THE COMPLETE SOLUTION TO FULLY INTEGRATED ASSET CONTROL
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Asset Management Case Study: Hardcat at Edith Cowan University


Hardcat is providing individual asset management autonomy at a Faculty level, whilst simultaneously providing the University's Finance department with an accurate picture of the entire asset base of the organization.

Background


The ongoing rollout of Hardcat at Western Australia's Edith Cowan University has reached a major milestone recently with the completion of asset data captures within all of the University's campuses and faculties. Hardcat's West Australian reseller, Asset Track Australia, has been closely supporting the continued rollout of Hardcat software at ECU with data capture, auditing and business services which have helped in transforming asset management at ECU from a manually updated spreadsheet based process to a state-of-the-art barcode-enabled database solution with powerful reporting.

The Business

Greg Gibbard with Bernie Cronin of Asset Track Australia, Hardcat's local dealer whose expertise helped to ensure a smooth and trouble free project.


A market leader in education for the service professions, Edith Cowan University (ECU) is located in Perth, Western Australia, a gateway to Asia. The University's international enrolments exceed 3,000 with students originating from more than 80 countries. ECU's origins go back to 1902 when it began as a teaching college. Today it is Western Australia's second largest university with almost 23,000 students.

The University has four metropolitan campuses in Churchlands, Claremont, Mount Lawley and Joondalup and a regional campus in Bunbury, a city 200kms south of Perth. More than 330 courses are offered through the five faculties: Business and Public Management; Computing, Health and Science; Communications and Creative Industries, which incorporates the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts; Community Services, Education and Social Sciences; and the Faculty of Regional Professional Studies.

The Problem


Like any major organization with a large asset base, multiple locations and numerous personnel, ECU has been continually striving to keep accurate records of its complete asset base. Assets over $5000 are managed via the University's ERP system, but assets under this value were managed by the individual Faculties or Business Service Areas in varying spreadsheet based formats. These asset registers did not always exist, and where they did exist, were often incomplete or their accuracy doubtful. This problem had existed since 1992.

Although a comprehensive asset numbering system was in place, there was limited use of barcoding technology to unlock time and efficiency savings in relation to the management of asset auditing or record updating. It was also difficult for the University's Finance department to gauge the range and depth of asset information on those assets less than $5000 without a centralized asset database, other than its ERP system.

The Solution

Point and shoot: ECU's Tim Smith audits assets in an instant using Hardcat's portable scanner solution.


Hardcat was initially implemented at ECU in 2001, with a pilot program undertaken by the Faculty of Computing, Health and Science (CHS). Since then, Hardcat has been progressively rolled out to ECU's other campuses and faculties, culminating in the recent completion of data captures.

ECU is currently utilising Hardcat's Core and Barcoding modules in conjunction with a number of Symbol SPT1800 portable barcode scanners. The portable scanners have been used extensively during the data capture phase of the project and will now also be regularly used with required periodical asset audits by the individual Faculty asset custodians.

ECU's Senior Finance Officer - Fixed Assets, Mr Greg Gibbard, charged with the responsibility of overseeing the Hardcat rollout, has during this time been conducting an ongoing staff-training program on Hardcat and the University's documented asset management processes. The objective of the training program is to allow the asset custodians appointed by the various Faculties or Business Service Areas, to take responsibility for the day to day administration of Hardcat and the assets under their control, thereby providing a valuable tool for improved fixed asset and budget accountability.

The Benefits


A number of barcode audits have been conducted in the period utilising the Symbol Palm scanners, which has greatly reduced the manpower and time taken to conduct these asset audits. Hardcat barcodes have also been aligned with ECU's Oracle Financial database to assist with the cross-referencing of asset locations in Oracle.

Hardcat's Barcode Auditing functionality and Palm scanners have helped immensely with the seamless updating of asset records, after several faculties relocated campuses during the data capture project. After the initial data capture at the original campus location, it was simply a matter of programming an asset audit for the Faculty at the new campus after they had moved all assets and personnel to the new site. The audit was conducted, with audit data used to relocate in excess of 1000 assets to their new locations with a simple upload of the audit file from the scanners.

Barcode auditing has also significantly reduced the time taken to conduct periodic asset audits by the Faculties. For example, one audit conducted that would normally have taken two days alone in sighting assets utilising a spreadsheet generated printout (without including the additional time and labour cost associated with data entry of this information) was completed in 6.5 hours utilising Hardcat and the portable barcode scanners.

Edith Cowan's Hardcat database now controls in excess of 25000 asset records, spread across five campuses, a possible 7900 room locations, 1000 plus staff members and incorporating 4700 product types. The complete range of the University's assets have been captured including, computing and office equipment, network and IT infrastructure assets, laboratory and scientific instruments, multimedia equipment, musical instruments, sports equipment and even the anatomy models and human specimens in the University's Anatomy Museum.

Conclusion


The implementation of Hardcat, coupled with an ongoing asset management training program, has provided ECU's asset custodians with a valuable tool to successfully administer assets under their control.

Hardcat is providing individual asset management autonomy at a Faculty level, whilst simultaneously providing the University's Finance department with an accurate picture of the entire asset base of the organization. With ever increasing demands placed on staff and financial resources at Australian universities, ECU's use of Hardcat and ability to control the mandatory asset management functions of the organization, such as regular auditing using minimal resources, is not being overlooked.


 
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