How to choose an asset tagging company, and what to ask before you commit

What you are actually buying

It is easy to think of this as buying tags. It is not. Tags are the cheapest part of the exercise and the easiest to get right.

What you are buying is a verified register: a document that says these specific assets exist, they are in these places, they are worth this much, and each one carries an identifier that lets anyone confirm it in seconds. The tags are how that document stays true.

This distinction matters because it is the fastest way to sort suppliers. A supplier who talks mainly about tag materials and unit prices is selling you printing. A supplier who asks about the state of your current register, your site count and your audit history is quoting for the job.

Seven questions worth asking

1. What happens if my existing register is wrong?

The answer you want is a description of a verification process: physically confirming what exists, removing assets disposed of but never written off, and adding assets in use but never recorded. The answer you do not want is a request for your spreadsheet so they can print against it.

2. How do you decide which tag material goes where?

Correct answer: per asset class, based on surface and environment. Anodised aluminium for plant and outdoor, self-adhesive for indoor IT and furniture, acetone-activated where tags must resist removal, polyester for soft furnishings. A supplier quoting one material for the whole estate has not thought about it.

3. Can you tag soft furnishings?

A specific question with a revealing answer. Mattresses, carpets, curtains and upholstery need polyester tags. If a supplier has no answer, they have not worked in hospitality or healthcare, and they will leave a meaningful share of your asset value untagged.

4. Who designs the numbering scheme?

You should end up with something readable and structured, encoding site and asset class, that will still make sense in five years. Not a sequential list, and not anything that encodes data which changes, like department or custodian.

5. What exactly do I receive at the end?

Get this in writing. A register in a format you can use, with the fields you need. Not a PDF you cannot work with, and not a proprietary file that only opens in their software.

6. Do I have to buy your software?

You should not have to. Tagging and software are separate decisions. A register that only works inside one vendor’s system is a register you do not fully own.

7. What have you done at my scale, in my sector?

Ask for specifics: asset counts, site counts, years. Vague claims about experience are not evidence.

What to look at in the answers

The pricing question, handled properly

Per-tag pricing is easy to compare and tells you almost nothing on its own, because it does not cover the part that determines cost: verification.

When comparing quotes, check they include the same things:

• Physical verification of what exists, or only tagging against your existing list?
• Travel and mobilisation to each site, or a single-location price?
• The same tag materials, or a cheaper substrate on the plant and outdoor assets?
• A delivered register, or tags applied with the record left to you?

A quote that is materially cheaper is usually cheaper because one of these is missing. Our own rates are published on the pricing page, and the drivers behind them are in what asset tagging costs.

Common questions about how to choose an asset tagging company

Asset tagging happens in your working environment, during working hours, in rooms with your staff and sometimes your customers in them. Worth asking:

• How disruptive is it? A competent team works around occupancy rather than requiring rooms to be cleared.
• Who is on site? Their own trained staff or subcontracted labour hired for the week.
• What about restricted areas? Server rooms, cash offices, clinical spaces, guest rooms. There should be a process, not improvisation.
• How is our data handled? An asset register is a list of everything valuable you own and where it is. Ask how it is stored and who has access.

Sector experience is not interchangeable

The mechanics are similar everywhere. The judgement is not.

Hospitality means departmental structure and a large soft furnishings component. On the Pax Manor project the work spanned over 3,000 fixed assets across hotel departments plus an inventory count of more than 10,000 items, and the tag specification for housekeeping was different from everything else.

Utilities means distributed assets in hard environments across branches. For Thika Water and Sewerage Company, over 2,000 assets across seven branches, tag type was specified per environment rather than uniformly.

Multi-branch commercial means consistency across sites matters more than anything. Kenya Dairy Board, 5,000-plus assets across 20-plus branches, started with verifying and cleaning a register that already existed.

NGOs mean donor reporting. For Hennet, around 600 assets, capture was structured around how funders ask questions.

Ask what a supplier has done in a setting like yours, and what they learned that they would not have known from a different sector.

A short due diligence list

1. Ask for two named projects with asset counts, site counts and dates.
2. Ask what happens to assets found on site that are not on your register.
3. Ask which tag material goes on your three hardest surfaces, by name.
4. Ask to see the register format you will receive.
5. Ask whether the price includes verification or only application.
6. Ask whether you can keep your data if you never buy their software.

Any supplier worth using will answer all six without hesitation. If you want to put those questions to us, the contact details are on the pricing page, or see how the service works on asset tagging in Kenya.

Common questions

The last item on how to choose an asset tagging company is the handover. Ask what you receive at the end, in what format, and who owns it. If the answer is vague, the register will be too.

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