In our previous post we talked about how absurd it would be to buy a new car simply because your old car needs tires. Yet for many organizations with large furniture assets in hospitality, government, and education, that is exactly what happens.
If you are running a hotel, a campus, or a barracks, you need to invest in furniture – and lots of it. This furniture needs to fulfil a purpose, be of a certain quality, be comfortable, and have longevity. In short, furniture is a considerable investment.
The good news is that this furniture is an asset which can be protected. In the 37 years we have worked in furniture asset management, we have helped tens of thousands of hotels, colleges and government organizations to understand how to protect and manage these valuable assets.
One challenge we face is to help organizations understand inventory tracking, one of the core principles of good furniture asset management.
Back to our car analogy. It’s not that you want to throw your old car away because of the tires, you don’t even know how many tires your car has. Again, it sounds absurd but it’s frequently true.
Consider the process of buying furniture. In some cases, furniture is bought as a series of piecemeal procurements, each with a value measured in hundreds of dollars. Yet these combined assets add up. In the case of the US government it adds up to millions of dollars across agencies and departments, and billions of dollars overall.
Without structured information on how this money is spent with details of how many furniture assets were bought, where they are, what they are made of, the opportunities to reuse resources and avoid waste are missed.
As the old adage goes: ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’. So as a first step, you need to consider how to approach inventory tracking of furniture assets.
Next week we’re going to be detailing some of the best practices when it comes to the inventory management of furniture, as we continue to share our insights on best practice furniture asset management.
Meanwhile, if you have any questions on furniture asset management best practices, please contact our team at [email protected].