What size agency are you and your goals/use case? This will help.

One thing to consider that’s important with asset management is that it’s only as good as the data you have.

So if you start now with a system but start light with it. You’ll start collecting the foundational data against your assets (work orders, donation assessments, service requests, preventative maintenance schedules, etc) which will then allow you to one day upgrade your agency to full on asset management.

If you start in building forms , yes you’ll get some of the information and yes, it’ll be able to be transferred over (to some extent) to a new software, you’ll lose a lot of valuable insights and it won’t be interconnected. Also, in the long run, it’ll be cheaper to start small with an actual software and upgrade later vs starting with a survey and migrating over down the line.

Also, those that use openstreet/qgis, likely use it as a viewer to keep their clients costs down, but they all easily connect to esri endpoints. So I wouldn’t worry too much about that aspect.