It’s Time to Back Those Assets Up! Upgrade your CMMS with MentorAPM

It’s Time to Back Those Assets Up! Upgrade your CMMS with MentorAPM

Utilities are seeing the benefits of improving asset management and putting new strategic asset management plans in place. Is your CMMS or Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system ready to support these plans? This is the year to upgrade your asset management software and here are some good reasons to do it.

1.     It’s old.

Lots of utilities are struggling with old on-premise systems that are reaching end of life and are being forced into expensive upgrades of the same old system. This is the year to take advantage of all the benefits of an agile, cloud-based, true multi-tenant solution like MentorAPM. Seamless software updates, leading edge cloud architecture and APIs, and super simple licensing make it easy to own. Advanced capabilities in a streamlined modern interface make it easy to use.

2.     Nobody’s using it.

Countless utilities have spent thousands and even millions of dollars implementing asset management solutions that nobody wants to use. Utility managers are frustrated because the solutions are difficult to work with and don’t help them get their work done. Maybe the configuration didn’t go well and the implementation was never fully completed, or their staff just doesn’t like it. Whatever the reason, the system is sitting on the shelf.

3.     It only does work orders.

Asset management is about way more than work orders. Asset management is about coordinating activities across your organization to get the most value out of your assets over their whole lifecycle.  A simple ticketing system CMMS can help you get organized and off clipboards and spreadsheets, but it won’t help you set priorities, evaluate and understand how your assets are performing, optimize your preventative maintenance (PM) program, identify asset criticality and risk, or create risk-informed capital plans. An end-to-end asset lifecycle management system will help you balance cost, risk, and performance for a sustainable and resilient utility.

4.     It doesn’t look after your whole utility.

If you are responsible for both network and treatment plant assets, you need a CMMS that can support your entire utility. GIS-driven solutions are great for distribution and collection systems, but not ideal for managing the assets inside your water production or wastewater treatment plant. Asset management solutions that don’t have integrated GIS are not very helpful for managing your networks. Instead, you can upgrade to a holistic asset management system that includes excellent GIS capabilities but isn’t restricted to GIS-driven architecture and workflows, so you can look after your pipes and your plants.

5.     It doesn’t help you identify risk and set priorities.

It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by all the fires that need to be put out today. It’s also very easy to focus on optimizing efficiency and closing work without stopping to ask if you are doing the right work. To truly move from being a reactive organization with a massive backlog of deferred maintenance, to being a proactive, agile organization that knows what its priorities are every day, you must start with understanding your risks. MentorAPM’s criticality and risk assessment tools help you confidently identify risk, set priorities, and then target your resources. You’ll be doing the right things, to the right assets, at the right time.

6.     It doesn’t have seamless mobile work.

Today, everyone on your team knows how to use a mobile device and you know that the new generation joining your crews expects to use phones and tablets. Old asset management systems that don’t have any mobile capability or rely on separate mobile platforms that require clunky data transfer just make everything harder than it needs to be. Mentor Mobile seamlessly takes work out into the field and empowers your crew to be more productive while improving quality of data collected.

7.     It’s time to update your asset register and condition assessments.

Field validation of your asset inventory and collection of attribute data is an expensive and time-consuming exercise. Add in condition assessment and you need a very big budget. Yet asset attribute and condition information is vital for effective asset management, maintenance and planning. MentorAPM Asset Lens crushes the time and cost of collecting asset data and assessing condition. Asset Lens also makes it feasible to regularly assess condition for up-to-date decision support.

8.     You can’t get the information you need out of it.

Reporting is everything! If you can’t get information out of your system, you can’t make better decisions about how you are managing your assets. MentorAPM makes all your data available to use with any business intelligence reporting tools. We have an integration with Power BI ready to go to make it even easier. You can also get around your GIS reporting backlog with our advanced MapViews capabilities that allow anyone to visualize asset and program information in a map view.

9.     You need asset management support.

Asset management is not just the responsibility of the maintenance department. Different people in different divisions have different responsibilities and must make different decisions about the same assets. It is vital that you have a single source of truth that supports your whole team. The MentorAPM platform helps guide everyone to asset management best practices across the whole asset lifecycle and is supported by our team of in-house asset management experts.

When you start with MentorAPM, we support you out of the gate with our Asset Management Foundations workshops. This training is designed to get everyone on the same page, connect strategic asset management plans to asset maintenance and care activities, and set up the successful implementation and adoption of the new system.

10.     It costs too much!

It’s highly likely that your current asset management system is costing you way more than it should. Old school licensing models, expensive annual maintenance fees, forced upgrades, extended implementations, costly customizations, on-premise servers and middleware inflict a monstrous total cost of ownership. Don’t be hamstrung by the sunk cost of past investment. This year you can cut the strings and embrace a simplified licensing model, benefit from the streamlined costs and maintenance of a SaaS solution and experience an agile implementation with quicker time to value.

11.  Changing is not as hard as you think.

Perhaps the thought of changing your asset management system is about as appealing as a root canal. We get it. You may have invested in the previous system only to have it not work. Or you know your data is a mess. Or you just don’t know where to begin. That’s okay. We have been doing this a long time and we know exactly where to begin and how to help you get your data organized. We know how to get your team on board and train them to move from the old ways of doing things to the new, better ways.

Change is hard, no doubt about it. But it’s not as painful as not changing.

We’re here to help. If you’re ready to explore upgrading your CMMS or asset management solution this year, give us a call. Make this the year you’re going to kick asset management, instead of it kicking you.

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