Atlassian’s guide to enterprise asset management
Before you start, this guide covers:
The scope of enterprise asset management (EAM): Why managing the full lifecycle of physical and operational assets is critical for business teams.
Strategic visibility: How connecting asset, inventory, and contract context reduces operational risk for functions like facilities and procurement.
Building a business CMDB: How to use Assets and object schema templates to create a relational database for non-IT resources.
Operational trust: Using Assets Data Manager to reconcile fragmented data from ERPs and spreadsheets into a single source of truth.
Practical walkthrough: A step-by-step example of managing business requests with full operational visibility and automation.
Service Collection products referenced: Jira Service Management, Assets, Customer Service Management, Rovo
Reading time: 9 minutes
Run business operations with clearer asset and service context
Business teams such as facilities, procurement, finance operations, workplace, R&D, and vendor management rely on enterprise asset management (EAM) for accurate information to keep daily operations running. They need to know which assets exist, where they are located, who owns them, which contracts govern them, and which services or people depend on them.
When this information is spread across spreadsheets, emails, procurement systems, and shared drives, teams waste time chasing details and making decisions with incomplete context.
Business team asset and service management brings that information together so requests, approvals, lifecycle tasks, and reporting can happen with better visibility and less manual work.
This approach, often called asset operations management (AOM), helps business teams answer questions such as: what do we own, where is it, who is responsible, what agreement covers it, and what is the impact if this asset has issues?
What is enterprise asset management?
Enterprise asset management (EAM) is the practice of managing operational service workflows using reliable data about physical assets, inventory, vendors, contracts, facilities, and the services they support. Business teams such as facilities, procurement, legal, finance, compliance, and other service teams use EAM for the lifecycle management of the objects and assets they manage.
EAM and asset operations management (AOM) are closely aligned: EAM provides the structure and lifecycle data, while AOM uses that shared context to connect operations, maintenance, and service workflows, improving asset performance and outcomes.
It brings together several related capabilities:
Asset management: tracking items such as office equipment, furniture, shared devices, badges, stocked supplies, and other business-owned resources across their lifecycle.
Inventory management: maintaining visibility into stock levels, availability, replenishment needs, and item movement across locations.
Contract and vendor management: tracking suppliers, agreements, identifying unlicensed software, ownership, spend-related details, and obligations.
Service management workflows: using that data to support requests, approvals, issue resolution, maintenance, onboarding, audits, and reporting.
Service Collection Assets provides the structure for storing and relating this information. Object schema templates can help teams get started faster, while Assets Data Manager helps consolidate and reconcile information from multiple systems into a more reliable operational record.
Why asset management matters for enterprise or business teams
Fragmented data is a liability in a modern enterprise. When asset information lives in siloed spreadsheets and email threads, business teams face increased operational risk and unnecessary overhead. Or when facilities, procurement, and operations teams lack a unified source of truth, they don't just lose track of items; they lose the ability to scale efficiently. Business teams need:
Financial control: Reconcile procurement, inventory, and usage data to reduce waste, duplicate spending, and underutilized resources.
Operational continuity: Track assets, maintenance, vendors, and contracts to prevent downtime and accelerate service delivery.
Audit readiness and risk reduction: Maintain a reliable audit trail and proactively identify expiring agreements, unsupported equipment, and compliance gaps.
Data-driven lifecycle management: Connect assets to service workflows and use real-time data to automate requests, improve decisions, and move from reactive fixes to predictive maintenance.
How Service Collection supports enterprise asset lifecycle workflows
Service Collection helps enterprise business teams connect operational work to the underlying assets, contracts, and inventory records that matter. That means requests and approvals can happen with the right context built in, instead of relying on email threads or tribal knowledge.
Build the foundation with Assets
Assets lets Business teams create a relational database for the things they need to manage and functions as your CMDB, storing configuration records and their relationships. This can include locations, rooms, equipment, furniture, stock items, suppliers, contracts, employees, cost centers, and service providers.
These objects can also be connected through relationships. For example, a medical device can be linked to a location, a support vendor, a maintenance contract, and a business owner. A stock item can be linked to a storage room, a supplier, a reorder threshold, and an internal service request type.
Best practice: start with one operational domain that creates frequent requests or reporting needs, such as facilities equipment, inventory stock, or supplier contracts. Then expand as teams build confidence in the model.
Use templates to get started faster
Templates help teams avoid starting from a blank page. While many organizations begin with IT-focused templates, the same approach applies to business use cases: use prebuilt object schema structures where possible, then tailor object types, attributes, and relationships to match the team’s real workflows.
For business operations, common object categories often include:
Facilities and workplace assets
Inventory and stock items
Vendors and suppliers
Contracts and renewals
People, teams, and locations
Car parts, telecom components, cameras, security devices, etc
This gives teams a practical starting point without overdesigning the model up front.
Use Assets Data Manager to improve trust in operational data
Business asset data often comes from many places: ERP exports, spreadsheets, procurement systems, vendor reports, workplace tools, and shared documents. Those systems do not always agree.
Assets Data Manager helps teams consolidate, cleanse, and reconcile that information before it is used operationally. This is especially helpful when multiple departments maintain overlapping records for the same assets, inventory, or agreements.
With Assets Data Manager, teams can:
Bring together records from multiple operational systems
Identify duplicate or inconsistent records
Normalize naming and attribute values
Flag missing ownership or lifecycle details
Improve confidence in downstream workflows and reporting
Connect requests, approvals, and issues to business assets
Jira Service Management allows teams to connect requests and issues directly to Assets objects. That means employees can reference a room, printer, badge, inventory item, contract, or supplier directly in the request, and agents can work from the right context immediately.
For example, a facilities coordinator handling a maintenance request can see the room, building, installed equipment, vendor, and maintenance agreement. A procurement analyst reviewing a purchase request can see whether a similar item is already in stock or governed by an existing supplier agreement.
Support service-aware business operations
Many business assets support services, not just departments. A conference room supports workplace operations. A badge system supports access management. A supplier contract supports procurement continuity. An inventory store supports fulfillment.
By linking assets and operational records to the services they support, teams can more clearly understand the impact when something breaks, runs low, expires, or needs approval. This helps with prioritization, escalation, and stakeholder communication.
Automate routine lifecycle work
Automation can reduce manual effort and help business teams keep records up to date. Teams can use automation to update ownership, notify stakeholders, create follow-up tasks, or route work based on the selected asset, location, inventory item, or contract.
Common examples include:
Creating a replenishment request when stock drops below a threshold
Alerting the owner when a contract is close to renewal
Assigning a facilities request based on building or room selection
Updating asset status when a request is approved or completed
Triggering review tasks for expiring warranties, leases, or supplier agreements
Walkthrough example: from business request to operational visibility
Here is a practical example of how business team asset and service management can work across facilities, procurement, inventory, and contract workflows.
Scenario
A growing company manages office equipment, stocked supplies, vendor contracts, and facilities requests across several locations. Today, inventory is tracked in spreadsheets, supplier details live in email, and facilities teams rely on shared inboxes. Employees often submit duplicate purchase requests because they cannot see what is already available.
Step 1: Model the operational assets
The operations team creates an Assets schema for locations, rooms, equipment, stock items, vendors, contracts, and employees. They define key attributes such as asset status, location, reorder threshold, contract start and end date, supplier owner, and service category.
They also link related objects, such as:
Stock item to storage location
Equipment to room or floor
Vendor to contract
Contract to covered asset or service
Employee to assigned equipment or access item
Step 2: Consolidate source data
The team uses Assets Data Manager to pull in information from procurement exports, inventory spreadsheets, workplace systems, and vendor trackers. Duplicate supplier names are reconciled, missing locations are flagged, and outdated contract records are cleaned before publishing data into the working model.
Outcome: the team now works from cleaner, more consistent records rather than piecing together answers across multiple spreadsheets and inboxes.
Step 3: Connect the model to service workflows
The team adds Assets fields to request types in Jira Service Management. Employees can now submit requests for facility issues, inventory replenishment, purchase needs, or contract questions with the related asset or item attached.
For example:
A facilities request links to a room and the installed equipment
A procurement request links to a supplier or catalog item
An inventory request links to the stock item and storage location
A contract review request links to the active agreement and vendor
Step 4: Use automation to reduce manual effort
When inventory for a stocked item falls below its threshold, automation creates a replenishment task. When a contract is 60 days from renewal, automation creates a review issue for the procurement owner. When a facilities request is submitted for a specific office, automation routes it to the right regional team.
Step 5: Improve reporting and decision-making
Because assets, contracts, and requests are connected, business teams can report more effectively on what they own, what is being used, what needs renewal, and where operational bottlenecks exist. Leaders gain greater visibility without having to ask teams to manually rebuild reports each month.
This same visibility could also allow all contracts for one vendor to be renewed at once, reducing renewal churn and potentially lowering costs by providing visibility into all contracts.
What this looks like in practice
Stage | What the team does | Operational value |
Model business assets | Create objects for locations, inventory, suppliers, contracts, and equipment | Builds a shared operational record |
Improve data quality | Use Assets Data Manager to reconcile records from multiple sources | Creates more trust in the data teams use daily |
Connect to requests | Link business assets directly to Jira Service Management workflows | Gives agents and coordinators immediate context |
Automate lifecycle work | Trigger renewals, replenishment, routing, and updates automatically | Reduces manual effort and missed steps |
Report with confidence | Track asset usage, contract timing, stock health, and request patterns | Supports better planning and business decisions |
How to approach implementation
If you are building this capability for a business function, a phased rollout usually works best.
Start with one high-volume operational workflow, such as facilities requests, inventory replenishment, or contract renewal tracking.
Define the minimum useful set of objects, attributes, and relationships needed to support that workflow.
Use Assets Data Manager to clean and reconcile source records before scaling broadly.
Add Assets context directly into the request and approval flows where teams already work.
Use automation for reminders, routing, replenishment, and lifecycle updates.
Expand gradually into adjacent domains, such as suppliers, locations, and service-linked reporting.
Good first milestone: make it easy for a coordinator or approver to answer what item or agreement is involved, where it is, who owns it, what state it is in, and what should happen next.
Customer spotlight: Atlassian Williams F1 Team
We’re really seeing Assets as a way of achieving full visibility of the things we care about from the entire lifecycle”
Richard Sworder, Head of Product Ownership, Atlassian Williams F1 Team
Frequently asked questions
What is enterprise asset management (EAM)?
Enterprise asset management (EAM) is the practice of managing the entire lifecycle of an organization's physical assets, from procurement and maintenance to disposal. It helps business teams, such as facilities and operations, maximize asset performance, reduce operational costs, and ensure safety and compliance across the enterprise.
What is the difference between enterprise asset management (EAM) and IT asset management (ITAM)?
While ITAM (IT asset management) focuses specifically on technology assets like laptops, software licenses, and servers, enterprise asset management EAM is broader. EAM covers all business-critical physical assets, including facilities equipment, fleet vehicles, office furniture, and industrial machinery, ensuring operational continuity across non-IT departments.
How does a CMDB support business teams?
A CMDB (configuration management database) supports business teams by mapping the relationships between assets and the services they provide. Instead of a flat list, a CMDB shows dependencies, like which vendor contract covers a specific piece of equipment, allowing teams to assess the impact of issues faster.
What is asset operations management (AOM)?
Asset operations management (AOM) is a strategic framework that connects maintenance, reliability, and operations teams through shared data. By integrating these functions, AOM moves organizations away from reactive "fix-on-failure" models toward proactive, data-driven strategies that improve asset uptime and overall business productivity.