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How NFL Teams Make Sure There Are No Asset Glitches On Game Day
We’re now in the middle of NFL season, which means that Sundays (and Mondays, and Thursdays) are now almost completely dedicated to the arduous task of eating wings and watching football. Fans across the country spend hours glued to their screen each week. How many of them take a minute to consider all the equipment, tools and human effort that go into making sure the game experience goes off without a hitch? How many of them consider the role of asset management on game day?
Not many. It could be as little as “almost none.” That’s okay: Most people need to worry about their fantasy team, or whether they should plan a trip to Houston for the upcoming Super Bowl. Like most big entertainment events — concerts, plays, conferences — the little things that need to happen in order for everything to go off without a hitch are given little consideration, outside of those whose jobs it is to make it happen.
As anyone who works in asset management or auditing can tell you, the same sort of mindset permeates office culture in regards to fixed assets. Things like computers, vehicles and office equipment such as printers and scanners are hardly noticed until there’s something wrong. Laptop missing? Flat tire? Why aren’t things working around here? If things run smoothly, on the other hand, you’ll likely never heard a word about it.
That’s why asset management software, which automates a great deal of the asset tracking and depreciation processes (among other responsibilities, is one of the unsung heros of both traditional offices and the “office” of NFL teams — otherwise known as the stadium.
Sure, fans can mostly identify equipment that is important to making sure a game runs smoothly: pads, helmets, jerseys, water bottles, headsets for communication, footballs (as the Patriots can attest, the whereabouts of all the footballs used in a game should be known at all times) and other game gear. These items can and probably should be given barcodes (
youth sports teams know all about that), and team managers barcode scanners, in order to keep track of everything. But let’s go a step further behind the scenes and talk about the scoreboard.
The scoreboard and other media displays in the stadium are made up of many crucial pieces of technology, and is one of the most important features of any stadium. Even die-hard fans can agree that football is a game of measurements, numbers, replays and many different kinds of information that whizzes by throughout the course of a match-up. Each NFL team is responsible for at least 10 games (two preseason, eight regular season — plus any postseason home games their team qualifies for) where logistics are expected to go off without a hitch.
Last year, Wasp Barcode
caught up with Nick Heller, the production manager at University of Phoenix Stadium, home to the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals have made headlines over the past few years as playoff contenders in a tough division, but Wasp was more interested in understanding how Heller transformed the oversight of scoreboard equipment by going with the company’s MobileAsset system.
When Heller first arrived in Arizona, there was no system at all for organizing and tracking the department’s equipment. You might think this is crazy, but though we can’t speak for the other 31 teams in the NFL, it’s true that many organizations choose to eschew (or, more likely, are ignorant to the importance of) asset management systems.
More than half of the business owners in Wasp’s 2016 State of Small Business Report said their company didn’t track assets or used a manual process (like pen and paper) to do so.
So Heller started using a mobile-powered asset management system to track the over $100,000 worth of equipment needed each game day (not to mention all the other destination events that take place at the stadium and off-site locations), such as cameras, microphones and speakers. MobileAsset is powered by barcode technology, which means all you need to bring your system on the road are scanners (
which can be found in mobile computers, dedicated barcode scanners or even
personal smartphones), along with the necessary equipment.
There are four main areas where users of
asset management systems, like Heller and his team, see almost immediate improvement:
- Location and status — Anyone who has worked for an unorganized business knows the frustration of trying to track down needed items in the middle of a work day. Keep everything where it should be with a barcode or RFID-powered system.
- Theft and loss reduction — Things get lost. It happens. It’s the cost of doing business. Things get stolen. It’s unfortunate, but not everyone is as trustworthy as they seem (or they don’t recognize the true cost of what they took). A check-in/check-out asset system assigns responsibility to any party that takes an asset, reducing their ability to misappropriate or simply misplace an expensive item.
- Forecasting — When does this computer need to be replaced? When should a system backup or other routine maintenance be performed? Asset tracking takes the guesswork out of these questions and tells you what your needs are before you even think to ask, and certainly before something breaks mid-game.
- Auditing and other value tracking — Speaking of tracking the status of assets, that’s also necessary for tax purposes. No more time-consuming hand-count audits, or making mistakes in the depreciation of your assets at the end of the year.
For live events like football games, as well as the myriad of other events that go on at University of Phoenix Stadium, there simply isn’t any margin for error. One overlooked step could mean disaster and a relatively unpleasant experience for thousands of fans who came to think about football and little else. It’s no wonder Heller made the switch to something that can provide peace of mind, even for a job of that magnitude.
There is no organization too big or too small for asset tracking. Not everyone can be as “important” (at least in national popular culture) as an NFL team, but those who have to care for the expensive investments that are fixed assets know that a tracking system is the least we can do for them. We hand every other responsibility over to automated software — except for Carson Palmer throwing touchdowns to Larry Fitzgerald, among other things — so maybe now’s the time to look into doing so for your business’s assets as well.
How could asset management help your business to track expensive equipment you rely on?
