Hitting the right note: How a public sector council took control of it’s educational assets and improved service delivery

In the world of public sector education, access to resources such as musical instruments is key to unlocking creative potential in young people. North Tyneside Music Hub is one of the fantastic organisations pushing forward and supporting such creative education. However, for organisations that manage large-scale, public-sector led music initiatives, keeping track of thousands of musical instruments across multiple schools presents an undeniable logistical nightmare.

For North Tyneside Music Hub, part of North Tyneside Council, managing its vast inventory of instruments was becoming increasingly difficult. With hundreds of schools and inquisitive students relying on their services, ensuring every instrument was accounted for, maintained, and allocated efficiently had become a huge challenge. North Tyneside started their search for a better, more modern solution when they discovered itemit. itemit has given North Tyneside much welcomed clarity, control, and cost savings when it comes to asset management.

North Tyneside Music Hub is a vital initiative, responsible for delivering the National Plan for Music Education on behalf of the Department for Education (DfE) and Arts Council England. Similar hubs exist across the UK. Their mission? To ensure that every child and young person, regardless of their background, has the opportunity to engage in music.

This particular hub works with 80+ schools across North Tyneside, providing a combination of classroom music education, ensemble opportunities, and loan instruments to students. However, delivering amazing initiatives such as these also results in a reality of juggling thousands of instruments lent out to numerous schools. With thousands of musical instruments being loaned across multiple locations, managing these assets effectively is crucial to ensuring the hub can continue delivering outstanding musical opportunities for young people.

Before using itemit, North Tyneside Music Hub relied on a legacy and outdated spreadsheet system to track its instruments. However, like all organisations using spreadsheets to track their assets, this method caused more issues than it solved. There were 4 key issues that needed to be solved:

1. Spreadsheets do not Provide Accurate Data: The spreadsheet was always out of date rather than showing asset statuses in real-time. This meant that instruments frequently moved between schools without accurate updates. Multiple staff could edit the spreadsheet at the same time without knowing so, resulting in missed edits and a lack of clarity. The ultimate issue: instruments were being misplaced, making it difficult to retrieve and reallocate them.

2. Auditing Assets was Time-Consuming and Inaccurate: With thousands of instruments deployed across schools, auditing stock was a daunting prospect. Being a public sector organisation, tackling audits with ease and simplicity was an vital requirement. Many schools had instruments hidden away in cupboards or storage rooms, making it difficult to assess the true availability and value of the instruments they had.

3. Limited Accountability: Instruments were loaned out, but without a reliable tracking system, there was no clear audit trail of where they had been assigned or whether they had been returned in working condition. Crucially, where issues occurred with instruments, it was difficult to assess at what point the damage had occurred. This also led to a lack of confidence that the equipment they were providing was really fit for purpose.

4.Inefficient Use of Funding: With new government funding streams available and with these funds being absolutely crucial for their continued operations, North Tyneside needed an accurate picture of what instruments they already had in circulation to ensure new investments were spent wisely rather than duplicating stock unnecessarily.

With these challenges in mind, North Tyneside Music Hub turned to itemit to provide a modern, streamlined, and scalable asset management solution.

Recognising the need for a smarter, more intuitive and reliable system North Tyneside Music Hub turned to itemit to revolutionise how they track and manage their musical instruments. itemit provided 5 dramatic changes to the way assets were tracked and managed at North Tyneside.

1. Instant Visibility with QR Code Asset Tagging: Instead of relying on outdated spreadsheets, each instrument is now tagged with a unique itemit QR code tag. Now, when an instrument is moved, staff can scan it instantly and update its status and location in a matter of seconds. This real-time tracking eliminates the confusion of disjointed records and lost assets.

2. A Seamless Loan System with Check-in/Check-out Features: itemit’s check-in/check-out functionality has revolutionised how the hub lends out instruments. Schools and students can now borrow instruments with a full digital audit trail, ensuring complete accountability for every piece of equipment. North Tyneside knows when the instruments are due to be returned, with peace of mind that itemit will automatically send out Notifications to prompt schools and students when equipment needs to be returned. 

3. Powerful Reporting for Funding and Procurement Decisions: With itemit’s reporting tools, North Tyneside Music Hub can now generate instant reports on asset location, condition, and maintenance needs. This has been crucial for funding justification, allowing the team to show exactly how grant money is being spent and which instruments genuinely need replacing. Painful and time consuming audits are also now a thing of the past, with the ability to produce audits within seconds, such as accessing the ‘History’ section on any item’s profile which keeps a full record of every action and movement recorded on the asset.

4. Issue Management for Instrument Repairs: Wear and tear is inevitable when thousands of students are using musical instruments daily. The difference with itemit? Teachers and administrators are now able to raise ‘Issues’ instantly with itemit’s built in Issues feature. When an instrument needs attention, North Tyneside’s team are now notified instantly, ensuring broken instruments are fixed and reintroduced into circulation as quickly as possible. No more unused instruments or instruments issued to schools with defects.

5. Sustainability and Cost Savings: Instead of buying new instruments unnecessarily, North Tyneside Music Hub can now see exactly what they have and where it is. Even more powerful than this, they can instantly access automatically generated reports relating to asset value, asset accounting and asset utilisation. The result? Reducing unnecessary purchases and ensuring existing resources are used to their fullest potential. This has led to more responsible spending of public funds and a more sustainable approach to managing musical assets.

By making the switch to itemit, North Tyneside Music Hub has gained complete control over its instrument inventory, transforming a once chaotic system into an efficient, streamlined, and transparent process with far reaching benefits brought to schools, teachers and students. Staff in all departments can now instantly locate instruments, eliminating the many hours once spent searching through spreadsheets or physically checking schools to find equipment. When it comes to repairing, collecting or re-assigning instruments, locating them and identifying their unique history is now a breeze. Every instrument now has a clear audit trail which has drastically improved accountability and prevents loss.

For councils, charities, and public sector organisations managing large asset pools, North Tyneside Music Hub’s success story is proof that a modern tracking system can make all the difference. Whether you’re dealing with musical instruments, IT equipment, or other critical assets, itemit’s intuitive and scalable platform ensures everything is accounted for, used efficiently, and properly maintained.

Have an asset tracking challenge that itemit can help with?

Here at itemit we love helping our customers make the switch to itemit and experience these immediate benefits. We’d love to help your organisation do the same. So, if you’re still struggling with tracking assets via spreadsheets

– it’s time to take a look at a better solution and trial itemit for yourself!