanning your entire network to collect information about which IP addresses are in use on your network devices and receiving regular customized  inventory reports, features that any worthwhile hardware inventory tool should include.

2. Enlist a service that offers negotiated shipping rates

Today’s remote workforce includes many employees who live across the country or globe from their company. By utilizing a service that provides negotiated shipping rates, you can save on the potentially exorbitant costs of shipping hardware.

3. Foster company culture with personalized hardware kits

Your employees might not work from your offices, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make each of them feel like a part of the team. Customized kits, which may include things like welcome gifts for new employees or branded packaging can add a personal, inviting touch to the hardware management process.

Hardware asset management

Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko

4. Manage all aspects of your asset inventory in one centralized place

Want to assign kits to new employees or update the swag that’s in those kits? Need to check the delivery status of a kit or find out a serial number to make an insurance claim? Save both your IT and financial team members from endless headaches by making all of these aspects of your inventory system possible to complete in one portal.

5. Outsource the storage and shipping of your assets

If you’re dealing with an increasingly remote team, chances are you might not have the area to store boxes upon boxes of hardware. Outsourcing your storage and shipping needs to a company that specializes in asset deployment saves you from losing precious space to hardware. It also saves you from hiring staff to oversee and carry out asset shipping.

6. Enlist a trusted IT services firm to facilitate all of the above

Does hardware inventory management still sound like a lot of work? That’s because it is! It doesn’t have to be, though. Solving your asset management issues requires a bit more than simply purchasing the latest inventory management software—but not much more!

Learn more about the IT services offered by Quadbridge:

Certain IT service and management firms now offer comprehensive support in all aspects of hardware inventory management. A good rule of thumb is to look for a firm that will allow you to integrate any asset management software or inventory management tool you may already utilize, and which supports your network inventory as a whole, rather than just the hardware. 

A pioneering IT reseller in North America, Quadbridge’s state-of-the-art remote employee equipment deployment service, QB ZeroTouch by Quadbridge, helps with all of the above and more. QB ZeroTouch takes care of every aspect of asset management, including procurement, inventory management, storage, device provisioning, asset tagging, kit customization and shipping. 

Ready to start making your IT administrators, HR leaders and finance personnel’s lives easier—and cut costs in the process?  Contact Quadbridge today to learn more about QB ZeroTouch, how it works and who it benefits.


Quadbridge outperforms with end-to-end IT solutions and managed services

Client profile

Industry: Environmental
Employees: 25-50

✓ Managed IT

✓ Managed M365

✓ Managed Backup

✓ Professional Service

✓ Managed Endpoint

After supporting Waterloo Biofilter with an office move, they quickly switched fromtheir current Managed Services Provider to Quadbridge. We now manage their entireIT environment and support their end-to-end IT needs.

The challenge

  • The client was un happy with their MSP
  • The client needed a partner who was responsive, proactive, and would implement IT best practices for their organization
  • They needed onsite and report support for ongoing IT management activities as well as complex, specialized projects

Our solution

• Quadbridge worked with the client to implement our Elite IT service thatprovides ongoing IT monitoring and management, responsive help desk,proactive service, and vCIO consulting

• We’ve become a fully trusted partner and have proactively led a number ofinitiatives to improve performance and advance their IT, including thefollowing services:

• Managed Cloud Backup: we optimized their backup strategy with anaccessible, cost-efficient cloud-based backup solution that our teamcontinuously monitors and assists with restore requests.

• Infrastructure Architecture: we upgraded their server infrastructure toimprove redundancy and performance – especially for employees workingremotely.

• Ad Hoc Requests: as the clients’ IT support, our team uses our range ofexpertise and onsite support capabilities to deliver on a range of simple andcomplex IT projects. These have included upgrading their conference roomsystems and completing a functional and aesthetic clean up of their cabling

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