Asset Management
Assets are items, such as refrigerators or freezers that you place at a retail store or customer location to increase your sales. As an asset’s owner, you’re responsible for the maintenance, repair, and other services required for the asset. Efficient management of assets can reduce customer complaints and, in turn, increase your brand value. By actively tracking your assets’ conditions, you can budget better, reduce losses, and ensure employee safety.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience in Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions that have Consumer Goods Cloud enabled. |
An asset’s serial number identifies the asset and is generated based on the asset template and asset type. An asset template defines the generic characteristics of an asset, and includes an asset type that contains the asset details. To manage different products, the admin creates asset templates and relates each template to a product while ensuring that the product type equals the asset type. For example, create an asset template such as Single Door Fridge, and then create asset type such as Single Door Fridge in Red.
To raise asset service requests, such as repair, maintenance, retirement, and replacement, a field service team can use the customer task template.
An asset is related to a sales org, and the sales org of an asset and the customer must be the same. You can also associate assets with an account and its related Point of Sales (POS). Here are the main differences between an asset and a POS.
| Assets | POS |
|---|---|
| A valuable piece of equipment. Can be a display. Can contain sellable components. Can also be a standalone equipment, such as an umbrella or mobile dispensing equipment. | A less expensive piece of equipment. Can be used as displays or floor stands at the store for selling and branding products. |
| Generally require tracking and maintenance. For example, maintenance and repair control of assets. | Generally refers to secondary placements or displays, which are often used for promotions. |
Tasks related to assets are created as customer tasks. Supervisors and reps can record their observations during task audit. As a sales rep and a supervisor, you can create, edit, deactivate, and review a list of assets that are assigned to a customer. You can manage assets in Consumer Goods (desktop) and in the Consumer Goods offline mobile app.
Let’s understand the process in detail.
- Create Asset Templates and Asset Types: Before you create assets, ensure that admins have created asset templates and asset types. For more information, see Create an Asset Template and Create an Asset Type.
- Create Assets: After the admin sets up master data, sales reps can create an asset assigned to a customer and relate the asset to an account for a valid period. To speed up the checkout process, you can also relate an asset to a relevant POS. To track the asset, place an order for an asset, and then store information about your customer’s products. You can also relate an asset to a product. While products represent the items that your company sells, assets represent the specific products that your customers have purchased. Use assets to store information about your customers’ products. For more information, see Create an Asset.
- Scan assets: Identify your assets by setting up a bluetooth scanner. Sales reps can sight the customer asset manually, scan the asset barcode with the camera to sight the asset, or sight an unknown asset by scanning or by manually registering the serial number. Before you scan the asset barcode, see Connect External Bluetooth Devices to the Consumer Goods Cloud Offline Mobile App.
- Track and Audit Assets: Supervisors and sales reps can audit assets and run asset-related surveys to document the asset’s condition, location, and use. During a visit, reps can track assets to ensure that the assets are placed at the store and audit assets to record the observations about these assets. For more information, see Audit an Asset.
- Review customer tasks, notes, and attachments: Sales reps can perform these asset-related tasks: Create customer requests for customer tasks, such as repair, installation requests, and de-allocation requests. Review customer tasks created by the supervisor and work on the asset. Add notes on the current situation of the asset. Review attachments, such as pictures and documents for each asset. Address customer complaints related to an asset. For more information, see Address Customer Complaints about an Asset.
- Create an Asset
Create an asset record to define all the details about an asset, such as manufacturer and year of manufacturing. To identify an asset easily, add a serial number or tag. Associate an asset with an account and its related point of sale. Or, associate an asset to a product to enable a sales rep to place an order for the asset. - Address Customer Complaints about an Asset
When a customer has problems or concerns with an asset, create a customer task for the asset. This task can be executed during a visit. - Audit an Asset
Use the Asset Audit object to record your observations for an asset during its audit. Track assets to confirm that assets assigned to customers are placed at the customer location.
