Asset tracking has come a long way in its long and interesting history. While there have been assets, there has been a need to track them and manage them.
Businesses throughout history have known the need to verify what they own and track it effectively. The need is still developing as more technology arises and as our assets get more multifaceted features and functionality.
The History Of Asset Tracking
Assets were largely tools and equipment in the past, which is why tracking them could be more rudimentary. As technology would have been in its infancy, too, the ability to track assets was more difficult.
Therefore, modern-day asset tracking started out with the use of spreadsheets to log and monitor ownership. This developed from pen and paper, but the problems were still similar.
Each asset would be logged in a cell and the corresponding row would contain data related to that asset, such as its location or information related to its finances.
This created issues such as an increased risk of ghost and zombie assets as this required a lot of manual input and editing to keep the sheets up to date. However, the technology just wasn't there to automate or speed up any operations.
Where Asset Management Is Today
After the development of apps and smartphones, asset tracking developed into something more automated and manageable. Asset tracking software was developed off the back of spreadsheets, noting their inefficiencies and problems and solving them.
Incrementally, the needs of businesses became clearer as asset tracking software developed, which gave way to new features that could be integrated into asset management.
The fundamental need has always been there to be able to log assets, track their locations, and interactions workers have had with assets, but the way these interactions were logged and managed could be improved.
Now, auditing is much simpler thanks to streamlined scanning and the power of a smartphone, and check in check out features are available alongside inventory in a way that would have been totally unmanageable in the past.
