Asset tracking is a fundamental element of asset management. The adoption of digital technology has made asset tracking systems a standard practice across different business sectors, driving operational efficiency, productivity, and business success.
Tagging assets with a unique identification code (asset tag or label) enables organisations to stay compliant with regulations and audits, through the ability to maintain current and traceable asset documentation. The audit trails produced by tracking systems enable organisations to fulfil legal and industry requirements with assurance. The cost of implementation can vary widely depending on several factors.
When looking for an asset tracking system, focus on these six important things:
- Volume and type of assets you need to track.
- How your organisation processes connect to asset management.
- Complexity of the tagging and scanning technology – the environment, data requirements and technologies available.
- Reporting needs – internal, customer-facing, and operations.
- Connecting your asset management with other systems and departments.
- Asset environment (indoor/outdoor/exposed to water/harsh chemicals).
What specific ROI metrics should I measure before buying an asset tracking system?
Managing your valuable assets should be viewed as a strategic investment that produces measurable returns, rather than as a mere expense. However, as with any successful project, it is imperative to identify ROI opportunities through a thorough assessment of your requirements before implementing a solution.
Strategic Value Drivers of Asset Tracking
-
Cost savings: Reduction in expenses from identifying and eliminating ghost/missing assets, lowering emergency repairs, reducing inventory carrying costs, insurance savings, and prevention of asset loss or theft.
-
Time savings: Hours saved through streamlined asset locating, faster audits, reduced manual tracking, and less time spent searching for assets.
-
Improved asset utilisation: Reducing over-purchasing and underutilisation.
-
Maintenance cost reduction: Optimised preventive maintenance scheduling reduces costly emergency repairs and downtime.
-
Operational efficiency: Automated workflows, maintenance job scheduling, and effective reporting that reduces administrative overheads.
-
Compliance and risk management: Reliable and up-to-date asset information provides the peace of mind required to confidently address an organisation’s GRC needs and help realise the implementation of the ISO 55000 standards framework.
-
Employee productivity: Reduced equipment downtime and faster access to required assets.
-
Reduced losses: Reduced theft, damage, or misplacement due to the knowledge assets are tagged and being tracked.
-
Improved purchasing control: Reduce unnecessary asset purchases based on accurate asset data in your asset register.
These metrics can be quantitatively measured before and after implementation to calculate ROI:
Where total cost savings is sum of the savings across categories like hours saved (multiplied by labour rate), reduced losses, maintenance savings, insurance savings, etc. Tracking these KPIs provides tangible evidence of the financial and operational benefits of asset tracking.
What are the benefits of asset tracking?
Tagging, tracking, and auditing your assets ensures data in your asset register is current and accurate. Delivering significant cost savings in several ways. It doesn’t matter if you use RFID, barcode, or QR codes, you can empower your workforce to rapidly and accurately capture data, complete maintenance inspections and work orders, view reports and undertake audits, using a mobile application.
Frequently Asked Questions
Reduced Asset Loss and Misplacement
Being able to track the whereabouts of your assets provides visibility into their current location and their previous locations (audit trail). Having tagged and tracked assets is a powerful deterrent for theft, which directly cuts costs associated with lost or misplaced assets.
Improved Operational Efficiency
Accurate asset data assists employees in quickly locating and utilising assets, reducing productivity downtime. Inspections, work orders, and audits via a mobile device minimises errors, and releases employees to focus on core tasks. This leads to significant labour and operational savings.
Optimised Stock/Inventory Levels
Asset tracking maintains optimal inventory, freeing up capital and decreasing storage costs. Up-to-date asset registers help organisations make smarter procurement decisions and avoid unnecessary purchases, improving cash flow and reducing waste.
Enhanced Audit Accuracy and Compliance
Performing regular audits provides you with a verified, accurate asset register. This will facilitate better asset accountability while ensuring that an organisation’s good governance and regulatory compliance objectives are met.
Why is asset tracking important?
Hospitals and large facilities especially experienced growth in deploying tracking solutions. The healthcare sector, in particular, has a high demand for asset tracking solutions to monitor essential medical equipment such as defibrillators, ventilators, and medical pumps, leading to significant time and operational efficiency benefits. Accurately locating devices and equipment issued to patients in the community ensures they can easily be retrieved when no longer in use.
Using a combination of barcodes and mobile scanning app, every asset was catalogued and mapped to its location, custodian/department, and maintenance schedule. Hardcat’s software generated real-time reports on asset status, condition, and movement, providing management with immediate insights into utilisation and risk. Our best practice asset management reduced the total cost of asset ownership through improved tracking and reporting, increased compliance, better maintained assets and a more reliable infrastructure. Customer in the Aged Care Industry
One audit that would normally have taken two days utilising a spreadsheet generated printout (and not including additional time and labour costs associated with data entry of this information) was completed in just 6.5 hours utilising Hardcat software solutions and scanners. Customer in the University Sector
Create Operational Efficiencies
Drive efficiencies by connecting your office and field teams for faster processing and improved data integrity. Automate labour-intensive audits and data collection by utilising mobile applications, combined with the latest identification and tracking technology. Achieve near perfect accuracy and reduce the time required to undertake audits by eliminating human error and cumbersome, disconnected spreadsheets.
More Control, Where You Need It
Smartphone and tablet apps provide you with mobility and accessibility even when you are offline. So, you can empower in-field staff to rapidly and accurately capture data, complete inspections and work orders, view reports and complete audits, wherever they are.
Make Faster, More Informed Decisions
Tagging and tracking solutions capture critical insights on assets, so you can identify assets that are missing, in the wrong location, not being utilised, in poor condition, or not in the asset database. With the data accessible anytime and anywhere, your team can improve efficiency and responsiveness in the management, repair and maintenance of critical assets.
What is data capture?
Organisations in asset-intensive industries are increasingly adopting data capture solutions to streamline the collection and validation of asset data. Unlike manual data entry, which is often slow, prone to human error, and costly, automated data capture methods provide faster, more accurate, and more reliable data acquisition.
Data capture applications allows users to capture assets via a mobile device. This data is then uploaded into your asset register to append to an existing asset record, add new assets found during an audit or validate/re-capture assets to upload back to your asset management system.
Capturing asset data via a mobility solution provides you with a verified, accurate asset register that will facilitate better asset accountability while ensuring that an organisation’s good governance and regulatory compliance objectives are met. Asset-intensive organisations should treat asset data as an asset in its own right!
Details that can be captured:
- Asset Code (barcode or RFID tag)
- Asset Name
- Asset Type
- Serial Number
- Location Name
- Person Name (owner)
- Cost Centre Name
- Condition (current physical condition)
- Parent/Child Asset Attachments
- Status
- More Text
- GPS Coordinates
- Preset Data
- Images (Photo)
The importance of naming conventions and how they support data capture quality
If you already have an asset management system, you will have a classification system established for assets. Classifications are a way to group assets together based on shared characteristics or operational functions. If you’re implementing an asset tracking system for the first time, creating this categorisation system is an essential step to ensure a consistent naming conventions and descriptions for reporting purposes.
Asset naming conventions are crucial for maintaining an organised asset register, providing a standardised way to name assets and making them easy to track, manage, and identify. This enables data capture to be as simple as selecting options from drop-down lists of predefined data. This reduces user error and ensures data quality. By standardising asset names, data capture fields like location, organisational unit/cost centre, asset status, condition, descriptions, and classifications become easier to populate accurately. The structured approach
How much does asset tracking cost?
The cost of an asset tracking system depends on several key factors, including the total number and type of assets. The sophistication of tracking technology required (such as barcodes, RFID, IoT or GPS), and the degree of system integration needed with existing business processes.
Smart sensors (IoT tags) are used to record machinery maintenance objectives, such as vibration, pressure or temperature and these can be costly. This data then needs to be analysed using data-analytical tools and AI (predicting potential equipment failures, enabling proactive maintenance and reducing costs and unplanned downtime). Whereas more traditional asset tracking using barcodes, QR codes and RFID have become more affordable.
There are many choices of tags/labels and reading/scanning equipment which impacts up-front and ongoing expenses. Additional costs also occur with advanced features like real-time location and sensor tracking. It is important to evaluate these factors and choose configuration options that align with your operational needs, budget, level of visibility, automation, and type of control you need.
In summary, the environment (indoor or outdoor), operational needs (automatic tracking), and required data (whether you need real-time location vs. last seen location) will play a significant role in determining costs.
Choosing the right scanning solutions
Are your assets fixed, mobile, high-value, consumable or all of the above? This influences both your asset tag costs, hardware (scanning) choices and location data needs. High-value assets that are remote may require real-time remote monitoring. You can connect workers with handheld readers with Wi-Fi/cellular data options. Have automatic indoor tracking via fixed readers that provide fast, bulk scanning with room-level real-time location positioning. As with all technology, testing the asset tags you choose with the readers selected is compulsory.
- Barcode and QR code Scanners read directly from the tags (line of sight), providing quick and accurate asset identification. These are the most commonly used for last seen location tracking.
- RFID Readers use radio waves to communicate with both active and passive RFID tags, without the need for direct line of sight. Readers can be either handheld or fixed at entry points to automatically capture tag data as assets move through monitored areas.
Many organisations deploy a hybrid approach, using advanced (and expensive) technologies (e.g., GPS, BLE, RFID) to high-value or mission-critical assets. While using simpler, more cost-effective barcodes for others. This allows the asset tracking system to scale and adapt according to the business needs you require.
Our asset tracking solutions are utilised by many organisations. From defence, law enforcement and emergency services to healthcare and government in over 121 countries. We deliver accountability and significantly improve profitability. Offering real-time visibility for any type of assets (asset agnostic). Let the Hardcat Professional Services Team assist you in deciding which tagging solution and hardware best suits your environment and operations.
Choosing the right asset tags
When procuring asset tags and labels, it’s about more than just design. The tags you choose directly impact accuracy, durability, and long-term efficiency. There are many considerations before making your selection.
Material Durability
Select the right tag material for your environment. For harsh industrial settings, anodized aluminium tags provide heat and abrasion resistance. The lifespan of an asset tag varies significantly, ranging from a few years for basic paper or polyester labels to several decades for durable metal tags, with electronic tags lasting 3-7 years depending on battery life and usage. Do your tags need to be water resistant? For standard office use, laminated polyester tags are a cost-effective and reliable choice.
Read Range for RFID Tags
The read range for asset tags varies significantly by type, from a few centimetres for QR codes to over 150 meters for active RFID tags. Most passive RFID tags read between 10-20 meters. The key factors influencing read range include the tag type (active/passive), frequency (LF, HF, UHF), antenna size, reader power, and environmental conditions.
Tag Attachment Method
How your tag stays fixed to your asset depends on various factors. Heavy-duty options like screws, rivets, or cable ties are ideal for rugged or outdoor conditions, while adhesive backing works best for smooth, indoor surfaces.
Barcode vs QR Code vs RFID
Barcodes are affordable and simple for day-to-day scanning while QR Codes enable quick access to asset data from mobile devices. RFID delivers high-speed, contactless identification for rapid audits and continuous tracking.
Environmental Resistance
Outdoor and industrial assets face harsher conditions so you need to ensure tags can withstand UV exposure, moisture, chemicals, abrasions, and extreme temperatures without losing readability.
Hardcat asset tracking case studies
Research facility: sensitive documents and samples tracking
A major research facility is using RFID asset management to successfully track their sensitive documents and medical product samples, throughout its large facility. Every item has to follow a strict auditing process within the company, and also for the Federal Drug Administration (FDA).
This institute uses a combination of RFID tags and barcode labels on its 4500-plus assets. They utilise fixed RFID readers with the Hardcat Sentinel software at certain key areas (entrances/exits) to manage the movement of specifically identified critical assets between identified locations. They also employ handheld RFID scanners to conduct planned and “spot-check” verification exercises.
Hardcat’s RFID software and fixed readers immediately recognise the actual movement of documents and provide reporting with a complete audit trail. The Hardcat notifications feature alerts key personnel to the movement of these assets for security, tracking and reporting purposes.
Energy company: RFID for tools and container tracking
For each project, a shipping container pre-packed with a defined list of specialist tools is loaded and shipped to the project site. However, they did not return with a full inventory. So fixed RFID readers were positioned at the doorway to the shipping container. Each employee on site was issued an RFID tag which was placed on their Staff ID cards.
When an employee entered the container to retrieve or return a tool, the fixed reader detected both the employee and the tools being either taken or returned to the container. Keeping track of daily transactions by site personnel provided full accountability and visibility over the tools being utilised.
There were multiple benefits to the solution. Including an automated process for tracking tools combined with an audit process to find any missing assets quickly. At project completion, there was only one item missing valued at $100. Cost savings of almost $100,000 per project.
Planning: key to asset management accountability
Effective asset tracking and management begins with smart planning and a clear strategy. A targeted pilot program often yields changes to the project scope to achieve greater value from your implementation.
For over three decades, Hardcat has been helping organisations across industries gain control over their assets. From implementing robust asset tracking systems to streamlining processes for compliance and reporting. Hardcat will make sure you have the right tools and strategies you need to track your assets with confidence.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to improve your current processes, our experience means you won’t have to navigate asset management challenges alone. We are here to guide you every step of the way. Take control of your asset management today. Contact Hardcat to learn how our solutions can transform your operations and maximise asset value.
