Help convince CTO desktop peripheral are consumables and not assets to be tagged

[u/No-Barber964]

Our company has been asset tagging everything at a desk to ensure that we can control the full lifecycle of hardware from procurement to disposal.

I’m trying to shift our process for the desk level hardware to only tag monitors as an asset and make keyboards/mouse, webcam, docking stations as consumables that we wouldn’t asset tag and only classify as consumables to track inventory levels

Our cto is consented we will loose visibility into where things are going and why we have to continually purchase more hardware when the firm isn’t growing

Any advice ?

Edit.. to add more context on the dollar amount of each model as many are saying to set a $ threshold

Monitor - $350 Headset - $250 Webcam- $160 Docking station - $100 Keyboard/mouse - $60

[u/No-Barber964]

Correct . But saying “it’s a waste of time” isn’t enough of an argument for him . I need more data to back up why these should be consumables

[u/ADynes → u/No-Barber964]

Argue that the Manpower it takes to log that asset and track where it's at and create labels doesn't justify the cost of the asset. At least not for keyboards and mice. You might not be able to make that argument for your monitors and docks but anything sub $100 you should be able to

[u/pmormr → u/ADynes]

Shipping person to receive it, put it in the system, IT person to tag it, accountants to go through the list of assets and classify them, IT person to decom it, IT person to hunt for missing inventory, accountants and tax lawyers figuring out how to depreciate and write everything off, management following up on reports, auditors going through reports... with follow up questions that will need to be answered.

It's not impossible to track, but there's the reason big companies say duck it and count the peanuts as consumables.

I'd also try the absurdist argument. What about a $75 SD card for a camera? What about SIM cards in phones? $200 SFPs for switches? What about hard drives? Memory upgrades for Susan? Where exactly is the line, because all of those things are more valuable than a keyboard, and it doesn't sound like you have those covered.

[u/KnowledgeTransfer23 → u/[deleted]]

Your corp doesn't employ Ripperdocs yet? Get with the times!!

[u/tmwhilden → u/pmormr]

And it’s always a Susan as the problem customer 😂😂

[u/Unethical3514 → u/pmormr]

I work at a place that wanted both the old and new part number and serial number any time we replaced internal components. They gave me static about it every time I replaced a NAS hard drive that our vendor sends to us as part of our maintenance agreement. I finally started telling them “sure, as soon as you provide me the serial number of the old drive, I’ll provide you the serial number of its replacement.” They shut up pretty quickly once they realized the absurdity of what they were mandating. The point is that as u/pmormr points out, some items cost more to track than they do to simply replace. Now, if someone is worried about spotting failure trends and problematic brands/models, just throw the broken shit in a box and check it every so often. It’ll quickly become obvious if something has a high failure rate.

[u/daolemah → u/No-Barber964]

Id explain if its asset tag,it comes under his umbrella to account for them. Vp of sales loses a portable keyboard during 6 day blitz closing 6m dollar deals. Management is not going to hold vp responsible, but failure to account for each asset is your bosses responsibility. So he has to harass said vp for explanation and confirmation. Its under his purview. It enters a ledger with a dollar value, it needs to be explained why its taken off the ledger. Audits are painful. If there is an asset tag, its part of the audit. Hence even mncs classify them as consumables. And he cant dispose of them easily if they are asset tagged. He also needs to inform finance that he intends to dispose a keyboard missing keycaps because its an asset. And let him get the approvals a few times. Everyone will be pissed wasting time on accounting for keyboards…. And also put laptop bags as consumable as well, ever tried to explain why you had to buy new laptop bags because the 10 you had in inventory have the plastic peeling off after 1year being kept in the storeroom are not fit to issue to the new salesman in charge of key clients? Its not the time its how stupid he will look. Honestly a quick and way to show inexperience at asset management.

[u/yrogerg123 → u/No-Barber964]

Because they're cheap, they break often, and the overhead of tracking the replacement in an asset management system is not worth the replacement cost?

Also, wouldn't an asset tag limit the functionality of a mouse? Where would you even put it?

That doesn't even go into the need to track and log the order, receipt, and destruction.

You'd also need to train employees that mouse and keyboard are bound to a desk and cannot be removed as needed. I know that I often grab stuff like that from unused desks to use as needed. You'd need to develop a system to quickly remove these items when desks go out of use. Otherwise they'll just drift away from where they started and you'll lose track. You'll end up with very misleading stats on these items.

That's a long way of saying that they are office supplies and not IT inventory.

[u/cats_are_the_devil → u/No-Barber964]

"Waste of time" should be traslated into a cost benefit analysis with manpower x hourly rate. It's pretty easy to justify that if it's saving over what the manpower and rate is... Show them it's not. Or move on.

[u/ThatCheesyPotato → u/No-Barber964]

Regarding Keyboards and espically mice, asset tags will wear off really quickly from human grease, rubbing against the desk daily, making them useless. Futhermore, does he have a USB stick or some small device, try tagging that and see how he reacts!

[u/patmorgan235 → u/No-Barber964]

Maybe look up some industry standard IT Asset management best practices/recommendations. Show that most other organizations don't track things that granularly.

[u/CARLEtheCamry → u/patmorgan235]

Fortune 100 company employee checking in :

We only track devices that have NICs. So a desktop laserjet printer we don't, but a networked LaserJet or a MFP, we do. Even the same model Zebra thermal printer, the USB one we do not track but the Z variant with the RJ45 port we do.

Now that came out of technical necessity so we can track anything that talks on our network. Sounds like the motivation here is lack of visibility and accountability in their purchasing system. I would suggest you look at those processes - if Sally in accounting is requesting 5 monitors a year, that's probably not legit.

We don't track assets for accessories, but we do have an internal ordering system that manages inventory. I can query the order database for every single tech item she has ordered if they are concerned, or since we have dollar amounts attached to each item in an order, something like <spend over $500 in a year on peripherals> kind of thing.

So this is more in the realm of inventory/order management, not exactly an IT thing but I get that smaller shops wear more hats. I helped improve our system from a closet with shelving and sharpie markers to integrating barcode scanners and running it like a proper warehouse. There are plenty of 3rd party solutions that you can buy out of the box that will at least get you started.

[u/insufficient_funds → u/No-Barber964]

Here's another way to look at it - if its asset tagged, then finance/accounting should be tracking that purchased asset and depreciating it. If it's not on a depreciation schedule then it's not a tracked asset by finance, and therefore shouldn't be a tracked asset by IT.

The point of asset tracking is to be able to identify it against the asset depreciation, and be able to know when it's been retired or lost.

[u/notHooptieJ → u/No-Barber964]

Let the boss knbow you can replace them for less money than it costs to tag them (before your labor time)

Keyboards and mice are $5 disposables like kleenex and monitor wipes (disposable monitor wipes cost more)

Anything over $50, tag that shit.

anything that goes in a bucket and not a box, Consumable.

[u/af_cheddarhead → u/notHooptieJ]

$5 office keyboards and mice are the reason I purchase my own keyboard and mouse for my office computer.

Yeah, don't be putting an asset tag on my personal property.

[u/notHooptieJ → u/af_cheddarhead]

Eh. the awful touchbar keyboard on my macbook made me bring my own klacker.

[u/ReputationNo8889 → u/No-Barber964]

I can tell you from experience that if you want to track assets like mice and keyboards you need strong as f stickers that hold on. Otherwise they fall off and you never find them. In most cases the stickers would cost more then the Keyboard/Mouse

[u/Plenty_Bake3315 → u/No-Barber964]

I was in this same situation before. I got a quote for the number of asset tags that would be required and sent it to the boss. Boss decided to just tag computers.

[u/TEverettReynolds → u/No-Barber964]

Because they are not expensive enough to warrant the time and cost of tracking them.

Someone is working on this. If that someone is from IT, they should have list of tickets and projects that their time would be better spent working on, especially projects that align with company goals and strategy.

And... if your IT people do not have high, medium, low projects to work on, then kick your IT manager in the butt to get some.

As a former IT Manager, my teams always had support tickets and projects to work on.. They never had "free time". Because even in their "down time" we had training and CBTs to do.

Plus, Any time I had to do inventories, I used Interns.

[u/Chaseshaw → u/No-Barber964]

I'm in a leadership position at my company and business has been bad the past year or so. Let me attempt to rephrase the request he's probably making:

The CEO is requiring me to trim the budget by 10%. I notice we're losing $$$ per year in asset replacement and the cause is unknown. Let me try and save the money here INSTEAD OF laying people off.

Make sense yet?

[u/HalfStackSecurity → u/No-Barber964]

Tell them you will likely need to hire an extra person to cover the increase in oversite and logistics which if you have a couple hundred employees is easily true. Note number of items per desk in each plan, multiplying by number of users.

[u/YREEFBOI → u/No-Barber964]

Math it up. Compare the cost of the time and material involved per item tagged with the cost of buying a new device. If it's more expensive and doesn't have any specific risk factors involed with loss of the hardware(data theft, leakage of personal info) it'll be a waste of time in his head as well.

[u/Magic_Neil → u/No-Barber964]

“Value creation”. Are you “creating” value by spending the time to tag and track a $20 peripheral through its lifecycle? It’s not that it’s a waste of time, it’s that your time could be better spent doing anything else to create value for the company, whether it’s to enable someone’s work via fixing issues or improving their workflows via new stuff.

It’s the same rationale of why the CEO gets their own printer, even if you’ve got policies against personal printers.. it’s not worth the time of a person making seven figures (or whatever obscene amount it is) to walk five minutes to get a piece of paper.

[u/architectofinsanity → u/No-Barber964]

What’s your hourly cost to the company?

Double it for how much time it takes to tag and perform the data entry because when it’s recycled you have more work to do.

If you’re using bar code tags - that could be a compromise. Get a bar code reader and quick data entry helps offset the cost.

[u/Ballbag94 → u/No-Barber964]

Why not do it, track how much time is wasted tracking the lifespan of such items over the next year vs the cost of the item itself and then next year reopen the conversation with the data that demonstrates that tracking these things costs more than it saves?

[u/KnowledgeTransfer23 → u/No-Barber964]

I agree with ADynes, time is money so a waste of time is a waste of money, you just need to show him the math.