WorkMax ASSETS 4 Challenges Tracking Assets

| May 21, 2019

Top 4 Challenges Tracking Assets

 WorkMax ASSETS 4 Challenges Tracking Assets

Top 4 Challenges Tracking Assets
By: Shannon Corgan, Director of Marketing

Tools and equipment are critical to a construction business’ success. Without the right tools and equipment available and accessible to your employees, you’re increasing the risk that you’re projects are going to miss scheduled deadlines and go over budget. Here are the top 4 challenges tracking assets for construction businesses:

Locating Assets

1. Locating Assets is Time Consuming

When a supervisor or employee needs a piece of equipment he calls the equipment shop to find out who has it. The equipment shop manager looks at the form or spreadsheet to locate the piece of equipment. The equipment manager typically knows that the tools or equipment were checked out in the morning from the equipment shop and isn’t always informed where they are throughout the day before it’s returned. Throughout the day, it’s common for a piece of equipment to be utilized at multiple locations by multiple employees. The equipment manager has to call, text, or email the person that supposed to have it. That person tells him it was taken to a different job site and another employee has it. Then there’s another round of emails, texts, and phone calls to find the piece of equipment. 

 

Manual Process Error Prone2. Manual Asset Tracking is Error-Prone

Most companies are still using paper or spreadsheet printouts in the field to track their fixed assets. If you are tracking your assets on paper, the inventory is only accessible in the physical location where your tools and equipment are stored which is typically an equipment shop. Your employees in the field can’t easily check the asset inventory from the field without making a call to the equipment shop manager. Another challenge for manual asset tracking or tracking assets on paper is that even though you may love your equipment manager, he or she may not have won any penmanship awards and the handwriting on the forms may be illegible. With manual asset tracking in one physical location, you can’t track where your assets are in real time and who has them.


Tools Lost Stolen

3. Tools or Equipment are Lost or Stolen

If you don’t know who has your company’s assets or where they are at, you’re increasing your chances of having tools or equipment lost or stolen. If your employees don’t have the right tools or equipment to perform the work needed, it slows down your projects and the amount of work that can be completed. When businesses owners experience tools or equipment theft, they have to purchase new tools or equipment if they haven’t insured the tools and equipment. Even if business owners do have insurance, they still have to take time to file police reports and insurance claims. In addition, they have to rent replacement equipment and can expect higher insurance premiums due to the insurance claims for their stolen or lost equipment. All of this leads to lost productivity and schedule delays. Schedule delays can lead to missed deadlines and penalties.

Difficult to Track Maintenance

4. Difficult to Track Maintenance

Unfortunately, if there is not a centralized location for fixed asset maintenance schedules, many times preventative maintenance isn’t proactively performed and is reactive. Most companies without a centralized asset tracking system with global visibility perform reactive maintenance which means they only service their equipment when they’re broken down. When your fixed assets are serviced just when it’s broken down, it can lead to much higher repair costs. Also, if you’re only performing reactive maintenance on your fixed assets, you’re reducing the asset life cycle and increasing the cost because you have to replace your fixed assets sooner.

 

If you can relate to any of the Top 4 Challenges Tracking Assets, and want to automate your asset tracking for accurate real-time asset inventory and assignments in a centralized location with global visibility, click here to learn more.