School Asset Manager Prices

[has]

Hi,

Were looking to move from excel sheets to a proper asset management software. We've looked at a few and almost all give start from price except School Asset Manager.

 

Does anyone know what price it comes at and is it one-off or monthly/yearly subscription?

 

thanks in advance,

 

H

[Edu-IT]

You could contact them and ask? They'd be the best ones to give you the price.

 

If I remember, it's yearly. And quite expensive for what it does.

 

OP SmartDesk - Asset Manager is definitely worth a looking at. Has full asset manager built in, amongst other things.

[ICTLTD]

You could look at Dell Kace. It is a fair outlay upfront but an amazing piece of kit.

[jonathon28]

Hi. We had them come out and we're on a demo at the moment. However at £120/month I don't think the head is going to go for it. It does seem a lot of money when you actually sit down and think about it because once you've been round once the majority of the work is done apart from the odd machine moving about or retiring asset. They have given us a second ipod touch to try and get our business and some nice UV pens and torch. I've been marking my stationary with it. My stapler keeps going missing.

[tj2419]

Does anyone know roughly how much Dell Kace is? I am in the same situation where i have been asked to research asset management software. Also has anyone heard of Paragon? A new member of staff has recommended it but i cant find a website for them.

 

Cheers

[ICTLTD]

Dell Kace is around £6K could be less could be more depending what you want to bolt on to it, but there can be additional discounts for education.

[Edu-IT]

Hi. We had them come out and we're on a demo at the moment. However at £120/month I don't think the head is going to go for it. It does seem a lot of money when you actually sit down and think about it because once you've been round once the majority of the work is done apart from the odd machine moving about or retiring asset. They have given us a second ipod touch to try and get our business and some nice UV pens and torch. I've been marking my stationary with it. My stapler keeps going missing.

£1440 a year to host what is essentially just a database? Seems like dead money to me. Pick up an iPod touch for about £150 can you not? A few pens and a torch, £20 topps?

[pcstru]

£1440 a year to host what is essentially just a database? Seems like dead money to me. Pick up an iPod touch for about £150 can you not? A few pens and a torch, £20 topps?

 

SIMS or CMIS/ePortal is "just a database". If only they were as reasonable!

 

I think our Premises team use it and quite like it. It does what it does well.

[Edu-IT]

Good point, but, they're very complex databases with lots and lots of functionality.

[teklogic]

Hi, we have just started using school asset manager, I have a feeling it is around £4k for 3 years and you get 4000 stickers free and an ipod. I may be wrong on the price because of a special offer we had.

 

We are getting on really well with it, you can upload videos and pictures of the item via any smart phone or computer. Handy if you want to record an entire room of furniture as asset.

[rich_tech]

I had someone cold call the other day trying to sell us school asset manager (usual receptionist is off work atm, so the call came through), I basically listened to the pitch then told them no thanks, because of its costs but also because we used spiceworks for our inventory management within the school I work in, having recently set that up, its free and does everything you would want off an inventory management program, takes a little bit of setting up but works lovely when you have it running, only thing I would say, it can be a resource hog so if you have a spare PC around, put it on there rather than on one you regularly work on, because it will slow your PC down if you install it on there.

 

edit: Offer price sounds above for SAM about the same we were quoted, but as our school only has a few wireless hotspots it wasnt worth the money for us.

Edited October 24, 2012 by rich_tech

[british_government]

it can be a resource hog so if you have a spare PC around, put it on there rather than on one you regularly work on, because it will slow your PC down if you install it on there.

Just one more thing on spiceworks, it will slow down every machine it scans when it scans them, so you will only want to run this overnight, which for laptops and netbooks is useless.

 

Back to helpful suggestions, I custom wrote a mysql, php solution for the school which I have been thinking about releasing as the school have given me permission to do so. If anybody is interested drop me a PM and I can build a version and get it to you.

[rich_tech]

As I said earlier If you just want asset management with spiceworks it is free and works quite well and you can work around issues easily enough (the network scanning is ok for fixed devices on your network and the fact that you can manually add in any other assets too is really helpful as well, you dont have to use the network scanning either, its not compulsory).

 

It is not hard to input the other devices and assets that dont network scan either, (I am in process of adding in our whiteboards as an example and its not hard on input once you set the initial stuff up for a different device) schools make it a bit easier I think as most computers are probably very similar specs and models anyway (though obviously not 100% of schools are like this).

 

Spiceworks can be a resource hog when network scanning thats true and you can improve its performance as well on your network, by just turning all unnecessary other scan and network settings off on the program (things like warranty scanning/network health/cloud services) and making sure it scans at a point of the day when your user base is quite low on your network and it can be used without any massive issues.

 

If its laptops and netbooks, if you wanted to use the network scan initially you only have to arrange scans when those devices are on, it can be done with planning, as once their in the database, they dont have to be scanned over and over to feature in your inventory, you could even time that to a point where you push out updates to the devices if you do them automatically to limit any impact on your network, you can also specify things like specific IP ranges to scan, which can help you scan devices of a certain class at a certain time with ease, but as with everything its down to the end user and how you want to use the program, for us where I work, its working very well here and it doesnt have any specific cash costs with using it.

 

SAM did look nice when he was showing us it, but it was a bit of overkill for us I felt, as we are not a massive secondary school where I am working and generally we try to keep our operating costs down where possible.

[british_government]

Interesting points on spiceworks, I tried it about 4 years ago, using all the full scanning and helpdesk features for a couple of months. Sounds like I didn't give it a fair chance, optimise it well enough, or it has had severe improvements since then!

 

In terms of functionality, if you can get it running well, I would recommend spiceworks at least as first call.