An interview with Christian Parthum, IT-Operations Officer at seventhings
There are many different asset management tools - but how do you spot a good one? Depending on the software there are different features you should look out for when buying, and more often than not, different departments put an emphasis on different feautures. In this blog post, Christian from the IT department at seventhings tells us what he thinks is important, what difficulties he sees in some softwares and what he hopes to achive in the future.
Savannah:
Hello Christian! Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today. Let's just dive right in! You work in the IT department at seventhings. What do you think is important for a good asset management software?
Christian:
Well, the absolute minimum requirements are safety, functionality and easy access to information. For me personally, it's incredibly important that you can easily see where any object is at any given time, be it a table, a laptop or anything else. So, where exactly is it? In what room? Who's using it right now? And have there been any changes made to it? Did the user switch or did it maybe even break? The best softwares have an incorporated ticketing system for such changes. Are there any open ticket requests for that item? In good systems, you can see directly who's working with what and any given problems with an item.
Savannah:
You mentioned safety and functionality in your first sentence. Could you elaborate on that?
Christian:
Well data security is just an incredibly important topic to me personally. Not just for an asset management software, but for any software I want to use. And performance is definitely a huge topic as well. I think, what is absolutely essential to any IT person, is that everything has to work, every time you try to use it. And I think we've done a pretty good job at that here. A challenge our kind of software poses, is that it's not a software that's constantly being used 24/7. You use it maybe once a day, a week, a month... so basically, you use it irregularly. And if it doesn't work properly that one time you do use it, that's really frustrating.
Savannah:
That's very true, that would definitely frustrate me.
Christian:
I have to say though, problems like that are often both incredibly fascinating and depressing to me. When you can't immediately find the solution to a problem like that, it's quite depressing. But it's also always exciting to look for that solution!
Savannah:
I can imagine! So how does this work specifically with IT inventories? What are the most important or helpful things here?
Christian:
Well, I definitely think that it's helpful when the IT database with which you manage the devices can be linked to your accounting software, for example DATEV. Meaning, that the systems can basically communicate with each other and everything can be managed in one central location. This has a couple advantages. On the one hand, I can see how much any object costs, which is important to me because I want to know if the Laptop that costs 5000 Euros lasted longer than the one that costs 500 Euros. On the other hand, I am able to link different things that are important to my own use-case. That could be like this: Worker A has a problem with his laptop and submits a service request: "My laptop is broken." And then I can see directly in the system that there is a service request tied to that specific object. When systems are linked, it's a much faster process of ordering a new laptop and inputting it in the inventory. And then I can access all this information in one single place in one software, and am able to coordinate everything much easier.
Savannah:
So in summation: Interfaces are the most important thing.
Christian:
Yes, but especially open interfaces. It's incredibly cool when this includes things that work "out of the box."
Savannah:
Oh dear, you'll have to dumb that down for me. What does “out of the box” mean?
Christian:
It basically means that functionalities of a software immediately work after purchase and I don't have to waste any time on installations of various plugins or any other components. Open interfaces enable a costumer to enact their own use-case without the software developers (so basically, us) having to do anything. With open API's, costumers can manipulate data in the system to his or her liking, within reason of course. Or they can use per-existing, standard functions of the software that we've already implemented because we know a large part of costumer base needs them.
So basically, I can chose what system I want to link and then the system guides me though an easy, predetermined process. It could look something like this for example: I want to link my DATEV system and so the system only asks me to input my credentials, I input these, click enter and voilà - everything works automatically. And I personally think it's great when you can link your own systems with a software.
Savannah:
Speaking of flexibility: While we're talking about all the things you should be able to do with a software - What are features you would like to see in the future?
Christian:
What I find incredibly exciting are modern means of logging into a system. At the moment we have a simple "username/password" login. But every bigger company has a central, internal employee register, the active directory, where all users are listed already. So it would be very cool if you only had to authenticate yourself once and then someone determines which softwares you should have access to. And then, you can just use any software you need to, without having to register for each one individually. I think these kinds of methods of authentication and security in a broader sense as well, are hugely important topics for the future.
Savannah:
Well that's a great sentiment to end on, don't you think? Thank you again for taking the time to sit down and talk with me.
Christian:
Of course, no problem! Any time.