Asset management - 5 areas of application

What is asset management?

In general, asset management is the administration of assets with the aim of maintaining or, in the best case, increasing their value. These assets can be of a tangible or intangible nature. As a rule, the term is used in connection with capitalisable assets, the so-called fixed assets. However, it does not necessarily have to be quantifiable values, because existing knowledge or competences can also be of enormous value, which must be maintained or expanded through suitable measures.

Types of asset management

Depending on the character and nature of the assets to be managed, the following classification can be made for the discipline of asset management:

Corporate culture or employees and their skills can also mean a long-term competitive advantage. However, maintaining and further developing these values is the task of human resource management.

Financial Asset Management

Even though the term asset management has become broader, in many cases it still refers to financial products that are actively managed by an asset manager. The asset manager can manage his own assets or act on behalf of third parties. Depending on risk affinity and return expectations, ongoing investment decisions have to be made with regard to the optimal allocation of assets to different asset classes. Since active asset accumulation can be based on a wide variety of objectives and strategies, assets are bundled in a purpose-oriented manner. In contrast to classical investment banking, greater importance is attached to risk minimisation, which is to be achieved through a stronger diversification of investment risks. Since not everything is put on one card, but a balanced distribution is strived for, the entire portfolio is always considered, which represents the best possible balance of interests from the asset manager's point of view.

IT or Digital Asset Management

After the financial industry, asset management is a firmly defined field of activity, especially in the IT world. This involves the administration and support of all hardware and software components of an organisation. A special feature of the IT sector is certainly that general best practices and standards quickly establish themselves and meet with broad acceptance. Structural and process organisation in IT asset management are therefore usually well structured and documented. Outside of pure IT companies, the management of digital infrastructure was seen more as a support process for the actual "productive areas". With the changes taking place in many companies and organisations, the importance of IT for the success of the company is also increasing. It is therefore not surprising that the approaches and methods of IT asset management are now being used as a benchmark and blueprint for process organisation as a whole.

Enterprise Asset Management

Based on the realisation that a company's assets are more than just depreciation-relevant variables, the active management of these assets has become a stronger focus of attention. Whereas in the past companies were primarily described in terms of their structural and procedural organisation, enterprise asset management brings a new perspective. Accordingly, companies can also be understood as the sum of their assets, their state (configuration) and, above all, their relationship (interaction). While service companies also adopt many concepts of IT asset management one-to-one in the course of digitalising their business processes, these must first be interpreted for the analysis assets in the industrial and production environment. With the increasing networking of industrial goods, however, the relationship level and the interaction of the most diverse assets are also becoming the focus of attention here.

Facilities Management

A special form of asset management is certainly intellectual property management, or IP management for short. IP management focuses on the creation of sustainable value through the protection of unique selling propositions. The aim is to strengthen and expand one's own competitive position by safeguarding value-added differentiating features. From the perspective of facility management, a facility is "a collection of assets built, installed or erected to serve the needs of an entity". Facility management is thus a special form of asset management for the assets tied up in buildings and properties. Facility management is not only responsible for the maintenance of building fabric, facilities and equipment, but also takes on numerous other important support functions.

Intellectual Property Management

A special form of asset management is certainly intellectual property management, or IP management for short. IP management focuses on the creation of sustainable value through the protection of unique selling propositions. The aim is to strengthen and expand one's own competitive position by safeguarding value-added differentiating features. An asset in the sense of IP management can therefore be anything that can be protected against imitation. This can be a product design, a technology or copyrights.  

Tasks of asset management

In today's data-driven world, one of the key challenges in asset management is also to abstract real-world complexity and translate it into appropriate data models that provide decision support.

What all types of asset management have in common is that they are concerned with the protection and expansion of assets. The tasks of asset management therefore concentrate on identifying assets and defining suitable measures for their preservation and value enhancement. In essence, the processes of asset management also follow the well-known PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act), which is immanent in every scheduling activity. In addition, the entire range of strategic, tactical and operational activities is covered.

Strategic tasks of asset management

The strategic level of asset management aims to establish a value-oriented framework for action that will last in the long term and form the basis for investment decisions. The critical success factors are to be identified and transferred into a target system, and a performance measurement system is to be set up to ensure that the targets are achieved.

Operational tasks of asset management

Once the strategic goals have been worked out, the focus at the operational level is on implementing and monitoring concrete measures.

Various software solutions are used in asset management to carry out and monitor operational activities.

Asset management and sustainability

Return of investment (ROI) remains one of the most important optimisation targets in asset management, yet sustainability considerations are becoming increasingly important in asset management. This is, of course, due to more decisive political action and the promotion of sustainable investments at all levels, as well as the increasing perception of sustainability as a competitive advantage.

Sustainability and the transition to a secure, carbon-neutral, climate-smart, more resource-efficient and more circular economy are central to ensuring the long-term competitiveness of the economy ...

REGULATION (EU) 2020/852

But what does sustainable asset management mean?

Of course, sustainability is on everyone's lips and part of any communication measure. However, the much-discussed EU Taxonomy Regulation also provides a first general framework for determining whether an economic activity can be classified as environmentally sustainable.

The environmental goals listed must therefore also be taken into account in every asset management strategy:

Regulation (EU) 2021/2139 also sets out technical assessment criteria that further specify the environmental objectives mentioned for different economic goods.

Asset management in maintenance

A modern maintenance organisation is increasingly developing into an asset manager of the company's fixed assets. This goes hand in hand with the fact that the strategic and creative significance of the maintenance area is increasing. Sustainability goals, which are also becoming increasingly important in the context of investment decisions, can only be achieved by building up core competencies in the maintenance area.