Asset Management - Contextual Research

The existing Asset Management module in Jisr was functionally inadequate — clients could not properly track asset availability or control asset allocation. The system had no clear status model, no audit trail, and no way to manage the full lifecycle of a company asset (from purchase to allocation to archiving).

Method: contextual interviews with 5 Jisr clients across different company sizes, plus a benchmark study of four competitors and solutions from other sectors — technology among them — to understand how asset lifecycles are handled outside HR. Sessions explored daily asset workflows, pain points with the current system, and the workarounds clients had developed.

Key findings: clients needed a clear asset status system (Available / Allocated / In-Repair / Damaged / Archived), the ability to allocate assets directly from the employee profile, full lifecycle tracking with history logs, and support for rich asset metadata (brand, model, serial number, purchase cost, warranty date, attachments).

The research revealed a core mental model mismatch: the system treated assets as static records, while clients experienced them as dynamic objects with a lifecycle. The redesign centered on a status-driven model with five clear states and context-sensitive actions at each state.

A second major insight: asset management was deeply tied to employee profiles. HR managers expected to see an employee’s assets when viewing their profile — not in a separate module.