What is Resource Tracking Software? Alternatives to Excel Sheets

A typical day in the life of a facility manager is one of variety. You could start your morning by responding to queries regarding building maintenance and end up sourcing contractors to fix the issues by the afternoon. In between, you’ll manage office systems and take care of day to day administrative tasks—an FMs plate is always fairly full.

As such, FMs should constantly be looking for ways to automate and streamline certain tedious responsibilities so that they can reclaim hours in their day for more pressing tasks. Resource management is one area of an FM’s day that can easily be simplified—all that’s needed is the right software.

Rather than having to manage an office through an abundance of spreadsheets and hopeful guessing, resource tracking software allows FMs to rely on one centralized system. If you’re looking for a simpler way to track your resources, consider letting software come to your rescue.

What is resource tracking?

Resource tracking is the act of tracking all of your assets and understanding where they are and how they are being used. Resources can be physical spaces, such as meeting rooms, or furniture, appliances, people and even time. For each company, the resources tracked may be different. For instance, companies who bill clients by the hour must track their time, while companies who manufacture equipment need to understand how their machines are performing at all times.

As a facility manager, it’s important you know the exact status of a physical resource at any given time, so that you can inform new employees about how to find them, or to ensure tune-ups, repairs or replacements are organized before a disruptive breakdown occurs.

An effective alternative to Excel

There comes a time when your company will most likely outgrow the capabilities of Excel spreadsheets—you may already be there. So how does resource tracking software effectively outperform Excel? These methods manage all of your assets in one system, from work order requests to resource location and asset life cycles, so that your employees can find and use resources in real-time.

Excel spreadsheets don’t update across multiple sheets and can quickly become outdated if not managed consistently. This is why Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms have become so popular. Some only manage one facet of your resources, such as time-tracking or request-managing. Others are scalable and can track multiple resources. What makes them so useful though is that they can update the status of resources across all parts of the platform so that your colleagues are up to speed on everything from the location and working order of the printer on the 33rd floor to the various assets in each individual meeting room.

The must-have resource tracking features

When you invest in a resource tracking software, there are a number of things that should be a part of your SaaS product:

1. The ability to locate, track and manage your assets
2. Real-time resource tracking
3. The option to generate reports and analytics for your assets
4. The ability to instantly find critical medical equipment anywhere in the organization
5. A scalable solution that allows for third-party integrations

You want to make sure the resource tracking software you select will offer your office the best return on investment and that it has all the right features for your business needs.

If you want to give the OfficeSpace a try, book a demo today—it’s free, easy and can help you consolidate your Excel spreadsheets into a single product that works for you.