Our company has grown quite quickly and I am facing new tasks which I did not think I'd need to deal with. Recently we've come ot a point where we have 100+ Devices (Routers, Bridges, Computers, Laptops, VOIP Phones etc). The other day I was quite frightened when I asked for an inventory and no one had one.

I want to start tagging all equipment and recording serials to begin tracking our inventory and ensuring we have a proper record of what equipment we have. Does anyone have advice as to how to go about 1. Convincing the higher ups why we need to do this and 2. What software or strategies might work?

Keep in mind this is not for furniture, office equipment etc but IT specific equipment. I'm concerned over people 1. Stealing the physical devices and 2. Losing track of configuration data etc in case we'd need to do a wipe and restore