During the last twenty years the defining aspect of working in the field of asset management has been change. This is particularly true in the last ten years. Today’s asset maintenance is seen as a creator of value rather than as a cost to be managed.
Fortunately we respond well to change; generally we have been quick to adapt new technologies and methods. Whether it be reliability-centered maintenance, mobile working technologies, bar-coding solutions, or sophisticated outsourcing strategies; asset maintainers have been quick to take advantage of advances in thinking, technology and management practices.
But for some reason we are lagging behind one of the more recent and dramatic changes in the way business solutions are delivered. Software-as-a-Service (SaS.) is one of these areas. The model is extremely simple, online systems, cost effective implementation and running, no IT infrastructure, accessible anywhere / any time.
Sounds like a great solution, and for many business areas it has changed the way that technology is bought and used. For example, Salesforce.com is an online sales management tool, (CRM) it costs less than most of its competitors (a lot less!) and is a great tool. It has about 27,000 licenses today.
Likewise we can see this trend in other areas, Net Suite provides a cost effective alternative to modern ERP systems, and its majority shareholder is Larry Ellison of Oracle™. Throughout the word we see similar systems with similar success stories.
From Time Sheet management, to Facilities Management helpdesks, through to Payroll Management; all delivered over the internet at a fraction of the implementation price and with virtually no ongoing costs aside from the annual license fees. Google gets it. They are now gearing up to deliver a whole host of business applications over the web. From email to documents, spreadsheets to commerce, they are taking the business world by storm. (The author is a committed user of Google products)
Yet for some reason the level of take up within the fields of asset management has been very slow, even though we were early movers in this area. A company called eMaint started out in the USA in 1986 and has pioneered the software as a service industry from a maintenance perspective. Today they provide their system to companies in facilities management, manufacturing and processing, utilities and energy companies and a host of other sectors.
So if the technology is available, the total cost of ownership is reduced, the functionality is similar (or even better in some cases), and an end to upgrades (lucrative IT industry cash-cow) why isn’t every asset-rich company now using this way of managing their assets?
Unfortunately where there is great change there is great opportunity, and sometimes progress gets hijacked. In virtually every industrial sector literally billions of dollars are spent needlessly every year implementing outdated technologies, maintaining and sustaining the infrastructure to keep it all going, and then implementing the latest upgrade to hit the market.
Why - because the EAM / ERP industry (Selling, implementing and providing services for enterprise management systems) is a gigantic product driven sector with a lot of momentum. According to the ARC Advisory Group 2006 Worldwide EAM Market Study the top ten EAM providers raked in around US$1.5 billion in 2006 in software license and support revenues alone.
So there is a lot at stake. And when companies come to the conclusion that they need to invest more effort in asset management, they are generally not fully aware of the options they have.
For example, in recent time, the past four years say, the UK water industry has been struggling to come to grips with some of the requirements placed on it by the industry’s financial regulator.
More than at any time in their past their future revenues are now tied to asset planning and how well they embrace risk management within their asset plans. While they have been lost in the detail of what they have to do, and how they can use their multi-million dollar systems to do this, the entire opportunity of low cost asset management systems has been overlooked.
This sort of reaction to crisis is more common than we would think. Outsourced asset management providers, infrastructure managers, equipment vendors providing after sales maintenance services all tend to get caught up in the emergencies of the moment and miss the opportunities that Software as a Service presents to them.
As a professional within this area I see one advantage that online systems are able to offer above and beyond anything else on the market. They are cost effective and rapid to implement!
This means more time and resources available to do the work of asset management, rather than doing the work of managing a system!
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