15 January 2016 
Adrian Cox, Project Manager, equipment.data
The EPSRC Capital Equipment survey conducted in 2015 revealed that institutions struggle to establish high-quality equipment asset records. Knowing what equipment you have, where it is at any given time and who is responsible for it are essential for good asset management and audit and to increase utilisation. Managing this information need not be a challenge with the help of an effectively managed asset system and supporting workflow
To achieve the best results from a database, the whole data capture process from identification of need, specification, procurement, purchase and entry onto an asset database must be high quality and efficient.
As the majority of institutions use their asset registers as the base data for a published equipment dataset, often publishing this data directly to the web, the quality of titles, descriptions, location and contact information has to be correct and helpful. To support this need the equipment.data team has published a poster providing helpful advice on appropriate content for an informative equipment or facility record.
Although improving the visibility of your research facilities and equipment is likely to increase enquiries for certain types and values of equipment, this does not, on its own, provide a mechanism for measuring increased usage. Neither will it be easy to attribute increased utilisation without appropriate customer relation management (CRM) and/or utilisation records in place to your equipment database. This is the next piece of the puzzle, as without evidence that keeping good records leads to increased use and value for money, evidencing the need for future investment will be difficult.
Over the past two years, examples of best practice supporting asset management and equipment utilisation have started to emerge. At the University of Southampton a process guide has been introduced: ‘The research equipment asset lifecycle’, below. This document acknowledges the need for institutional stakeholders to understand the importance of effective asset management by providing guidance on the purchasing process and lifecycle of the asset record, through to publishing the equipment or facility data on the institution’s equipment database. To enable a sustainable approach to publishing the data the University worked with Unit4 to establish a solution enabling improved data capture and publishing using new detailed data views linked to the Agresso Fixed Assets module.
With approx. 40% of HE institutions using Agresso there is potential to roll out such a development across other interested institutions wishing to publish equipment data to a database or internal CRIS. Source. BUFDG 21st Century Systems Conference
Supporting the decision and contracting process, the N8 consortia has developed the N8 Equipment Sharing Toolkit. This informative guide covers issues regarding health and safety, training, pricing and charging including VAT, and contracts. In addition, the toolkit provides useful template forms to capture information helping inform the decision process. Equipment Sharing Toolkit - N8 Research Partnership
Finance departments and research support offices have a fundamental role in managing the data that supports equipment sharing and other research activity. They can lead and encourage an institution to:
If you would like to know more about equipment.data and how to get your asset database working for you, or if you have an example of best practice you would like to share, please contact the equipment.data team support@data.ac.uk
