Maximizing resources and minimizing sunken costs is likely a top priority for your organization and its data centers. But with all the moving parts of your organization, including data center compliance, asset tracking management, capital asset visibility, and more, it’s easy for processes and equipment to get lost in the shuffle.
IT Procurement is a vital part of the asset management process that ensures you use your inventory as efficiently as possible.
Let’s dive deeper into why smart IT asset procurement is not just a nicety, but a necessity for businesses today. We’ll touch on the basics of Smart IT Procurement, why it’s important, and how RF Code makes it possible through its 100% accurate, fully automated, and real-time asset management platform.
What Is Smart Procurement?
Smart IT Procurement is a phrase coined by RF Code CFO, Cameron Lord. It’s an integrated part of effective inventory management that allows you to buy fewer assets and spend less on them when you do. Additionally, back-end integrations with ERP software/payment systems allow early payment processes to run correctly, which in turn saves you money. Smart IT Procurement gets the most out of onsite inventory by not overbuying or underbuying and leverages existing on-site inventory more efficiently.
With Smart IT Procurement, asset managers have real-time visibility into each site and know all the necessary details on their inventory at any given moment. With enhanced oversight and a better sense of what’s actually going on at all of your sites, you can greatly reduce over-provisioning and wasted assets.
The result? Millions of dollars were saved and countless headaches were avoided.
Why Is Smart IT Procurement Important?
It’s no secret that procurement enables businesses to keep operations running smoothly. But when you dive deeper, procurement can be more than just a part of everyday business. When executed properly, Smart IT Procurement has the ability to lower costs, minimize operational challenges, and get the most out of your resources.
So why is Smart IT Procurement something that needs to be on your organization’s radar? Here are a few key reasons.
Provisioning
How many times have your teams gone to stand up a project, only to realize they don’t have the needed assets? Under- and over-provisioning are typically among the biggest challenges organizations face when it comes to asset procurement.
Take this global mobile and tablet giant based in California, for example. As one of the first businesses to pioneer the early pay process with several server vendors, this organization integrated RF Code into their ERP system, which would then notify server deliveries and automatically start the PO payment process. The business had net 45-day payment terms but negotiated a 2% rebate for any invoice paid earlier than 30 days. The result? Roughly $1 million a year in savings.
While capacity planning and operations are typically top of mind for businesses as they go to stand up a project, conversations around inventory management and procurement are rarer than they ought to be. In reality, people don’t consider how they can be utilizing their existing inventory. This, in turn, leads to under and over-provisioning, which results in sunken costs and wasted resources when left unchecked. Automated, accurate, real-time provisioning enhances operational efficiency for both asset managers and IT directors, as well as minimizes the amount of manual, error-prone processes on their plates.
Inventory Control
If you only have a few small assets moving about a single data center, you might be able to easily keep tabs on them and manage them efficiently. But when you’re dealing with capital assets on an enterprise level, real-time visibility into where they are located can make all the difference.
The work RF Code did for IBM is a great example of this. With over 20,000 operational data centers and 19,000 racks under management, IBM needed to improve its asset visibility and reduce security exposures, on top of lowering its environmental monitoring costs. Through RF Code’s asset management solutions, IBM was able to achieve $42 million in savings over 5 years and improved inventory accuracy from 71.8% to 99.7%.
Smart IT Procurement is a must for large organizations that need to know where their capital assets are located at all times and how they’re being utilized. Optimized inventory control and asset utilization management are critical to asset supply chain improvements for large organizations.
Sustainability
Businesses need to not only think about what’s best for their organization but also about what’s best for the planet. A lot of assets in circulation today weren’t built with sustainability in mind. Without proper inventory control and procurement in place, organizations may continue to use assets that should have been retired ages ago.
With smart procurement, senior-level IT directors and asset managers can better understand which assets are negatively impacting their sustainability goals, and promptly retire them or recycle them for more efficient equipment. As best-in-class data centers continue to experiment with new technologies such as immersion cooling and alternative power sources, it’s important that your organization begins working towards a more sustainable future. Smart IT Procurement is just one small way you can be part of the solution, not the problem.
Big companies. Senior level director level type person. IT person. Probably not a finance procurement person, but maybe.
Big company IT asset managers. Their job is to maintain corporate assets. When we start talking about these types of things with these folks, it allows them to expand their scope.
Procurement Integration
Procurement integrations with RF Code provide asset managers and IT directors with a seamless way to collect, consolidate, and analyze real-time information on virtually all of their distributed IT assets. When it comes to our customers, one of their biggest opportunities for cost savings is when they have a server partner tag assets before shipping. This allows a few key things to happen:
- The customer will be notified as soon as the new server(s) arrive at the receiving area and without human intervention required.
- Customers can negotiate early payment terms with server vendors and allow the RF Code infrastructure, integrated with the procurement system, to start an early payment process and automate the receipt of the server.
When assets are tagged at the receiving area, you get smart procurement and more efficient utilization. Being able to integrate existing systems and technologies with RF Code enables organizations to unlock major cost savings and improve asset visibility.
RF Code’s Approach to Smart IT Procurement
In today’s world, you need your asset management solutions to be just as dynamic as the data centers themselves. With equipment constantly on the move throughout your facilities, it’s easy to misplace or forget about assets. But a surplus of overlooked equipment can quickly begin negatively impacting your finances. To truly make smart procurement a reality for your organization, you need a partner that can provide proven asset management solutions and people-powered support.
That’s where RF Code comes in.
Able to provide real-time monitoring to lower costs and improve availability, RF Code has helped countless IT organizations achieve greater visibility and enhanced oversight over all of their critical assets. Our platform makes Smart IT Procurement possible in several ways:
- Adaptable to any type of physical IT device you currently have. Vendor independent, meaning anything you need real-time information on is always available.
- Real-time data at your fingertips. Constant updates give you around-the-clock visibility into the inventory within your data center facilities.
- API feeds into multiple systems, so inventory data is shared with DCIMs, ERP systems, and more. Inventory data is accessible by numerous groups and distributed to their unique systems, so everyone benefits from insightful, easy-to-access data.
By tagging assets at the receiving area of your data center, RF Code delivers Smart IT Procurement and, in turn, more efficient utilization of all your assets. Instead of over-investing in hardware to compensate for lost and stolen equipment, our real-time asset management platform gives you detailed device information so you know where your assets are, how long they've been in service, whether they require maintenance and more.
Our approach to Smart IT Procurement gives your asset managers the in-depth information they need to prevent overbuying and achieve major cost savings. Without Smart IT Procurement, you risk not having what you need, when you need it. Assets that you need readily available at one site may end up being at an entirely different data center. Additionally, certain sites may build up a surplus of assets that keep your procurement processes from being as efficient as possible. By improving the allocation of resources and eliminating excess expenses, you can enhance operational efficiency across the board.
Where Does Your Data Center Stand?
The procurement decision happens early on when standing up projects, and it dramatically impacts how the rest of the process will go. If someone in your organization believes more assets need to be purchased — when in reality you have existing assets that are being underutilized or overlooked — you’ll run into over-provisioning issues that result in wasted costs and resources.
To keep your organization agile and prepared for the future of inventory management, you need to have verified, real-time visibility into your inventory.
RF Code’s continuous, real-time asset tracking solution enables your IT asset managers to drastically improve your asset management processes, delivering 99+% asset location accuracy across the entire lifecycle of every IT asset. By providing information on the location of your IT assets in real-time, RF Code solutions ensure inventory accuracy and deliver continuous savings by eliminating costly, time-consuming, inaccurate IT audit processes.
If you want to discuss how RF Code’s 100% accurate and automated Asset Management solutions can help your data center reduce critical IT procurement costs, schedule a time with us today.
