IT asset management software: 10 tools to manage your IT stack

Every thriving business knows the importance of optimally managing its IT assets.

Managing IT assets manages spend to keep costs down. It’s also a way to guarantee the most value from your software and hardware investments.

Ultimately, if you overlook asset management, your bottom line suffers—which is why financially responsible, growing businesses rely on asset management software.

This guide walks you through a definition of IT asset management software, explains what to look for when choosing the ideal tool, and offers a list of the top 10 options on the market so you can finally ditch those ineffective spreadsheets.

What is IT asset management software?

Think of IT asset management software, or ITAM, as the software that manages the rest of your software and hardware.

Software and hardware include everything from digital applications to laptops, routers, and mobile devices. Streamlining asset management is essential as your business scales and your technological needs grow more complex.

Asset management solutions oversee the life cycle of the software solutions you onboard, from implementation to the end of the contract.

IT asset management software offers IT support in a variety of ways, including:

• Visibility into the software your organization uses
• An end-to-end look into the IT asset life cycle
• The effective management of software licenses as they expire and are renewed
• Prevention of costly software feature overlap
• Software inventory management, tracking, and asset discovery
• Help IT teams establish a proper software procurement process
• The ability to use data to drive decision-making as assets are onboarded, offboarded, or their contracts are renewed

One of the most significant benefits of IT asset management software is cost savings. Once onboarded, the right asset management solution ensures an organization isn’t overspending on features it doesn’t use.

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Examples of IT asset management

IT departments can get a lot out of an ITAM platform.

Here are just a few examples of what IT asset management might look like in practice:

• Running a yearly audit on IT assets to monitor condition, location, and maintenance requirements
• Implementing a software license management program to prevent licenses from being underutilized or unused while ensuring license compliance
• Requiring an IT leader to sign off on all new software purchase orders
• Providing training to procurement team members regarding data security requirements
• Setting and distributing physical assets like smartphones and tablets to new employees

What to look for in IT asset management software

SaaS annual contract values have increased over five times in the last six years. Organizations increasingly dedicate their budgets to SaaS spending and managing new assets.

Asset management solutions each have strengths and weaknesses. Taking the time to audit your business's best asset management tool will pay off with long-term cost savings. Once you pinpoint which non-negotiable features you need, you get a clearer picture of the best purchasing options.

Generally, there are a few essential features asset management software should have, no matter how basic or complex the solution is.

Here are some of the most critical features worth considering:

Auditing: Assessing your asset management controls is critical to keeping your tech ecosystem in check. Without auditing tools, you lack the data to assess your asset management efforts. When looking for an asset management solution, consider how in-depth its auditing capabilities are to match your organization's needs.

Automation and notifications: What’s a software tool without automation? Robust automation features are a vital part of any IT asset management solution. Especially at scale, it’s increasingly difficult to manually keep track of license renewal dates, physical asset updates, or contracts. Automation is a solution to many of these processes.

Reporting and analytics: Whether your IT team prefers to work with pre-designed features or wants the flexibility to create customizable reports, checking out any solution’s reporting capabilities is necessary. This way, your IT team is equipped with the tools to communicate asset information with stakeholders, determine budgets, and prioritize contract renewals.

1. Vendr

One of the most significant benefits of onboarding cloud-based asset management software is that it centralizes how you manage, control, and track software changes at scale. It’s what Vendr was designed to do.

With the help of automation, IT teams keep organized and accurate records of their SaaS usage, deals, and licenses in one easy-to-use dashboard.

With extensive data points, Vendr ensures you always get a fair market price for new SaaS tools. That way, you no longer have to allocate excessive time and resources to managing supplier deals. As an IT asset management solution, Vendr is especially helpful for organizations interested in long-term cost savings.

Top features

• Automated SaaS management system of records
• Licensing and provisioning management features
• Approval workflows to ensure security and compliance
• Dedicated support from a team of software-buying experts
• Overlapping spend alerts to save you money on software

Best for

Organizations that spend between $400,000 and $5,000,000 want to automate their processes.

Find out how much you could save on SaaS with our free savings analysis.

2. Asset Panda

Asset Panda is designed to help you keep in-depth records of all your tech. It offers configurable custom fields to track assets with specific features and lets you log asset history, including repairs, manuals, and receipts.

Top features

• Enables conducting full equipment audits
• iOS and Android mobile app capabilities
• Built-in barcode scanner
• Ability to create custom end-user roles with specific permissions

Best for

Asset Panda works great for budget-conscious companies.

Pricing

Visit their pricing page to get a quote. Asset Panda determines price points depending on the number of assets you want to track.

3. NinjaOne

Asset visibility and real-time insights into the state of your tech stack are important parts of keeping track of all your software solutions. NinjaOne harnesses automation, alerts, and monitoring features, so you always know who is accessing your assets and through what endpoints.

Top features

• Automatically creates tickets when hardware changes occur
• Detects health and performance issues
• Easily installs or uninstalls applications at scale
• Features built-in remote and hybrid asset management tools
• Offers free onboarding and training

Best for

NinjaOne works great for SMBs looking for ease of use and robust customer support.

Pricing

NinjaOne offers flexible, per-device pricing. Contact its sales team to get a quote tailored to your specific needs.

4. Torii

With the power of AI, Torii arms IT teams with increased visibility into their SaaS spend. Teams can create no-code workflows for every asset management need to ensure full visibility into their tech stack. Torii is built to help IT teams handle shadow IT, so no applications are left in the dark.

Top features

• Integrations that help map and track software spend
• Comes with a drag-and-drop workflow builder
• Automated triggers streamline internal processes

Best for

Torii works great for smaller IT operators that need visibility into a growing SaaS stack.

Pricing

Contact the sales team to get a personalized quote and free demo.

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5. Flexera

If you’re an enterprise-level organization that needs asset management tools for greater visibility and more complex management capabilities, then Flexera is worth considering. Flexera’s approach to IT asset management is all about cost savings and creating an ecosystem of lean applications through features like cloud cost optimization. Great for on-premise, cloud, or hybrid SaaS setups.

Top features

• Includes tools to help negotiate better vendor agreements
• Built-in automated reclamation process helps you remove software you don’t use
• Gives you actual visibility into specific asset usage
• Monitors for security threats and compliance issues

Best for

Enterprise-grade IT teams that need asset management solutions at scale.

Pricing

Contact the Flexera team to learn more.

6. USU

Budgeting and cost optimization are at the core of USU’s asset management solution. With its downgrade reports feature, you get real-time analysis to negotiate cost-efficient SaaS licenses with ease.

Top features

• Automated subscription management
• Easily connects to provider APIs

Best for

Enterprise-level and SMB IT teams that need to manage complex service processes.

Pricing

Contact the USU team to get a demo and learn more.

7. Eracent

With Eracent, you can manage both software and hardware to keep costs low and all your user licenses in order. With data normalization features, IT teams can make informed decisions that better align with their long-term goals.

Top features

• Life cycle management and process automation features
• Integrates with other applications for an easy flow of data
• Advanced tools for license optimization and cost reduction

Best for

Eracent works best for larger corporate IT needs with a high level of complexity.

Pricing

Contact the Eracent team to learn more about personalized pricing options.

8. Certero

Certero is an excellent option for teams that want to create a single source of truth that enables visibility and cost savings across all apps and network devices. Certero helps you eliminate data silos by offering all the tools IT teams need to manage assets—whether on-premises, SaaS, or in the cloud.

Larger organizations don’t often have an effective solution for working with multiple data teams beyond IT. Certero scales with data and analytics capabilities to ensure every team can extract insights for ongoing strategy.

Top features

• Software platform autodiscovery features
• Manages hardware and software
• Onboarding is efficient
• Easily create custom dashboards

Best for

Enterprise businesses that need IT management tools able to handle complexity and data at scale.

Pricing

Contact the Certero sales team to learn more.

9. Snow Software

Modern problems require modern solutions: Snow Software takes that idea to heart as an IT asset management solution. Snow enables you to manage all infrastructure spending and establish governance across your organization.

Think of Snow as a mix-and-match option that caters to the specifics of your IT needs. You can choose which products to access, including the Snow Spend Optimizer solution, Snow SaaS Management, or both.

Top features

• SaaS license renewal negotiation tools
• Tracks both on-premises applications and infrastructure
• Collects asset data through API connectors
• Asset tracking for both paid and free applications

Best for

Snow software is best for hybrid enterprises looking for multifaceted ITSM solutions flexible enough to adapt to ongoing changes.

Pricing

Contact Snow Software’s sales team to learn more.

10. Ivanti

With Ivanti, you can track, consolidate, optimize, and customize SaaS assets throughout their use, keeping a record of spending, asset age and value, and all contract negotiations.

Ivanti is built for performance management, so you always know the value of staying with a specific vendor. With Ivanti, storing and organizing key procurement data is easy, and the program even comes with a vendor scorecard feature. You always know the context of each vendor’s value with a button click.

Top features

• Offers out-of-the-box processes
• Highly configurable dashboards and datasheets
• Built-in tools to help with software updates
• Product catalog feature to increase the speed of provision
• Built-in barcode scanning to easily look up assets

Best for

Businesses looking for a practical solution for asset management that can be used on the go.

Pricing

Contact the Ivanti sales team to book a demo and learn more.

Types of IT asset management

Understanding the kinds of IT assets that exist (and apply to your organization) is an important step in choosing the right ITAM software tool for your needs.

There are four primary types of IT asset management. Some ITAM tools are specialized for a certain kind of asset management, whereas others tick more than one box.

Cloud asset management

This kind of IT asset management focuses on managing cloud asset services. That includes cloud computing services from the likes of Amazon, as well as SaaS tools like:

• ServiceNow
• Slack
• SolarWinds
• Trello
• ManageEngine
• Microsoft Office 365
• AssetExplorer

Digital asset management

This digital asset management platform helps you take control of digital content such as licensing, metadata, and formats.

Hardware asset management

Hardware asset management focuses only on the physical tech assets your company uses, such as:

• POS (point of sale) devices
• Servers
• Mobile devices
• Computers
• Workstations
• Kiosks

Fixed asset management

Fixed asset management encompasses a larger variety of physical assets. It includes everything under the hardware asset management umbrella, as well as other fixed IT assets like:

• Desks
• Networking cabinets
• Server room air-conditioning
• Server racks
• Printers

Start managing your software with Vendr

Today’s businesses need improved control and visibility into their tech stack with the help of an asset management system.

As enterprises and up-and-coming startups increase the number of applications, a centralized management solution is necessary. Saas management gives you complete visibility into which resources are dedicated to which applications.

Vendr streamlines and simplifies SaaS oversight with powerful automation and license management features. Once onboard, you get visibility into SaaS usage and spending—plus, you learn how to optimize for both.

Learn how much you could save annually with Vendr’s free savings analysis.

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