$4.3b in business assets are lost every year. Are you part of the statistic?
Did you know that billions of dollars are wasted each year through the loss of assets?
Specifically, Australian businesses are losing $4.3 billion in assets every year. Research commissioned by Telstra found that only 82% of companies look for their lost assets, and their searches are successful only 22% of the time.
Asset loss happens far too frequently and has a huge impact on business, not only costing organisations financially but also negatively impacting their productivity and customer relationships.
Gerhard Loots, Global IoT Solutions Executive at Telstra says, "We also found nearly half (48%) of respondents say that it is embarrassing to report lost assets to their organisations. That makes sense, as a similar number (47%) said losing company assets negatively affects their relationships with clients."
Where and how are assets being lost?
Assets are being lost everywhere and asset loss doesn't discriminate by industry. Every business has assets they can't afford to lose, and all have the same chances and vulnerabilities of employee error, misplacement, and the increasing rates of theft.
Australian businesses are losing an average of six percent of assets every year, including small items like keys, briefcases, and other hardware. More expensive items like vehicles, lab equipment, shipping containers and IT hardware are also targeted. Assets are much too valuable to be misplaced, stolen or abandoned at worksites as frequently as they are reported to be.
Research from Telstra found that the main reasons for businesses losing assets were due to; employees misplacing them (46%), assets being inadequately stocked (36%), employee theft (29%), and assets getting lost in transit (27%).
As an asset manager, it can be worrying that larger pieces like bulldozers and trucks get lost frequently, which is more often than not easily preventable. With billions of dollars at stake and an immeasurable amount of time spent searching for lost assets, it's time to rethink how we manage them.
How to prevent asset loss
More than half of Australian organisations (52%) say losing assets ultimately costs above and beyond the financial impact of their replacement, highlighting the enormous economic gains if this challenge is solved.
Half (50%) of companies rely on manually logging records, while more than a third will simply rely on wandering around a site to find the asset they need. 86% of companies view asset tracking technology as a strategic part of their digital transformation effort, likely because of its ability to mitigate the enormous losses companies are experiencing today.
Fortunately, new technology like fleet management and asset tracking solutions uses a range of technologies such as GPS tracking, Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, RFID, Wi-Fi, NFC and Bluetooth to keep tabs on your assets at all times. Asset tracking can bring asset recovery success rates from theft or misplacement up to 100%.
What was once a neglected manual task can now happen automatically in the background. Asset tracking enables real-time insights into where your assets are and how they're being used. This ensures effective asset management and significantly reduces the chances of them being misplaced or abandoned on work sites. If a theft occurs, tracking and geofencing alerts can detect and alert you when assets are moved out of their designated locations, allowing you to take action immediately.
Not sure where to get started?
Connect is our asset tracking solution to help you manage your assets and save time and money preventing asset loss in your business. To learn more about how your business can implement asset tracking with Connect, fill in our form below, and our team will get back to you.