Top 7 IT Asset Management Metrics

IT Asset Management is the process of ensuring that an organization’s technology assets are properly accounted for, deployed, maintained, upgraded, and disposed of at the end of their usable life. As discussed in our white paper, ‘Outsource IT Asset Management and Boost Productivity and Profitability in the Process,‘ the management of IT assets has been somewhat of an afterthought for large organizations’ overtaxed IT departments. However, as the importance and scope of IT technology have grown, an increasing number of enterprises are engaging the services of dedicated IT asset management resources, introducing key metrics that aid in IT decision-making. This article focuses on the top 7 metrics that are valuable to an organization and can be delivered on a monthly or weekly basis.

1. Inventory Levels – This metric measures the “What?”, “Where?”, and “How Many?” of asset management that is vital not only to IT leadership but also to financial leadership. In any organization, a key pillar of success in asset management is to have an accurate inventory of all items deemed of value to IT, how many are in stock or deployed, and where they are located. This information typically includes, at a minimum, item model, serial number, acquisition date, acquisition cost, warranty date, owner, and status. Minimum inventory thresholds are often placed on each category of item to ensure there is a sufficient quantity in stock to fulfill orders without having to wait for the procurement process, which could take weeks.
2. Received Tickets – This metric reflects the number of new asset-related tickets routed to the organization’s IT Asset Management team and is an indicator of work volume. Tickets may consist predominantly of service requests or incidents. Service requests represent end-users asking for equipment, onboarding requests to prepare laptops and/or mobile devices, or even replacement of equipment that is aging beyond warranty coverage. Incidents, on the other hand, are typically routed to the IT Asset Management team from the Tier I or Tier II Service Desk as a result of failed equipment that needs to be replaced.
3. Resolved Tickets – Reflecting the number of tickets resolved by the IT Asset Management team, this metric is an indicator of productivity. Paired with the number of tickets in the backlog, average resolution time, and SLA %, it offers a comprehensive view of overall team performance.
4. Backlog Tickets – This metric reflects the number of tickets waiting to be handled by the IT Asset Management Team and is an indicator of staffing level. To understand whether an organization’s staffing level is in alignment with the volume of work being delivered, it is first necessary to understand what the baseline backlog should be.Every organization will have some natural backlog that is acceptable. Acceptable backlog may include onboarding tickets, for example, with future start dates too far in advance to fill the equipment order at present, or it may involve waiting to collect returned equipment from offboarded users. Essentially, these are tickets that the IT Asset Team cannot take immediate action on but are waiting for something outside of their control. The amount of acceptable backlog varies from organization to organization, but it’s fairly easy to identify by looking at backlog volume over a period of 6 to 12 months and counting the number of tickets that fall into the acceptable designation monthly, then averaging this over the reporting period. Once the baseline of acceptable backlog is identified, it is now possible to monitor the number of tickets that exceed this baseline. As the backlog rises and the SLA % metric drops, this indicates the asset team is being overwhelmed with work they are unable to get to in a timely manner. This metric can thus lead to other meaningful questions to understand why the backlog is rising. Is it a short-term spike or something more continuous? If the volume is continuous, this may be the trigger to increase staffing levels and bring the backlog and SLA % back into expected alignment.
5. Average Resolution Time – This metric reflects the average time it takes the IT Asset Management team to resolve tickets. It is important to note that it is natural for there to be some fluctuation month to month in this metric. The fluctuation stems from the different types of tickets being handled in a month. For example, it may only take 15 minutes to fulfill a service request asking for a new docking station that happens to be in stock in the asset depot, but it might take several hours to fulfill an onboarding request with several kit items, including imaging a new laptop, installing a custom software configuration, adding a mobile device, monitors, headset, docking station, keyboard/mouse, and having it boxed and shipped. If a month has a hiring spike, for instance, we would expect that month to reflect a longer average resolution time than a month with more balanced ticket types or more peripheral fulfillment. To use this metric in a more meaningful manner, our focus should be less on the minor fluctuations from period to period and more on the significant shifts which should prompt questions that may, in turn, lead to technological improvement and automation.
6. SLA % – This metric reflects the percentage of asset management tickets resolved within the designated SLA target time and is an indicator of overall performance. While the SLA target does vary from organization to organization, a common baseline is 7 calendar days from receipt of a ticket to fulfillment. An ideal target is to achieve a minimum of 95% of all resolved tickets within the defined SLA window.
7. Customer Satisfaction – This metric reflects the percentage of satisfied survey responses for tickets resolved by the IT Asset Management team and is an indicator of how the organization’s user base views the service they are receiving. This metric is important in judging the overall user experience of asset management, which is often one of the factors associated with what “success” looks like in an organization.

While there are many other data points that can be interesting to capture such as how many new equipment orders were placed in a given period, the amount of equipment pending recycling or the percentage breakdown of imaging methods used in device provisioning, these are often viewed as more ancillary to the core metrics noted above.