Transforming how Microsoft tracks its moveable assets

Microsoft Global Workplace Services (GWS) manages millions of dollars of office furniture, but because those assets were not physically tracked, the company couldn’t always say with certainty where all those desks, whiteboards, and monitors were at any given time.

Because they’re on wheels, office chairs were an even bigger challenge. Whenever anyone went to a meeting and there weren’t enough chairs, someone would go hunting for extra chairs in nearby conference rooms (and chances were they wouldn’t return them when they were done).

Once a PO was written for furniture items and they were procured, there was never any location-specific tracking of that furniture—ever.

—Timothy Ikehara-Martin, software engineer, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

And while this was irritating to the employee who had to go find a chair, it was even more so for the people in charge of tracking the furniture; something the pandemic made more challenging because chairs that once just moved from one office to the next were now moving across town to an employee’s home office.

“Once a PO was written for furniture items and they were procured, there was never any location-specific tracking of that furniture—ever,” says Timothy Ikehara-Martin, a software engineer with the Microsoft Digital Employee Experience team.

If chairs are like cats, and who says they’re not, this amusing but frustrating situation was a challenge for facility managers who had no way of knowing where the indifferent chairs that they were herding from room to room lived.

[Read how Microsoft connects high-quality, discoverable data.]

Creating the ideal asset management solution

When the Microsoft Digital Employee Experience team heard of the challenge with the company’s physical assets, it started working with GWS on potential solutions. The team decided to use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management’s Asset Management functionality with some enhancements added by the team.

The multi-organizational team was up to the challenge—they started by identifying the pain points they wanted to fix.

First, was the problem of location. Where had all the chairs gone to? The solution would require a quick, simple way to track assets physically.

Second, the team considered the cost of repairs (and using warranties to reduce costs). If no one was keeping track of asset locations, they most likely weren’t able to track current conditions and repairs.

Third, the team had to consider the manual labor associated with asset management. Many asset tracking programs require a barcode scan, which would mean employees would sometimes need to stoop, bend, crawl, or lift to get a good read. It was a sub-optimal scenario that could lead to a poor working experience along with human error.

Finally, they considered the amount of time it might require to ensure assets are tracked properly. Tagging, scanning, and inputting data for thousands of assets is an ambitious task. They needed to streamline the process as much as possible.

Their solution was to use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, which gives employees a quick, simple way to automatically update asset locations using passive tags with a minimal level of physical work.

With this shift to RFID, we’re looking at each piece of furniture as its own unique asset with its own unique properties and characteristics. You can look up the history of the asset, what’s happened against it, where it’s been, and also make any necessary updates.

—Scott Parker, senior district facilities manager, Global Workplace Services

Rather than having to find and scan a barcode for every piece of furniture, an employee just needs to stand near the asset—the RFID technology locates and documents the location automatically if a technician comes within a couple of feet of the asset. In the real world, this means a technician simply opens a conference room door, holds up their scanner for a few seconds, and boom, they are done.

With Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Asset Management, data is entered into the system when a physical asset is created and is assigned a tag ID. Subsequently, when a user is scanning that tag, they can see the history of that asset, meaning they know where it has been, where it potentially belongs, and who is checking in or checking out this asset.

“With this shift to RFID, we’re looking at each piece of furniture as its own unique asset with its own unique properties and characteristics,” says Scott Parker, senior district facilities manager in GWS. “You can look up the history of the asset, what’s happened against it, where it’s been, and also make any necessary updates.”

Wide-scale deployment

The Microsoft Digital Employee Experience team wants to do much more with their new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Asset Management module.

“It’s designed to work with any asset type in any location,” Ikehara-Martin says.

So far, it’s been successfully utilized for furniture resets, within warehouses, and by technicians. While they haven’t yet determined the exact ROI for GWS specifically, it’s already provided numerous savings opportunities when it comes to warranties and budgeting.

In the future, GWS expects to fully automate the asset tracking process using Dynamics 365 and the Asset Management module. With full automation, technicians can stand by the door of a room and within a few minutes be able to scan the equipment and furniture in the room, cutting back significantly on the time required to track each piece of furniture. From Global Security to AV, tracking and managing security cameras and audio/visual equipment is much easier. Visual floor plans can direct users to know where each asset is at any given moment, whether it is a chair or an Internet of Things device.

Many Microsoft customers are facing some of the same challenges.

“Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 with RFID workflows enabled, it’s possible to extend its Asset Management capability in ways that can transform your enterprise,” Ikehara-Martin says.

While it isn’t just about physical assets such as tables and chairs, it is also about the larger range of assets that can be ascribed a tag ID to follow and be managed within the same program. Having these types of insights in a single dashboard helps various departments keep track of both physical assets and expands to other things such as equipment and shipping capabilities.

• Treat every new onboarding or offboarding cycle as an opportunity to reassess physical equipment and materials and to review your need for upgrades, purchases, or sales.
• Consider using RFID tags—they are flexible and easier to manage than barcode-based tracking.
• Look to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for scaling automation and tracking processes like asset management.

• Read how Microsoft connects high-quality, discoverable data.