What to look for in an ideal asset management solution
When it comes to selecting software for asset lifecycle management, an imperative to 'do more with less' means forward-thinking organisations recognise the need for a unified approach.
An enterprise approach caters to whole-of-organisation requirements by linking applications, knowledge and data across your organisation. That helps you lead from a big picture viewpoint.
Decisions based on reliable, consolidated data are more likely to save your organisation time and money, and benefit employees and consumers alike.
Checklist of non-negotiable features
Although it’s clear you need an enterprise solution, there’s a wide variety of products and vendors. How do you begin to refine your options? Here are some features that you can’t live without:
- Comprehensive physical asset register
- Maintenance history and asset valuations
- Work and maintenance planning and management
- Work order creation and service level management
- Booking system for plant and fleet
- Work scheduling and contractor management
- Skills database to match human resources to work requirements
- Oversight of occupational health and safety
- Defect and risk records and management
- Detailed inventory and materials information
- Procurement and supply chain management
- Financial management, cost recovery and cost analysis
Five key factors to consider
Once you’ve checked off features specific to asset management, it’s important to consider how well a solution will support your broader organisational goals. For the benefits of integration to flow throughout your organisation, you need to ensure solutions are compatible with your operational needs, workflows and future plans.
These are the essential aspects of an enterprise software solution that enable you to run a finely-tuned organisation:
1. Comprehensive
Your solution should seamlessly share data with departments such as finance, purchasing, contracting, procurement, logistics, maintenance, operations and human resources. Look for a vendor who can cover all key business domains, with simple and effective integration between different applications. Integrated financials and asset management information is a must-have to understand exactly how you are performing (actuals versus budget), and gauge whether scope creep or delays are affecting your budget.
What to look for:
- Comprehensive physical asset register
- Maintenance history and asset valuations
2. Digital by default
Empower your organisation to adopt new work practices, work flexibly and capture data anytime, anywhere. Solutions that prioritise mobility and availability lead to cost reductions. For instance, it means crews don’t need to come back to the office for new work orders or to update asset information, yet you still have full visibility of what was done and when. Features like GIS functionality should be supported even when devices aren’t connected to a network—to help you accurately map all assets, including those that are remote or underground.
What to look for:
- Device-agnostic solution with high availability
- Mobile apps that function connected and disconnected (no Wi-Fi)
3. Intelligent
A smart solution connects people with information relevant to their needs quickly and reliably. Real-time data enables you to match the right people and resources to jobs based on availability, location and skill. It also ensures related departments and teams have up-to-date information, and that leaders have actionable insights to make timely decisions, especially if data about assets is easily fed into business intelligence and analytics tools. Favour software that helps you move from reactive to proactive maintenance and preventative work, to achieve economies of scale.
What to look for:
- Real-time data, models and automation that optimise decisions
- Easy integration with business intelligence and analytics tools
4. Connected and accessible
Becoming more transparent and responsive to customer needs is important to maintain your social licence to operate. Poor communication often stems from inflexible information management. It’s vital to invest in connected, user-friendly software that enables frontline staff to give people a positive experience. For example, your solution should allow you to use real-time internal data for customer-centric experiences such as engaging web portals, well-timed automated alerts, and self-service options for the community.
What to look for:
- Data can be accessed & re-packaged for customer-facing content
- Easy-to-use interfaces that enable non-technical staff to leverage data
5. Secure and evolving
Your data is a valuable business asset, so your solution must support sound data governance. Ensuring your organisation's information is consistent, valid, and accurate means you need a trustworthy vendor with ingrained technical expertise and a commitment to continuous improvement. Ask about their cycle of ongoing updates, their experience in supporting cloud deployments and their ownership of the technologies underpinning their delivery of Software as a Service (SaaS).
What to look for:
- Reliable, well-managed network and cloud infrastructure
- True SaaS that makes deployment easier and more cost effective
These are the top things to look for when choosing enterprise asset management software—to ideally support the complex processes and decisions within your council.
Discover More:
Optimise your asset management with a lifecycle approach
5 reasons to revisit asset management
See the big picture with a single, integrated view of assets
Keep exploring
Visit our Asset Management Hub for further resources on how you can reimagine your asset management processes.
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