As businesses become increasingly dependent on technology to function, the number of fixed assets they must acquire, own, track and maintain continues to explode. What’s a fixed asset? It’s a long-term, tangible asset that’s used by the business to generate income or provide services to customers. Examples are desks, chairs, tables, copiers, and, of course, various types of technology equipment.
With trends like digitization and the hybrid workforce, companies need more digital assets to operate than ever – laptops, keyboards, mouses, cables, chargers and more. These assets are often taken outside the four walls of the enterprise into home offices or on the road, making them even harder to track and protect.
It’s important to manage fixed assets properly for a number of reasons. For starters, ensuring the business maximizes the return on their investments is critical to profitability. Employees need to have access to assets that are well-maintained to be productive and efficient, and effective financial reporting, cost control, compliance, and informed decision-making all hinge on having detailed information about every asset the business owns.
To manage assets the right way, companies need a complete and accurate asset inventory that includes data about their location, condition and value.
Keep tabs on your fixed assets
A leading cloud-based fixed asset tracking platform, Reftab offers organizations across an array of industries an easier way to track, monitor and maintain fixed assets and equipment. “Our platform provides a single pane of glass to understand what assets and equipment your company owns, who’s using it and how it’s being used,” said Michael Caslowitz, Reftab’s Co-founder and CEO. Roughly XX customers leverage the platform today to keep tabs on their assets, track depreciation, optimize spend and satisfy regulatory requirements.
The majority of Reftab’s customers are IT administrators who must build and maintain a complete and accurate inventory of technology assets and equipment, to comply with regulations, optimize IT spend, keep employees productive, and reduce the risk of cyber attacks. While the platform offered a high degree of flexibility and ease of use for tracking fixed assets, it had no network discovery tool. This became problematic not only because the number of technology devices companies use has increased exponentially, but because of “shadow IT” – unsanctioned equipment purchases that IT knows nothing about.
“Our users would have to add their technology assets into the system manually,” said Caslowitz. “For example, if someone in the finance department needs a new printer, they can buy and install it without IT’s help, and it’s never logged or tracked.” Additionally, people often bring in their own devices and sign onto the network – IT has no way to monitor or protect those devices if they lack visibility into all network-connected devices.
To bridge the gap, Reftab’s customers were asking for an integrated tool that could automatically discover every technology asset on the network, even idle devices and shadow IT. “They told us they’d find benefit in synching all of their technology inventory data with Reftab, so they could see everything all in one place,” Caslowitz said.
Integrating with Lansweeper – the market’s leading IT discovery and inventory solution – was a no-brainer. “Lansweeper is an industry standard,” Caslowitz said. “It’s used by so many people in different industries, so it was the clear choice.”
Why Lansweeper?
Lansweeper enables Reftab customers to detect, identify and gather detailed data about every network-connected device, automatically and in seconds. Through the integration, this data flows into Reftab seamlessly, eliminating the need for tedious, manual data entry and providing complete visibility over the entire IT asset estate. Lansweeper provides granular information about all assets, including the make, model, installed software, user, location and more – information that was lacking from Reftab prior to the integration.
Thanks to the Lansweeper integration, Reftab customers know exactly what IT assets are connected to the network at all times. “Lansweeper crawls the network so well and provides diversified information,” Caslowitz said. “As soon as a device is added to the network, Lansweeper detects and identifies it instantly, and adds it to the inventory.”
Goodbye spreadsheets
The Lansweeper-Reftab integration eliminates the need to maintain cumbersome spreadsheets or create manual logs – outdated methods that are time-consuming and error-prone. “Spreadsheets can work for up to a certain number of assets, but as a company grows and acquires more equipment, it’s impossible to keep those spreadsheets up to date,” Caslowitz said. With Lansweeper’s real-time asset discovery and our platform’s advanced automations, you know exactly what you have at all times. Audits are a breeze because the platform does the work for you.”
Once an asset is detected and added to Reftab, IT administrators can assign it to the right user and create a unique barcode for easy tracking. In the Reftab mobile app, they can scan the barcode at any time to retrieve all of the data about that asset. They can also confirm that what exists in the physical world exists in Reftab. “The ability to verify inventory is vital for completing audits, reconciling budgets or assigning equipment to new hires, and ensuring your valuable equipment is properly utilized,” Caslowitz said.
According to Caslowitz, the integration with Lansweeper not only helps Reftab customers to maximize their investments in their existing tech stack, it adds value. Additionally Lansweeper simplifies compliance management by providing accurate information and a clearer understanding of who’s using what equipment at any given time. “By taking advantage of the Lansweeper integration, our customers can spend less time tracking and logging IT assets, and more time optimizing and protecting the infrastructure,” he said.
Get Started Now
Lansweeper’s integration with RefTab is just one way Lansweeper can be integrated into your existing tech stack so you can leverage rich, up-to-date technology asset data for various use cases. Learn more about our seamless integrations here.