Local governments are being asked to operate on increasingly tight budgets. New systems to reduce asset management waste could be a godsend.
Municipalities face enormous challenges. By the time the pandemic hit at the start of last year, many had not fully recovered from the financial crisis of 2008. The challenges of the pandemic have increased demands, while resources have been painfully tight.
Budgets have come under strain. Doing more with less is the motto. Across the board, operations are having to reduce waste and maximize efficiency. It’s an ongoing struggle and one of the key battlegrounds will be asset management.
Local governments have to manage a huge amount of physical assets. However, the systems used to manage them are outdated, segregated and inefficient. Managers are operating on an incomplete view of their asset infrastructure. Inevitably, this leads to waste which in turn leads to additional costs.
A solution lies in a next generation asset management solution such as IBM Maximo.
What is IBM Maximo?
Maximo has been a big name in asset management since the eighties. In 2006 it was bought by IBM and has evolved to become one of the leading cloud based enterprise asset management platforms on the market. It offers a range of services including purchasing, inventory, management of locations, a service desk and work planning.
Operating on the cloud it can be used to manage enterprise assets around the world or to bring together IT assets into a single space. By doing so, it offers a host of benefits which help businesses compete in the digital age.
Reduced costs
The most obvious is the ability to lighten those budgetary pressures. Many municipalities find themselves overwhelmed with a patchwork system of spreadsheets, databases, and separate systems managing different parts of their inventory.
There is no overall vision of asset movement worldwide and, as such, an enormous potential for additional costs. IBM Maximo breaks down these different segments bringing systems under one banner. It gives you a full view of your assets in one, easily manageable location.
It fits around you
One of the biggest barriers to innovation is a reluctance among some staff to change. Employees may have been using the same systems for many years. They have become comfortable operating in a certain way and will resist change, even if that change is intended to make their lives easier.
When new systems are implemented without proper foresight, they can often do more harm than good. Glitches in the transition, together with problems caused by the unfamiliar nature of new technologies, can cause more problems than they solve.
Staff will often configure their own locally based workarounds to keep things operating smoothly. This can work against the goal of achieving a streamlined, unified system. IBM Maximo offers a high degree of flexibility allowing itself to be adapted to suit any situation.
Provides insights into your inventory
Getting control of your assets gives you access to data and metrics which can inform your asset management. It offers the prospect of predictive maintenance, permitting financially optimized maintenance processes.
It delivers KPIs which can be tied to service level agreements to keep all personnel up to date on how systems are performing against expectations.
It allows users to manage data through key performance indicators (KPIs), charts, and IBM Watson analytics to bring data to life like never before. Assets can be connected to the computer work making it possible for them to be monitored and moved remotely. Its SRO data replicator connects its systems operating on deployed assets to central systems through reliable, low bandwidth replication.
Making it work
These are just three benefits Maximo can bring to operations. However, as with all systems, the key often lies in the implementation. Our expert services help develop a complete and bespoke implementation with our IBM Maximo Accelerator℠.
To do this we offer the following:
· A review of existing asset management architecture.
· We’ll design a cloud hosted IBM Maximo instance running on IBM Cloud.
· Installation and configuration of IBM Maximo multi-region high available configuration.
· Configure IBM Maximo according to customer’s asset management requirements.
· Review and import existing asset management data into IBM Maximo.
· Conduct an asset management lifecycle best practices workshop.
· Develop and provide training services to IT staff and field teams.
· Conduct production rollouts of IBM Maximo.
· Provide ongoing IBM Maximo Managed Application Support.
This tried and trusted approach gives you all the tools you need to ensure IBM Maximo is implemented smoothly in a way which will offer real value to your organization. To learn more about our IBM Maximo Accelerator℠ email letsdothis@stonedoorgroup.com.
About the Author
Eva Baez is a Senior Consultant at Stone Door Group with 22+ years of experience in IBM Maximo & Enterprise Asset Management as well as IBM Cloud technologies. Fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.