BSP 173: Rethinking Information Technology Asset Management by Jeremy L. Boerger

On this episode of Best Seller TV, author Jeremy Boerger sits down
with host Taryn Winter Brill to discuss his book “Rethinking
Information Technology Asset Management”. Boerger begins by
identifying, in layman’s terms, what information technology asset
management – or ITAM, is. He said ITAM is “a segment inside service
management that deals with getting the most value out of your
hardware, software, server, systems necessary for modern businesses
to function.”      Asset management at its core
is trying to fight a two-front fight – spending money on IT vs
lowering costs. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine any business
existing without an IT infrastructure in place; however, that
doesn’t mean businesses should spend money frivolously. Boerger
argues that we spend money on cybersecurity tools, photo production
tools and even telecommunications, but do we stop to ask what is
our ROI? Is there a better way to spend our dollars? Perhaps on
employees, salaries and stock returns?     This is
where the ‘rethinking’ part comes into play. Boerger explains that
according to a 2016 Gartner article, medium-to-large organizations
can lower their software spending by about one-third. That can be
accomplished with three things:    Recycling already
purchased licenses instead of buying more Ensuring the software
features being bought line up with the work that’s being done
Having a system in place that measures how the work is being done
so you don’t get penalized by software publishers conducting
software audits   However, there are other ‘flaws’ that plague
the industry, such as having two main operating methodologies:
transactional and accountancy. Boerger describes the first as
“nothing happens without a receipt” and the latter as “comparing
what’s on the left hand side of the ledger with what’s on the right
side of the ledger.” In the book, he describes a third methodology
to be used – epistemology. Boerger argues that asset management is
an exercise in epistemology, which he defines as the study of
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