Installed Base
Understanding the Installed Base
Customer Asset Lifecycle Management starts with the installed base. An installed base is made up of assets, tangible or intangible, that have been sold
directly to end-users or through a sales channel. Tangible assets are things that you can touch such as computers, cars and elevators. Intangible assets are things you cannot touch such as such as software and other electronic media. Intangible assets can also include services and educational products.
These assets that have been sold indicate that a relationship must have formed for the transaction to take place. Research and wisdom tells us that it costs up to 10 times as much to make a new sale to a new customer than to complete a sale with an existing customer. Depending on the size of the company, the transaction detail would be captured in either an ERP system for a large company or in something like an inventory system for small to medium companies.
Overview of an Asset
An asset has economic value and is owned by an individual or company.
For organisations selling tangible product these customer assets would usually have some kind of a unique identifier such as a serial number. For intangible customer assets, such as computer software, the unique identifier may be something such as a licence key, and contract numbers for service contracts or leases.
The transactional information that is in your company would hold details on the asset model, asset description, a unique identifier (such as serial number), as well as detail on who you sold it too. This information is part of what is called the assets attributes. These asset attributes form part of our capability to answer such questions as whom does the asset belong to now? Is the person or entity that we sold it to the asset owner? Where is the customer asset located? When did you sell it?
Was it a channel sale?
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