Digital transformation is a buzzword that has been around in enterprise asset management for many years.
But what does it mean and how do you get there?
To truly achieve digital transformation, you need to have an integrated EAM approach that enables you to maintain one source of truth inside your ERP or EAM system.
In this article, we will discuss what digital transformation in enterprise asset management looks like and what it takes to get there.
When Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) was first formalized and large organizations were first founded, all asset management processes were performed on paper. As modern EAM began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s, organizations began to implement ERPs, EAMs, and CMMS’ to manage their processes.
As technology advanced, solutions for detailed processes like maintenance planning and scheduling, permitting and safety, and capital project management, began to emerge. However, not all of these solutions integrated with an organization’s core ERP or EAM system, leading to multiple sources of truth and data lakes across systems.
In its current state, traditional EAM is performed using an ERP system and manual EAM methods, or with an ERP system, manual methods, and multiple digital solutions.
While many organizations implemented these digital solutions to streamline their processes, they are now in a spot where they have to maintain and update tens to hundreds of isolated systems just to keep their EAM processes running.
This is the challenge that true digital transformation is designed to resolve.
A true integrated enterprise asset management processes enables you to maintain one source of truth inside your ERP system, eliminate unnecessary systems, and empower your teams with easy-to-use solutions. To achieve this, organizations need one ERP system and one EAM integration vendor with an integrated platform of solutions.
“Why use a traditional ERP system plus EAM integrations?” you may ask. Most organizations have an ERP system that is used across their enterprise, and it is widely endorsed by teams like finance, HR, sales, supply chain.
Due to this, most asset management teams are urged to use the core ERP to perform their asset management too. However, ERP systems are not always designed with the functionality to manage maintenance, operations, and engineering work efficiently. This is where EAM integrations come into play.
With integrated EAM tools, organizations can maintain their ERP as their single source of truth while having the freedom to manage their work in a solution that provides increased flexibility, visibility, and efficiency.
So how do you get there?
You will want to start by taking stock of all your asset management processes and how you are managing them now. They will most likely be managed in one of the following ways:
Once you determine all your processes and how you manage them, you should identify areas that need improvement. The first areas you should focus on are the ones where you have the most inefficiencies, inaccuracies, or issues.
Once you have these prioritized in order of which processes need to be improved first, you can begin to create a roadmap for how you can transform these processes with the help of integrated digital or mobile solutions. Your roadmap can include phases for assessment, implementation, training, and continuous improvement.
Once you have identified areas of improvement within your enterprise asset management, you should identify key stakeholders you will need to get approval from to transition to more effective solutions. This could be your IT, maintenance, operations, or finance teams.
Getting key stakeholders involved ahead of time will allow you to streamline the approval process once you get to that stage. When you approach these teams about implementing a new solution, you should have a business case presented.
This should detail what your process looks like in its current state and how a new integrated solution could help you:
These are just some of the examples of the types of benefits you could highlight when trying to make the case for an upgraded solution.
Once you present a business case to key stakeholders and get them on board with your initiative, the next step is to evaluate solutions.
To select the right EAM system and integrations, you will need to consider your business needs. Generally, your organization will already have an ERP or EAM system such as SAP, IBM Maximo, or Oracle. If that is the case, you only need to evaluate the EAM integrations you need. When evaluating EAM integrations, at a high level, you should ensure they:
For some solutions, you can find checklists online that help you understand what to look for in that kind of EAM solution:
Once you get a sense for what you are looking for in a solution, you can begin research into the top solutions in the space and evaluate them based on the criteria above to ensure they will help you achieve true digital transformation (one connected source of truth).
The next piece you should consider in digitally transforming your asset management is creating standardized and centralized data. Without consistent and accurate master data, you can end up with unnecessary costs and reduce efficiencies.
To get master data standardized, organizations usually take two routes. The first option is to leverage consultants every few years for a data cleansing project. The other option is utilizing master data management and governance technology to maintain data quality consistently.
While the first option can enable you to get your data cleansed, there aren’t processes in place after the master data project to keep your information organized. Leveraging a master data solution enables you to get your data clean and keep it clean.
As you implement new solutions and work towards digitally transforming your processes, you should provide comprehensive training on the new system. This will ensure that solutions are used properly from the start and increase the chance for high user adoption.
One thing to consider during this stage is that some of your team members may be resistant to changing from old processes to new processes. EAM solutions that offer easy to use interfaces and robust online training programs can help to combat resistance to change.
By selecting a solution with built out online learning, you can easily adapt to changes in personnel with efficient, already built out training programs. This helps to increase the speed at which you can train new teams and improve their comprehension and use of the solution.
Once you have implemented a new solution, you should track your asset management performance to identify improvements. This will help you prove how the investment enabled you to achieve improved efficiency, visibility, cost savings, and more.
For example, if you implemented a planning and scheduling solution, you could track schedule adherence, maintenance backlog, wrench time, or other KPIs your organization measures the success of maintenance on.
An additional step you can take towards digital transformation is to transition manual paper processes to mobile solutions. By bringing your paper processes to mobile devices, you free up your technician’s and operator’s hands and enable them to focus on the task at hand.
Well-built mobile solutions allow your techs to go out on site and capture information directly on their mobile device, syncing it directly to your ERP in real-time. Additionally, you can set required fields to ensure that all necessary information is captured in the field.
When you make a business case for mobile work management and execution solutions, you can prove value by focusing on decreased printing costs, increased accuracy, improved efficiency, increased wrench time, and enhanced visibility.
Once you have gotten your asset management digitally transformed, the next step is to begin implementing asset performance management solutions that help you achieve predictive maintenance.
To do this, you will need asset sensors in place and a data historian system attached to the sensors. After you have these things in place, you can select an asset performance management solution that pulls information from your data historian and uses artificial intelligence to create asset models that help you monitor your assets.
Well-designed asset performance management solutions will enable you to receive high level alerts of critical asset issues so that you can focus on the most important issues rather than false alarms.
Achieving true digital transformation with integrated asset management processes enables organizations to streamline processes, decrease costs, and maximize visibility.
Digital transformation is the state all organizations are moving towards because it makes the most financial sense. Why use 200 isolated solutions and paper processes to manage your asset management processes when you could slash that in half or even more?
Integrated asset management seeks to do just that. In an ideal state, you use one ERP system (with connected instances across sites) and one EAM integration platform to address specialized needs like planning and scheduling, STO management, permitting and safety, operational risk management, capital project management, and more.
By digitally transforming enterprise asset management, organizations can:
By analyzing your asset management processes and working toward an integrated EAM process, you can begin to successfully digitally transform your asset management.
To make this process easier, you can partner with an EAM vendor who can show you how you can approach this transformation in achievable phases.
Want to learn how Prometheus Group can help? Reach out to us today to discover how you can achieve digital transformation with the Prometheus Platform.
EAM or enterprise asset management monitors an asset for its entire lifecycle with a company. This includes asset health monitoring, performance adjustments, maintenance, and eventual replacement.
Asset management can be done manually through in-person inspections and paper reporting. However, digital strategies for asset management unify these systems in a central EAM solution. This includes real-time asset monitoring, maintenance scheduling, labor planning, part ordering, and more.
EAM technology refers to dedicated software solutions for asset-intensive businesses. This includes analytics and reporting functions, master data management, asset performance management, planning and scheduling modules, and more.
Enterprise asset management technology helps businesses increase their productivity and profitability. It does so by reducing production downtime, increasing asset health, and optimizing analytics.
EAM technology can come with risks, particularly in the transition phase. Without proper implementation, EAM could complicate a business whose workflow is not optimized. The consequences could include extra costs, training time, and administrative labor.
In response to the increasing pressure on asset-intensive organizations to remain productive, efficient, and low cost, organizations are identifying EAM integrations as the solution. With solutions that enable organizations to maintain one source of truth inside their ERP, while performing their daily tasks with an easy-to-use solution, organizations can streamline processes and perform work more accurately and efficiently.