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New Year, Better You

Jan 1, 2019 | Blog

new year, new asset tracking

 

It almost lasted forever. 2018. The year a lot changed. Maybe you loved it, maybe you hated it. Maybe the New Year’s festivities were just what you needed to shake the dust off your boots, but now, 2019 is here, and reality is setting in. No more fireworks or dancing for a while as the dreaded January cold has arrived. Now it’s time to go back to routine and to start building up on your resolutions.

So, what are your resolutions? If it doesn’t fill you with dread to be asked, resolutions can help you get through the cold and dark months. It’s getting to the time to start getting ready for the sun. Exercise, saving money for holidays across the globe, healthy eating. Christmas can’t be looked forward to anymore for a little while. Now it’s time to look forward to the future.

How can our app help you? First of all you need to know that assets can be anything, and any asset can be tracked. This goes from exercise gear and equipment to paintings and posters. Our app has reminders, information you can input and change, and a customisable way of tracking to help you become the best you possible.

 

Exercise

The one word that can cause shudders in the best of us: exercise.

You can still taste Christmas dinner, though. It’s dark outside and you’re so tired. What can you do to help yourself? You can get out there and start helping yourself look and feel great.

Exercise is probably the most common New Year’s resolution, but that doesn’t make it feel any easier. It will be rewarding, but not on the first few days. It’s still difficult, but don’t worry, our app can help you keep track of things.

After all, bed may feel appealing, but you know you’ll thank yourself as soon as you start that new exercise routine.

 

Jogging

Getting out there and going for a jog in the freezing cold doesn’t sound that fun, especially not after all of that Christmas food! You’ve set the resolution though and it’s the first Saturday of the new year. Your alarm has gone off.

Last night you had all the motivation in the world, where is that now? All you want to do is go back to sleep. You know that you have to start as you mean to go on, though.

 

What are your assets?

New trainers, your headphones/earphones, jogging bottoms, that new vest top, a fitness tracker.

So how do you track them? You can add a copy of the receipt for proof of purchase and add the retailer. You can also track the number of uses. That way if there are any problems you can fix them, and the moment your trainers stop being bouncy enough you’ll know. Music? You can also track this. Track your music player and your headphones so that you can pick them up and get out there a lot sooner to the sounds of heavy guitar or pumping bass.

 

Gym

Maybe jogging isn’t enough though. Maybe you want to pump some iron either in your bedroom or at the gym itself. Maybe you’re looking to turn into a new man or woman, filled with motivation, never as tired as you used to be and with the muscles to boot.

 

What are your assets?

Dumbbells, mats, fitness sites, protein shakes, your body!

The equipment itself is easier to track as you can stick on a QR code. This way you can scan when you’ve taken it to your exercise room and when you’ve put it back and you can see how long you’ve used it for. Record your reps too! This way you can easily watch as you get more and more in shape.

You can link each bit of equipment to any fitness website. One has that perfect pdf of a routine with sit-ups and crunches? Link your mat. One tells you the best technique for curling? Link your dumbbells. One shows you the perfect cardiac routine? Link your trainers.

As well as this, you can add each ingredient that goes into your shakes as well as the equipment you use to make them. Track your blender to track the warranty to make sure you’re making the best shakes. Then you can know when the warranty is going to expire. As well as adding your receipt, you can add links to the best recipes out there so that your shakes get you out to the gym with wide-open eyes. Track the ingredients so you know which bananas are freshest or so that you can see if the milk is in date faster and with ease. Then you can make those miracle milkshakes!

But how do you track your body? First of all, you don’t need an itemit QR code tattoo to do this, but if you want to, feel free to contact us. But you can link your routine to your assets, so that you know how many curls you’ve done with your dumbbells and how much you’re lifting.

 

Healthy eating

This extends from fitness. Track your food and your ingredients so that you can quickly and easily know what you want to eat and when. Know exactly what’s going into your body with ease. If you’re having a rest day then feel free to ignore everything, or you can still use the app to impress yourself at how much pizza one person can actually consume.

Also, you can use it to track if you’re drinking less or doing a dry January. Tracking how much you aren’t drinking day to day can make the week feel less long and help keep you feeling fresh and happy. Even if you just want a can of beer every Friday, add it as an asset and track it! Then you’ll know better how well you’re doing for 2019.

 

What are your assets?

Pots, pans, food, glasses, alcohol.

Track all of your ingredients so that you know what’s in and out of date instantly. If you’re eating less and starving at work, instead of having that awful moment where you daydream all day about that steak and then come home to find that it’s gone or out of date, avoid this by tracking it!

Track your utensils as well so that you know if you have to do a wash before cooking food and so that you have more time to focus on the important things, such as eating nice, healthy, well-prepared meals.

You can even track your alcohol consumption. Track that bottle of 2004 red that you’ve been staring at. January doesn’t have to be the longest month of the year. Look forward to finally having that glass without feeling like it’s too far away to manage.

 

Money tracking

January sales. Christmas shopping. Two things that upset a lot of people. Either it’s upsetting because there are so many good things and you just simply can’t have everything, or because the money is getting spent. Worth it? You deserve that new thing right? But can you really afford it?

Track what you’re buying, whether it’s a gift to yourself or if it’s something you really need to have. Track your new wardrobe, track your makeup, track anything, make that Christmas bonus go even further!

 

What are your assets?

The things that take you from window shopping to shopping ‘til you’re dropping.

January can be rough. Good food can make it easier. If you’re spending a bit extra on a new sushi maker or on steak knives or anything like that, you can track your assets, their warranties, and your receipts so that you know exactly what’s leaving your pocket.

This doesn’t just apply to food, either, you can also apply this to instruments, clothes, painting sets, pens, anything. Track them so that you can budget without needing to use spreadsheets and so that you don’t need to run through your bank account wondering if you’ve been robbed. Most of us have been there but now it’s a feeling that can be avoided.

 

Holiday planning

Christmas parties are over. New Years is done. Family has gone home. It was all either amazing or a bit disappointing. Either way, it was straining and stressful. Now it’s time to get back to work and try and settle back into the routine that the holidays shattered.

Sometimes, the best way to get through the time when the dust settles is to look forward to the future.

Your resolution is to see more of the world, so where do you want to go on holiday? America? Vietnam? London? Amsterdam? They’re all options but holiday planning takes a lot of thought and preparation. With itemit, this is a lot easier. It can even help you learn a new language.

 

What are your assets?

Luggage, language books, boarding passes, passports.

Now there’s an opportunity to track your passport. Track and know where it’s being kept at all times, as well as it’s expiry date. You don’t want to be excited for a tour of the world only to discover that your passport has one week left on it. Add it to itemit, now it’s all less stressful.

A lot of us have the habit of just throwing in any old clothes into our suitcases and hoping for the best, but if you track your shirts, shorts, jeans, blouses, shoes and the like, you can easily see what you have and haven’t packed. Pack what you really need, then if you see something better, it’ll be a lot easier to swap it.

Tracking what you’ve put into your luggage is helpful also because then you won’t end up with too many straighteners, and also when you’re leaving the hotel and coming home you’ll know for certain that everything is in the case. You can even track the luggage itself with our inexpensive QR tags!

If check out is at 10 am, you don’t want to be tired and checking every single wardrobe, under the bed, and behind the television to make certain you have everything at 9.59 am. Just scan items in and you’ll see what’s there.

Track your other assets as well, such as your language books. Why not connect your books to your tickets? If you have a pdf of a boarding pass, you can attach these to your language books so that you can have everything you need to order food and have fun, all in one place.

 

The better you

Before long you’ll realise how much easier things can be with asset tracking. Instead of trying to juggle finances and holidays on spreadsheets, you can add so much more interactive information to our app, then everything will be in the same place to use and see with ease.

No more jotting down notes for the exercise you’ve done or just attempting to remember it. Now you’ll be able to see exactly what you used and for how long. You’ll have a much better ability to just see how much you’ve been exercising and how well you’ve been eating. You can be proud of yourself with just a glance!

By February you’ll no longer be a tired shell strained by Christmas parties and long, dark nights. You’ll be the person you were before. Or, in fact, you’ll be better.

Start the New Year right

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How Santa Tracks his Assets

Dec 15, 2018 | Blog

wrapping presents

 

Picture this. It’s Christmas morning. You’ve had trouble sleeping last night because of the excitement. You feel like you’re young again. “Has he been?” You wonder to yourself as you rush to the sitting room. Slowly, you open the door. Joy fills your eyes and puts a smile on your face. The presents are there. It’s time to celebrate.

Santa has been busy. All year long his elves have been making toys. He’s been taking care of his reindeer. He’s been dashing around. He’s been preparing everything for this one night. How does he keep track of everything? Magic? Well, yes and no. The secret is that it’s a little bit of magic and a lot of asset tracking.

Thanks to the Christmas Labourers and Artists Union of Service-elves, or “C.L.A.U.S” for short, the itemit team was invited to travel to the North Pole to see the process first hand…

 

Making the lists (and checking them twice)

First of all in the long process towards Christmas day, children start writing letters. What is the deadline, though? It seems as if most parents have different deadlines for sending off those letters! What about the later children where Santa might not be able to properly make everything in time? What if there’s a lost letter?

The process here is simple. Tagging and scanning. One unique QR code per letter across the world. The elf gets out their smartphone, sticks on the tag, scans it with itemit, and adds the child’s name (Holly Yule, for example) to the app.

With this information, and as Santa has early access to an exciting new itemit feature that will be released in the New Year: collections, Santa can group and share assets more easily amongst all of his elves. Now they can very easily see which children in the world have and which have not sent their letters with a simple scan. Each child’s letter can be assigned to an elf a lot easier and kept track of better. No child is without presents in this case.

The collections are simple. One for the nice list. One for the naughty list. Now all it takes is scanning a letter and then it’s easy to see who the child is, and whether they’ve been good or naughty.

All of this means that elves can start making presents right away! All they have to do is scan in the letter and update the information so that it says toy construction is in progress. Santa no longer needs to wait until all the letters are in before he starts making the presents!

 

Toy construction asset tracking

Now for the fun part. This is what the elves were hired for: Making everyone’s toys.

Before any manufacturing can start, however, first things first. Elf and safety. The union are very big on this and there hasn’t been an accident in years. The union accredited this to the easier tracking of elf and safety assets.

Those hats elves wear? They’re actually reinforced so that anything falling from the higher levels of the construction line won’t cause an injury. They’re all tracked with itemit QR codes so that every elf can stay safe, and so that when maintenance is needed on the hats, it can be recorded.

Now, with all of that out of the way, the elves can finally start making toys and presents. With all of the individual materials shipped up all the way from the penguins in the South pole, the materials have to be tracked to make sure everything gets to the right place for assembly.

Penguins don’t have much time to waste. Always gliding and asset dividing, penguins use RFID in order to track the locations of their assets faster and with more efficiency. Due to itemit’s user-friendly UI, even a penguin with fins can track assets with ease.

When the materials reach the North Pole, the elves can easily scan the RFID tags to ensure every asset has arrived, or to see the ones that haven’t. All it takes is an RFID scanner and tags with a good read range and all of a sudden everything is in front of the head elves with the app. Then all is needed is the distribution of each asset to the right place.

This previous step makes the next one a lot easier. Assembly. As all the right materials are on the correct production line, all that is needed is to stick each component of a doll together and there you have it, multiple assets become one.

tracking presents under the tree

’Tis the season to inventory

So when all of the presents are made, then what? Well. It’s time to link the presents to the children. So let us tell you an invenstory about how the elves do this..

All of the admin elves take over here, they can edit and update the information with existing tags after scanning them. Each elf can then assign presents to a child. If you look hard enough, inside the presents there is a beautiful little RFID tag ready to be scanned.

It’s a lot easier to keep track assets with itemit than with a spreadsheet. This was what the elves used before, but now they simply have to scan and match each present to a child. Before, one elf could only use one spreadsheet at a time as paper would have to be passed around before being added up to a database. Now, with a unique serial number that the app creates, there’s only one way to match up children to presents.

Also, one of the biggest problems with spreadsheets is a lot of RSI, or Reindeer Shouting Incidents, where the elves would take out the frustrations of scrolling for weeks on poor Rudolph. The reindeers joined in as well. Then, luckily, itemit put a glowing RFID tag on Rudolph’s nose so that Santa could track his own progress. The results speak for themselves.

 

Sleigh loading

There isn’t much left to do, now. The letters have been categorised by naughty and nice. The presents are tracked. They’ve been matched up to the children. All there is to do now is wrapping and bows and delivery.

With billions and billions of metres of wrapping paper for all of the gifts, the elves get out their scissors and their tape and start snipping. With the RFID tags already in the gifts and with each gift assigned to a child in the collection of good children, all it takes is a scan of the present before wrapping to update its location, and then the wrapping itself.

Elves are the most talented gift wrappers on the planet and beyond. It takes no time at all and it is done with great skill and accuracy. With itemit, they can go faster than ever before. They even have races now to see who the employee of the year will be!

How does itemit help elves wrap presents quickly? RFID tags don’t need a line of sight and so the presents can be identified after they have been wrapped up!

What this means is the elves don’t even have to look at the gift they’re wrapping, they can just speedily do their thing and then pass the wrapped up present down the production line.

In the past there was a process of looking at the present, writing down what it is, and then wrapping it up, before signing it off. Now, the elves whirr along with magic hands, wrapping the presents up as only an elf can. Then, elves with RFID scanners at the end of the production line need only scan the present and add a gift tag, before updating the status of the asset to “wrapped” in the app and putting the gift in each child’s pile.

It was Christmas Eve when the elves got to this stage.

When everything was wrapped, the boss walked in. His boots echoed across the hall as the music and laughter of the elves dies down as they watched with respect at the smiling, bearded man. He looked at the billions of piles. Each pile had the tracked letter at the bottom, the QR tag sitting on the front.

”Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and Rudolph.” He called out with a hearty laugh. The reindeers pulled up a beautiful sleigh painted red and with jovial sleigh bells jingling along.

Santa pulled out his ice-phone, before scanning each letter and using his magic sack to collect the presents. He updated the status of each child to “ready for Christmas” and laughed “ho, ho, ho” with each scan.

There was only one thing left to do.

 

Distribution and supply chain management

Santa sat in his sleigh with that year’s helper elf beside him. The helper elf had one job, to scan each letter as the presents flew from the sleigh down each chimney along with Santa. They then had to change the status to “Christmas cheer delivered” and then that home was ready to wake up.

Santa had his milk, his sherry, and his cookies and Rudolph had his carrots. Santa shared some of the sweeter things with his helper elf. They travelled the world laughing and talking, scanning as they go, knowing that no well behaved child would wake up the next day without any presents.

They returned home happy. All the presents had been delivered. The only thing left to do for Santa, his reindeers, his elves, his helper, and the itemit team… Was to take a Christmas elfie.

Christmas Elfie
Image courtesy of all-free-download.com

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