Conduct an inventory of your assets: The first step is to know what you have. Beyond that, know what you use as well as the last time you used it. Many times, executives do not even know what assets they own. This is the first step in knowing the opportunity and building an effective strategy.

Understand the asset needs of your organization: Cost avoidance is a term used when an organization is able to take an unused asset from one location and use it in another - avoiding the new purchase at the location in need. If a manager in one location sells his asset while a manager in another buys the same asset new – this is truly money wasted. Communicate internally the desire to clean up your inventory and get employees to buy in to the process.

Understand the asset’s current market value: The laws of supply and demand are always in motion. Early in 2009, for example, the commercial assets market began to slow. Because of the construction slowdown and excess capacity from organizations with large fleets, supply of things like heavy equipment and rolling stock was high, but demand stayed constant resulting in lower market prices for assets. Many organizations responded to the lower prices by choosing to sit on the sidelines to wait for prices to recover. Over the past month, a shift is once again occurring. Supply is dwindling while demand has stayed constant. This reverse shift is causing prices to start to rise. Now is the time to act to maximize the market value of your assets.

Build a plan: It is important to understand the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the assets and build a broad plan around the acquisition, management and disposition process. In fact, most large organizations have a proactive corporate strategy to automatically address the flow of assets. Create a calendar and methodically begin the process. In areas such as fleet vehicles, many set a fleet refresh time of seven to nine years. They have learned it becomes more expensive to continue to maintain and operate a fleet asset beyond its lifespan than it is to simply buy a newer one.

Execute: Nike said it best, "Just do it" - but be smart about it. When asset disposition strategies fail, they fail for two reasons: 1) no one owns the process; 2) when someone does own the process, they are not empowered to make decisions. The solution is to have a proactive strategy with an Asset Disposition company. It minimizes the organizational disruption and outsources the process management to a third party held accountable for results. Who owns the process depends on the organization, the asset and the frequency of the disposition.