What Is An Asset?
Any ‘thing’ that is important to you and your business. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it’s not…
Assets are the things that make your organisation unique. They are the capabilities that set your organisation apart from others and create superior value for your customers. They are not the exclusive domain of accounting, maintenance or engineering. They are your competitive advantage.
In some situations, the assets of an organisation may appear to be obvious. A rail network has rolling stock, tracks and major infrastructure. But that’s not all. Sometimes, the smallest and least visible of assets, such as a simple switch, can make a significant difference to how a rail service operates.
Often what we prioritise as assets are those items on a balance sheet. But in most organisations this is not the case. At its most basic, PAS 55 defines an asset as plant, machinery, property, buildings, vehicles and other items that have a distinct value to your organisation. In the broadest sense, however, an asset is any ‘thing’ that is important to your business – tangible, intangible, people, know-how, customers, systems, processes, mission-critical, mobile, and more. It’s a unique point of interest that delivers a business capability.
“What is more, assets are not static. They have lifecycles. As they operate their properties change over time. They can be recycled. They have rotatable components, which also have unique properties and lifecycles of their own. They have relationships with other ‘things’, custodians, their environment and more…”
Quite often, the challenge of managing the vast amounts of data associated with these unique and changing attributes overwhelms traditional asset management software systems.
However, new asset intelligence software and smart asset tagging systems, like assetDNA, enable organisations to re-define what they have traditionally regarded as an asset to be any ‘thing’ that is important to their business – at a much more granular level than ever before. This ability creates new opportunities for organisations to drive performance in asset utilisation, business processes, productivity and performance.
To learn more about asset intelligence technology and assetDNA, contact Relegen on +61 (0)2 9998 9000 today.