How many copies of Adobe Creative Cloud is your company actually paying for? Do you know which laptops are due for replacement before they fail during a critical meeting? Is that old server in the closet still running—and is it a security risk?
If these questions make you nervous, you’re not alone. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), IT assets often live in a chaotic world of forgotten spreadsheets, old invoices, and “tribal knowledge” inside a senior tech’s head.
This isn’t just messy; it’s expensive and dangerous. You overspend on software licenses, deploy insecure “shadow IT,” and can’t budget effectively for hardware refreshes.
The solution is IT Asset Management (ITAM).
For many SMBs, “ITAM” sounds like a terrifying, enterprise-level project involving $100,000 software suites. But it doesn’t have to be. Here is a practical, 5-step guide to get a handle on your IT assets without an enterprise-sized budget.
What is ITAM, Really?
At its core, ITAM is a simple process for knowing what you have, where it is, who is using it, and how much it costs you. It’s the complete lifecycle management of your IT hardware and software.
- Hardware (The Physical): Laptops, desktops, servers, monitors, printers, mobile devices.
- Software (The Virtual): Licenses, subscriptions, applications, and their versions.
A 5-Step Practical ITAM Plan for SMBs
Forget the complex frameworks. Start with these five achievable steps.
Step 1: Discover & Inventory Your Hardware
You can’t manage what you don’t know you have. Your first step is to find every device connected to your network.
- For Office Networks: Use a free network scanning tool (like the free tiers of Lansweeper or Spiceworks) to automatically discover most of your connected devices (PCs, printers, servers).
- For Remote Workforces: This is harder. You may need to start with your device management (MDM) tool or, as a last resort, your purchasing records from finance.
- What to Track: Log every device in a central list. You can start with our IT Asset Management Log template. At a minimum, track: Device Name, User, Device Type (Laptop/Desktop), Model, Serial Number, Purchase Date, and Warranty Expiration.
Step 2: Audit Your Software & Licenses
This is where you’ll find immediate cost savings. Your goal is to find the gap between what you pay for and what you actually use.
- Audit Subscriptions: Get a list from your finance department of all recurring software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscriptions. You will be shocked at what you find.
- Reclaim Unused Licenses: Log in to your Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Adobe admin portals. How many licenses are assigned to employees who left the company 6 months ago? Reclaiming even a few of these licenses can mean thousands in savings.
- Find “Shadow IT”: Use your network scanner or firewall logs to see what cloud services employees are using that IT doesn’t know about.
Step 3: Centralize Your Data (The “Single Source of Truth”)
An old spreadsheet on a shared drive will fail. It will become outdated, get locked for editing, or be duplicated. Your data must live in one central, accessible place.
For an SMB, this doesn’t mean a complex system. It could be:
- A modern cloud spreadsheet (like Smartsheet or Google Sheet).
- A dedicated, low-cost ITAM tool (like Snipe-IT).
- A module within your existing helpdesk software.
Choose one, and make it the only place your team is allowed to update asset information.
Step 4: Define Basic Lifecycles
ITAM isn’t a one-time list; it’s a living process. Define simple, repeatable workflows for the four key stages of an asset’s life:
- Procurement: How is new equipment requested, approved, and purchased?
- Deployment: What is the checklist for setting up a new laptop?
- Maintenance: How are assets patched, updated, and repaired?
- Retirement: What is the secure process for wiping, decommissioning, and disposing of old hardware?
Step 5: Schedule a Quarterly Review
This is the most important step. Set a calendar reminder every 90 days for your team to perform two tasks:
- Reclaim: Review your software licenses and reclaim any that are unused.
- Replace: Run a report on all hardware whose warranty is expiring in the next 6 months. This is your new budget and replacement plan—no more surprises.
The Biggest Problem with ITAM? Time.
Reading this guide, you’ve probably been thinking, “This is great, but when am I supposed to do all this?”
You’re right. Just like documenting your network, ITAM is a critical, high-value internal project. It saves money and reduces risk. But it’s constantly fighting for time against the endless, noisy demands of external user support.
Your team is forced into a no-win choice:
- Option A: Spend Friday auditing SaaS licenses to save the company money.
- Option B: Spend Friday writing another guide on “How to use the new Outlook UI” because users are creating tickets.
This is the core challenge for every SMB IT team.
How to Get Your Time Back
The only way to win this fight is to change the rules. You can’t add more hours to the day, but you can reclaim the ones you’re wasting.
Stop letting your team’s most valuable hours get drained by the repetitive, low-impact work of writing and maintaining guides for common software. This is a problem you can solve instantly.
A managed knowledge base like Kandbe takes this entire category of work off your plate. It provides a complete library of professional, user-friendly guides for all the software your employees use—and we keep them updated when the UI changes.
By letting Kandbe handle your user-facing documentation, you free up dozens of hours for your team. You get back the time you need to focus on high-value projects like ITAM that save money, reduce risk, and move your business forward.
Ready to stop wasting time and start saving money?
See how Kandbe can take all user-facing software documentation off your plate, freeing up your team for the work that really matters.