Effective asset lifecycle management cuts maintenance costs, avoids business downtime and is vital to plan for smarter capital deployment. How can a CAFM solution help control the value and lifespan of the equipment that is central to your operations?
The asset lifecycle is the journey of a company’s assets from acquisition to end-of-life. Traditionally, it’s broken down by Facilities Managers into four stages:
Being able to accurately monitor and manage each stage of this lifecycle can help businesses:
But many businesses don’t have a complete record of all their assets in one place. They may be spread over different systems and in different physical locations. Many companies are using spreadsheets rather than dedicated software, which can make it a difficult solution to maintain and scale, particularly across multiple sites.
But even if there is a definitive list of all your assets in one location, they may not be digitally linked with warranties or service histories. Without this kind of oversight you may be flying blind when it comes to controlling the long term cost impact of asset maintenance, compliance issues and opportunities to improve reliability.
A good CAFM solution should help you:
Building a centralised electronic asset register is where you can really start taking control of FM time and resources. Creating a single source of truth around the location and condition of your key assets instantly gives you a handle on exactly what you are responsible for - as well as potential areas of risk. The right FM software will give you the tools to rapidly capture the details of existing assets. It should allow you to import information via separate spreadsheets or manual entry, while structuring the data for consistency.
This data might include:
The right CAFM should let you ‘walk the floor’ with your mobile phone or tablet, recording the details of your assets as you go. These tools need to help you compile your register at pace:
To make this happen you really need a ‘mobile-first’ CAFM platform that tightly knits together your asset register with your workflow management tools.
Once the asset is in the register it should automatically trigger workflows within the CAFM to prompt engineers to:
A well managed asset register working as part of a CAFM will let you instantly review current and outstanding maintenance requirements including:
The register should also contain the service history of each asset. Work orders should link to these details so that engineers are fully aware of what work has been done on the asset before and what condition the equipment was in when last inspected. This will ensure the engineer attends properly equipped with the right spare parts on hand, and improve the rate of your first-time fixes.
A great asset register not only needs to tell you what assets require maintenance spend but also which assets are covered by a warranty or service guarantee..
The asset register should store vital data about asset warranties that automatically trigger cost management activities:
The way the CAFM system collects and maintains asset data is key to its success. The old cliche is true - if you put garbage in, you’ll only ever get garbage out.
Dedicated, mobile friendly portals for engineers will make it easy for them to:
By capturing accurate real time maintenance and spend data, a great CAFM system will help you visualise important budget and maintenance trends at an aggregated level. But they will also allow the FM team to drill down on the detail to act quickly:
Without the right data showing historic trends around spend and depreciation - planning your budget can end up just being guess work.
Reports generated in a CAFM by data in real-time, will allow FMs to accurately predict:
A data-driven strategy will allow you to create a more proactive maintenance operation.
Data collected from the detail of your asset management should help you access all the ‘big data’ you need for strategic decision making around CapEx.
The dashboards in the system should let you slice, dice and visualise the data to answer vital commercial questions around making smarter investments:
Planning for the smart deployment of your capital should aim to not only optimise your spend but also improve the quality of the workplace. The data can show you where failing equipment is only likely to deteriorate more and where serious disruption is likely if action is not taken.
It can tell you where capital spend can alleviate or prevent worsening customer and worker experiences.
But only an accurate, well-maintained asset register will support this granular level of decision making.
Asset lifecycle management is vital to protect your business from the commercial and compliance risks of unreliable equipment, unpredictable maintenance needs and the dangers of budgeting guesswork.
A CAFM system with the right asset management features combines the granular control you need for efficient day to day equipment management - with the ‘big data’ vital for strategic procurement and maintenance decision making.
Most importantly, it can help you optimise spend, while at the same time optimising the experiences of the people who use your buildings every day.