In this phase a plan is developed to identify what types of assets need to be identified, tracked and managed. It would include the selection of categories or groupings of assets that make sense for the organization, i.e. the “taxonomy” of the assets to be managed. For example, perhaps it would be useful to group all office furniture together, or alternatively, to group desks together, separately from filing cabinets and office chairs. All types of PC’s can be grouped together, or they can be segmented by manufacturer or by portability – Desktop PC’s and Laptop PC’s.

The planning phase establishes the geography of the assets. In other words, assets can be tracked for a single floor of a building, en entire building, buildings in a single city of section of the Country, or even across many buildings across the U.S. or even worldwide.

Planning and design includes:
• Establishing location-naming conventions.
• Establishing asset types naming conventions.
• Collecting manufacturing, supplier and custodian information.
• Capturing digital images of assets and custodians.
• Collecting employee information including reference numbers.
• Deploying methodology to identify employee personal assets.
• Deciding on bar code numbering conventions and design.

This phase also establishes the kinds of information about each asset that would be necessary or useful. The attributes that can be identified include, but are not limited to such information as; asset type (desk, chair, telephone, fax machine, desktop PC…), serial number, service tag, picture of the asset, dimensions, color, condition, location, employee assigned, Original Purchase Price, Fair Market Value, etc.

And finally, the Planning Phase sets out the Operational Plan. This is the Plan that details the lifecycle of types of assets, how they will be tracked and managed, and the procedures to be used for collecting the data, and for tracking moves, changes and deletions/retirements.