Why your IT asset management needs AI

AI has become one of the most recognizable and influential trends in the tech industry. From virtual assistants to image recognition algorithms, companies across industries now have at least one AI-powered feature in their product offerings or plan to deploy one. At this point, it’s counterintuitive not to do so.

Just like other areas of technology, IT asset management is being transformed by AI. Automated features that save time or simplify workflows are starting to appear in this space and will keep improving.

GroWrk stands at the forefront of this innovation, providing AI-driven IT asset management solutions that cater to some of the fastest-growing and largest companies worldwide. With operations in over 150 countries, GroWrk's integration of AI helps streamline complex processes, enhance accuracy, and deliver real-time decision-support systems across vast IT infrastructures.

Companies in every industry are investing in AI

Since the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, a new iteration of generative AI technology has been released every month. In March 2023, there were six major releases, including GPT-4 by OpenAI, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Bard.

Around that same time, Salesforce released Einstein GPT, a generative AI for customer relationship management, and Bloomberg announced a LLM for support in the financial services industry.

IBM’s Global AI Adoption Index for 2023 reports that around 42% of enterprise-scale companies surveyed have actively deployed AI in their business. And 59% of those companies already exploring or deploying AI say they have accelerated their rollout or investments in the technology. 

According to McKinsey, gen AI features can add between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy. To put things into perspective, the UK’s GDP was $3.1 trillion in 2021.

The industries with the highest impact as a percentage of their revenues are banking, high tech, and life sciences. AI could deliver up to $340 billion annually for the banking industry and up to $660 billion a year in retail and consumer packaged goods.

The transformative impact of AI in IT asset management

The main challenge IT asset managers face is keeping up with the constant changes in their IT estate. That means tracking assets through on-premise and cloud-based solutions, updating software, replacing hardware, meeting compliance, and avoiding cost overruns on licenses or underused hardware.

There’s a massive opportunity for AI in the IT asset management industry. AI can automate these manual tasks, making IT managers’ work easier, faster, and scalable. Here are some of the benefits of incorporating AI in IT asset management:

Automated management

An essential element of IT asset management is visibility over an organization's assets. AI-powered solutions can scan your network to identify all devices and software, including those previously unnoticed or ignored. This can ensure that every asset is accounted for.

AI can organize assets while delivering detailed data about their specifications and setups, which helps in decision-making and resource allocation.

Proactive insights 

AI-powered technologies can monitor asset performance and utilization in real time, detecting any irregularities or issues as they arise. This proactive approach enables IT asset managers to respond quickly, decreasing downtime and enhancing overall system reliability.

Organizations can use AI-powered predictive analytics to plan for future asset requirements based on past data. Proactive planning helps to reduce disruptions and ensures that resources are efficiently allocated.

Enhanced compliance and security

Managing software licenses is a vital element of ITAM to ensure compliance. AI can track software usage and suggest optimizations to reduce licensing costs. It can also monitor software license usage in real time, alerting IT teams of possible infringements, thus reducing the risk of expensive legal disputes.

Cost reduction

AI in ITAM can spot underemployed assets, allowing organizations to reassign or retire them. This reduces expenses while reallocating resources to enhance strategic IT infrastructure investments.

Furthermore, AI can offer insights into the total cost of ownership for each asset, including maintenance, energy usage, and software licenses. With this information, IT asset managers can make informed decisions on retaining, upgrading, or decommissioning assets with this information.

Risk mitigation 

Cyber threats are a looming concern for any IT team. AI can assist in spotting weaknesses in IT assets and infrastructure, signaling possible hazards, and suggesting security updates or patches. Organizations can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and associated costs by proactively addressing security alerts.

Challenges and considerations

A recent case involving Air Canada's AI chatbot raised questions about the safety and reliability of AI-powered systems, especially when it comes to managing sensitive information and providing accurate responses to user queries. 

A customer needed information about Air Canada’s bereavement travel policy, so he went to their website. There, he was engaged by the Air Canada chatbot, which then delivered misleading information regarding refunds. 

When the customer went to Air Canada for his refund, they told him that the policy differed from what the chatbot had told him. The customer filed a complaint and got his money back. Although it was not a large sum – only $800, a different scenario could cost a company thousands.

Introducing AI into IT asset management will likely increase the focus on risk management. Companies using chatbots like these will have to double down on ensuring data accuracy, respecting intellectual property, customer privacy, and overall security.

Here’s what that can entail for IT asset management:

• Data accuracy: Different models can produce varying outputs from the same prompts, making it difficult for users to evaluate accuracy and reliability.

• Intellectual property: AI training data and outputs could pose intellectual property risks, like violating copyrighted or legally protected materials. In this case, it's critical to understand what data was used for the model's training.

• Privacy: Privacy concerns may arise if user data used in model outputs identifies individuals. Generative AI could also be used for harmful content, such as disinformation, deepfakes, and hate speech.

• Security: Gen AI can be manipulated to produce malicious outputs, a process known as prompt injection. In this technique, a third party gives the model new instructions that trick the model into delivering output that the model producer did not intend.

GroWrk's pioneering AI implementation

Organizations are already using generative AI to improve their IT asset management solutions. Many companies are integrating this technology to improve their service and simplify user tasks. Here are a few examples:

GroWrk

Growrk has innovatively harnessed the power of AI with the launching of GroWbot 2.0, an AI-enhanced chatbot that utilizes OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. This bot not only supports IT operations seamlessly but also learns from interactions, improving its response quality and relevance continuously. Here’s how Growrk is revolutionizing ITAM with AI:

• 24/7 IT support: Growbot 2.0 offers round-the-clock support, managing queries about IT assets efficiently, which reduces the need for human intervention and speeds up resolution times.

• Proactive updates: It provides updates on equipment status and logistics, keeping all stakeholders informed in real-time and helping prevent any operational delays.

• Automated ticketing: If an issue cannot be immediately resolved, GroWbot 2.0 automates ticket creation, ensuring no query is overlooked and every problem is tracked until resolution.

Torii

Torii is a SaaS Management platform that helps organizations manage licenses, vendors, and users across applications, including communication, identity management, CRM, HR, finance, accounting, marketing and more.

Their AI features help track contract renewals, app mapping, and contract ingestion. They also have an AI assistant that can answer questions about users, license counts, contract details, and application statuses.

Snow

Snow Software is a cloud-based platform that provides insights into an organization’s IT environment. Integrating software asset management, SaaS management, and cloud cost management enables users to manage and optimize IT expenditure, reduce costs, minimize risk, and extract maximum value from their technology resources.

Their AI solution is Snow Copilot, the first of a series of AI capabilities to address the challenges in IT asset management and FinOps. Snow Copilot is an AI assistant developed in Snow Labs, the company's innovation incubator. It enables users to ask conversational questions and receive natural language responses.

The future roadmap: AI in ITAM

The journey of AI in ITAM is just beginning. Tools like GroWrk’s GroWbot 2.0 are setting benchmarks for what AI can achieve in optimizing IT asset management.

These AI systems not only simplify workflows and improve operational visibility but also assist in strategic decision-making by providing insightful analytics and forecasts. 

In the IT asset management space, AI-powered features will impact work tasks for the better, leading to:

• Simplified workflows that don’t rely on switching between platforms or spreadsheets.
• Easier information retrieval through chatbots that can provide instant updates about any asset.
• Time saved by not having to process all this information manually.

Wrapping up

GroWrk’s AI capabilities demonstrate a significant leap towards transforming IT asset management into a more efficient, compliant, and risk-mitigated process. Organizations looking to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving IT landscape will find GroWrk’s AI solutions indispensable.

In embracing AI, GroWrk ensures that ITAM not only meets today's challenges but is also equipped to handle tomorrow's opportunities. This proactive adoption of AI underlines the need for industries to leverage such technologies to stay competitive and efficient in a digital-first world.

GroWrk is not just keeping up but setting the pace in AI-powered ITAM solutions. To experience the benefits of GroWrk’s innovative AI implementations and how they can optimize your IT asset management strategy across 150 countries book a demo today.