Second installment of the series on the stages a piece of equipment goes through from the moment it is purchased until it is decommissioned. In this article: how to maintain visibility and control of the hardware once it is already delivered and in use, as the team grows across multiple countries.
A company with a growing distributed team can go from ten to sixty computers in just over a year. At first, knowing where each one is is simple: someone writes it down in a spreadsheet and that is enough. The problem appears when the number of collaborators increases and every time a computer is reassigned, breaks down, changes country, or is left in the hands of someone who manages other tasks.
In the first installment of this series we talked about acquisition: how to choose, buy, and deliver the right equipment to each person. That stage solves how the equipment arrives. But buying well once does not guarantee anything about what happens next.
The next stage, maintaining control over that equipment while it is in use, is usually the one that receives the least attention. This happens precisely because there is no clear moment of urgency that forces it to be resolved, until a problem arises. This is the asset management stage.
What is IT asset management in a remote team?
IT asset management is the process of knowing, at all times, what equipment the company has, who has each one, what condition it is in, and where it is located. It is not the same as managing devices at a technical level (that is MDM, a different layer that we explain in detail in this article).
Asset management answers a more basic and, at the same time, harder to sustain question over time: what is there, where is it, and whose responsibility is it.
In an in-person team, that question barely exists because the computers are in the office and can be seen. In a team distributed across several countries, each computer lives in a different house, travels through different postal services, and passes through different hands without anyone seeing it. The registry stops being an administrative procedure and becomes the only way to know what the company actually owns.
What happens to a piece of equipment between delivery and recovery
Between the day a piece of equipment is delivered and the day it is recovered, years can pass, and during that time the equipment rarely sits still. It changes hands, breaks and gets repaired, gets upgraded, travels to another country, or sits idle. Each of these movements is a point where the inventory can drift from reality, and it almost always drifts in the same direction: the registry says one thing, and reality says another.
These are the events that, in practice, break the inventory:
Reassignments. A person leaves or changes roles and their equipment is handed to someone else. If no one updates the record, the computer is listed under someone who no longer has it.
Breakages and repairs. A piece of equipment goes out for repair and returns weeks later. During that time, is it listed as active, in repair, or does it simply disappear from the count?
Relocations and country changes. The employee moves. The equipment has changed jurisdiction, but the registry still says it is where it no longer is.
Upgrades and expansions. A monitor is added, a battery is replaced, a peripheral is joined. The asset is no longer the one that was purchased, but the registry does not reflect this.
Offboarding without recovery. Someone leaves the company and the equipment remains at their home, until it shows up (or doesn't) in the next inventory check.
These events are the normal operations of any growing company. The point is not to avoid them, but to have a registry that updates at the pace they occur. When that registry depends on someone remembering to log every move, the gap between what the inventory says and what exists in reality is just a matter of time.
Why the spreadsheet stops working when the team grows
A spreadsheet works as long as there are few teams and only one person in charge of updating it. The problem with this format is that it does not scale. As teams, countries, and the number of people who need to upload or consult information grow, the spreadsheet accumulates three weaknesses that end up making it unreliable.
The first is the reliance on a single person: if the person who maintains it takes a vacation or leaves the company, the knowledge goes with them. The second is the lack of real-time updates: the spreadsheet reflects the last moment someone remembered to touch it, not today's status. The third is the lack of traceability: it tells you, with luck, where an equipment is now, but not its history (who had it before, when it was repaired, what countries it has been to).
Spreadsheet | Centralized management system | |
|---|---|---|
Inventory control | Depends on who updated it last | A single record, visible to the whole team |
Update | Manual, subject to forgetfulness | In real time, tied to each movement |
Access | Limited to whoever has it | Multiple areas (IT, People, Ops) on the same data |
Traceability | Only current state, no history | Full history of each asset since purchase |
Multiple countries | One spreadsheet per country, or all mixed into one | All countries in the same view |
The difference is not noticeable on day one. It is noticed the day someone asks how many teams there are in Colombia and the honest answer is "we would have to check."
Operational blindness: the cost of not knowing where each device is
Operational blindness is being unable to answer, with certainty, where each company device is and in what state. It is not an abstract problem; it has a concrete cost that appears in four ways: ghost devices that nobody knows where they are, assets that are not recovered when someone leaves, new purchases that could have been avoided by reassigning something that already existed, and company data exposed on out-of-control devices.
The most expensive case of operational blindness is the one that appears during offboarding: the device that is not recovered when someone leaves the company. There, not only is the value of the device lost, but also the certainty about what information was carried on it. It is a problem that starts much earlier, the day that device was poorly registered, or not registered at all.
What an asset management system that works across multiple countries needs
Asset management that works for a distributed team does not depend so much on the tool used, but on some decisions made beforehand that determine whether the registry will reflect reality or not. There are four.
That the device is in the company's name, not the employee's. We already mentioned this in the procurement issue: if the device is registered in the person's name, recovery is almost impossible to enforce. It is the foundation for everything else.
A single registry, not one per country. An inventory fragmented into several local spreadsheets is not an inventory: it is the absence of one. There must be a single view, with all countries included.
Well-defined statuses. A device can be assigned, free, undergoing repair, in transit, stored, or decommissioned. If these statuses do not exist or are not used, the inventory says "there are 60 devices," but it doesn't say how many are actually available for reassignment.
Traceability from purchase. A device's history cannot be reconstructed later. Either it is registered from day one, or it is lost.
None of these four things are expensive to implement from the beginning, but they can all mean major costs if implemented late, or after problems with lost devices have already arisen.
What happens when a device is stolen or lost: where asset management ends and MDM begins
When a device is lost or stolen, the two layers that coexist in hardware management are clearly visible. Asset management tells you what device it was, who had it, and where it should be. MDM allows you to act on that device: block it remotely, locate it, or erase the data before anyone accesses it.
Both are needed, and one does not replace the other. Without the registry, you do not know which device to block or what information it had. Without MDM, you cannot do anything with that information once the device is out of your control. We expand on this in MDM and asset management.
If you configure your devices with MDM through First Plug, you manage both layers, the registry and device control, with the same provider that already knows your fleet.
How we manage assets in LATAM
At First Plug, asset management is supported by something that is not software: our own operation in LATAM. Having our own operation in each country of the region, and not relying on third parties, is what allows every movement of a device (a delivery, a reallocation, a repair, a recovery) to be registered by the person who actually did it, at the moment it occurs, and does not depend on an external intermediary reporting it on time.
The platform works on top of that operation, which is the visibility layer. Several areas (IT, People, Ops) can see and manage the same inventory in real time, without the data depending on a single person. You can also upload devices that you did not purchase through us, so you have a single inventory of your entire fleet. Access to the platform is free; what is contracted separately is the service (purchase, logistics, storage, recovery) according to what each company needs. We explain it in detail in What the First Plug platform does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is asset management the same as an MDM?
No. Asset management answers what equipment you have, who has it, and where it is. MDM manages the device at a technical level: remote lock, data wipe, configuration. They are distinct and complementary layers, and most companies with remote teams end up needing both.
Is a spreadsheet enough to keep equipment inventory?
At first, yes. It stops being enough when teams, countries, and the number of people loading or consulting information grow. At that point, the spreadsheet becomes outdated, depends on a single person, and does not keep the history of each piece of equipment. A centralized system resolves those three things.
Can I manage equipment that I did not buy from First Plug?
Yes. The platform allows you to load equipment purchased anywhere, not just those acquired from us. The idea is for you to have a single inventory of all your equipment, regardless of where each device was purchased.
Is there a cost to use the management platform?
Access to the platform is free of charge. What is contracted separately is the service—purchase, logistics, storage, recovery—according to what each company needs. The value lies in having visibility and control over your inventory.
How is equipment recovered when someone leaves the company?
Recovery is a stage in itself of the life cycle, with its own reverse logistics, data wiping, and coordination by country. This is the topic of the next installment in this series.
Conclusion
Acquisition defines how the life of a piece of equipment begins. Asset management defines whether the company maintains control over that equipment throughout the entire time it is in use, which is most of its useful life. It is the least urgent stage of all, until a departure, a theft, or an audit occurs and, suddenly, it becomes the most urgent.
The difference between companies that maintain control and those that lose it is not how much equipment they have, but when they started keeping proper track of it. Centralizing from the very first piece of equipment costs little; organizing sixty devices scattered across four countries, without a common registry, is an entire project in itself.
If you want to see what your equipment pool would look like in a single inventory, you can explore the platform or request a quote.
What is coming up next in the series
The third installment covers offboarding and recovery: what happens to the equipment when someone leaves the company, how reverse logistics is coordinated across multiple countries, and how an asset is recovered without losing the information stored on it. This is the stage where operational blindness is most costly, and where having traceability from the day of purchase stops being just a good practice and becomes concrete savings.
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