How To Capture Your Inventory in BeamON

How To Capture Your Inventory in BeamON

Capturing your inventory can be a formidable task, but it’s a critical component of mitigating downtime, dynamic data management, and utilizing the BeamON platform to it’s fullest potential. While oftentimes a large undertaking, use the tips and tricks below to help streamline this project for your team and break it down into manageable pieces.

Inventory capture: we all have wished (at one point or another) that we’d been more intentional along the way. In an ideal world, we know exactly what we own, where it is stored, the most current software version that has been downloaded, the last time it was serviced, who has it, when it needs to be replaced… all those small but critical pieces of information, which oh-so-often only live inside someone’s head.

As the saying goes, the best time to start was yesterday, but the next best time is right now.

The following action plan can help your team tackle this project and get your inventory into a manageable place, once and for all.

Step 1: Get the right tool in place

At BEAM Dynamics, we know the right tool makes all the difference with what happens next. Our platform has been thoughtfully designed to bring your team in to alignment and to bring clarity to your most critical assets and their health. 

The best time to engage BEAM is on the front end of this process, as this allows us to customize the platform to your specific needs and to help navigate next steps with you. We offer a 4 week free trial of our platform to get your set up and onboarding complete - reach out to us to get started!

Step 2: Meet with your team to get organized

What are the main pain points in your inventory capture? What are the priorities? Is there anybody you need to get involved who is not yet? People are often the most complicated part of inventory management, so it’s important to bring your team into alignment with this project. Taking time on the front in to illicit buy in will help keep momentum going through the length of the project.

Step 3: Build the processes on the front end

How do you want to capture the information? What systems and processes do you need in place to make sure this continues to happen? Who is responsible for capturing information related to your inventory and making sure it gets captured and added to BeamON? Who on your team will be responsible for keeping BeamON up-to-date? Taking the time to map answers to these questions ahead of time will save you time down the road.

Step 4: Start with what you have

Now to the fun part: actually getting your inventory captured. We recommend you start with what is already accessible to you: does this information live anywhere now that you could access? Financial reports, old purchase orders or invoices, the back of a napkin - you get the idea! Even if you are starting with outdated information, this at least gives you a starting place you can reference to kick this project off for you.

Pro tip: purchase orders, invoices, and receipts tend to be a strong starting place since most organizations keep these on-hand for financial reports. We recommend starting here if you are stuck.

Step 5: Start with the most important

Begin with outlining your most critical pieces of equipment and committing to getting those into the platform first. Accessories or easily replaceable items (lights, cords, etc!) should be a secondary priority to critical equipment. Most often, capturing an inventory can be such a formidable project, and it can be tempting to get overwhelmed and stuck looking at everything you need to capture. By starting with the most critical items, you can get momentum with the things that actually matter most to get the quickest return for your organization.

Step 6: Get started and commit to the goal

Build a schedule and share it with us - what are your goals and what is your timeline? We recommend committing to a regular cadence of capturing inventory and getting it uploaded into the BeamON platform. Committing to a regular upload schedule will help keep your team motivated and on track with your goals. Plus, if you share it with us, we can help keep things on track on our end too! We’re here to help.

Do you have any questions about Beam's Enterprise Asset Management solution? Please contacts us here.