SAManage “Spices” Up Inventory Management at Contra Costa ARC
“Our inventory is far more accurate, and we can get more detailed information about each PC.“
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Background
The Contra Costa ARC is a non-profit organization committed to enhancing and enriching the lives of adults and children with developmental disabilities. With more than 350 staff members serving over 1,000 customers, the agency provides both services and advocacy to promote personal independence and self-sufficiency.
IT Coordinator Jackson Riggen simply didn’t have the time, or the resources required to manually manage technology inventory. “I had used an automated inventory management system at my previous company, and knew firsthand the value it could provide,” Riggen says. “The key for us was to find the system that could meet all our needs in the most cost-effective way.”
Challenges
Contra Costa ARC’s PCs and other technology assets are spread out over 12 sites, making inventory management quite a challenge. Close to half of those PCs are allocated to staff members, while the others belong to those the agency serves. Riggen needed a more efficient means of logging and tracking this inventory. Additionally, because the Contra Costa ARC is a non-profit organization, affordability was a critical criterion.
Initially, Riggen commissioned a free product called SpiceWorks to help eliminate the cumbersome manual activities required to keep an accurate log of all PCs. But, while the solution’s help desk capabilities were extensive, its asset management functionality proved to be quite limited.
“While SpiceWorks could scan the local network for devices and collect that data, it did not automatically scan our networks which were located at several different sites and not on the same LAN,” he claims. “It also lacked the ability to import assets in bulk from CSV files. And, these were features we definitely needed.”
Solution
After closely evaluating several tools, Contra Cost ARC replaced SpiceWorks with the SAManage IT management service. SAManage provides Riggen with a highly productive, economical way to centrally monitor and manage all the organization’s technology assets, no matter where they reside.
“What’s great about SAManage is that its agents run in the background on each PC. These computers then call in to the server and dynamically provide updates on a regular basis,” he states.
“Another ‘plus’ is that SAManage is an on-demand solution, so the central server where inventory data is stored is fully-managed,” Riggen adds. “This spares me the need to create extensive documentation as a back-up plan. If anyone ever needed to fill my shoes in an emergency, they could simply log in to the Web site.”
Contra Costa ARC is also leveraging the SAManage help desk solution. Seamless integration with the asset management capabilities, as well as the new, soon-to-be -released ITIL-based IT service management functionality, provide the organization with a more robust and comprehensive environment for all their IT management needs.
Benefits
SAManage dramatically improved Riggen’s efficiency, saving him an estimated 33 hours – plus travel time – each time inventory is conducted by eliminating the need for him to manually perform audits.
“Our inventory is far more accurate, and we can get more detailed information about each PC,” added Riggen. “And, more importantly, this data can be aggregated in a more useful way, providing us with better insight into our assets.”
“We also appreciate the responsiveness of the SAManage team. They pay attention to our needs and listen closely to our feedback. You don’t see that very often with technology vendors,” he claims. “I would strongly recommend SAManage.”
