Enterprise Asset Management Best Practices: The Four Key Principles

by | May 12, 2020

Any and every asset acquired by a business organization represents an investment. Whether that investment is great or small, it is vital for an enterprise to exact a substantial return and derive maximum value from it. Failure to maximize any investment transforms a potential asset into a potential liability, resulting in a significant financial setback and loss.

This is why enterprise asset management matters, particularly in large organizations that rely greatly on high-value physical assets such as heavy equipment, vehicles, industrial devices, and spare parts to remain operational, productive, and profitable. A solid and scalable enterprise asset management strategy can spell the difference between fully realizing an asset’s absolute potential to drive value to the organization, and failing to recognize an asset’s significance and reap substantial gains from it.

What is Enterprise Asset Management?

Enterprise asset management is a holistic approach to managing the entire lifecycle of all physical assets owned by an organization, from procurement to disposal and all the stages in between. It is an integrated set of various processes, systems, and tools to effectively manage and maintain all operational assets so they perform at target service levels.

Simply put, enterprise asset management is all about keeping equipment, vehicles, devices, and other business-critical assets in optimal condition through effective scheduling, improved performance tracking and reporting, detailed operational and maintenance cost analysis, predictive analytics, and preventive maintenance. EAM is about maximizing asset utilization through optimized asset care until the asset has reached the end of its service life and is disposed of and replaced.

Four Key Principles of Asset Management

1. Comprehensive and Accurate Data Capture

Accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date data is the bedrock on which a solid enterprise asset management strategy is built. Each stage of the equipment lifecycle requires precise information so all decisions are driven by solid data and every action performed is based on highly reliable and actionable insights.

However: Enterprise asset management involves several departments and multiple roles. Using a traditional approach to information management can result in data silos scattered across the organization. The absence of a unified platform to capture, organize, manage, and distribute data can lead to a host of problems, such as inaccurate purchase order details, inability to spot anomalies in the procurement process, and assets getting deployed to the field when it’s scheduled for maintenance.

An enterprise management software platform with powerful data capture and management capabilities ensures that information is centralized and updated across the organization. 

2. Full Visibility into Asset Lifecycle

Unhindered visibility into every phase of the asset lifecycle allows all EAM role players to perform their functions effectively and efficiently. Visibility is critical in ensuring that the organization orders the right equipment, devices, vehicles, and parts, down to exact model numbers and the right quantity to keep their inventory levels optimal.

Visibility enables users to quickly spot issues in their assets’ performance, recognize problems as they occur, pull them out of rotation, and schedule them for maintenance and repair. Visibility shortens an asset’s downtime and prolongs its service life, generating more value for its organization. With visibility into an asset’s lifecycle, users are able to reallocate their assets and deploy them to critical activities to maintain overall business continuity.

The benefits of inventory visibility include enhanced and accurate tracking of items regardless of where they are in the asset lifecycle. Aside from improving the precision of order requests and auditing, inventory managers can quickly spot order anomalies the moment they occur, enabling them to immediately adjust and respond appropriately. This helps them save time and money while preventing any complications that may arise from inventory mishaps.

3. Effortless and Seamless Communication Across Different Roles

An enterprise asset has a long and complex life, and passes through many pairs of hands. Because of this, enterprise asset management requires constant communication and collaboration throughout the organization, across and between multiple individuals and departments. The smoother and more seamless these lines of communication, the better enterprise assets are taken care of. It is where there are gaps in communication that errors and inefficiencies creep in.

With the right software platform, mechanics can take a look at their scheduled tasks and priorities and message dispatch for additional instruction, observation, and clarification. Field technicians and mechanics can submit their field data and field reports to management directly from the site, effectively accelerating the flow of information and enabling communication in real-time. Inventory managers can look at automated purchase orders and inform involved departments for confirmation, approval, and/or clarification. In the event that an anomaly is detected, managers can rapidly take decisive actions, make the necessary adjustments, or cancel the purchase order.

Because the flow of communication across people and departments is seamless with EAM, the collaboration becomes a breeze. Different individuals from different departments can access the same version of information, ensuring their tasks, decisions, and activities are driven by the same data. This eliminates the risks of miscommunication and misunderstanding, empowering people within the organization and those in the field to perform at their absolute peak.

4. Preventative (not Reactive) Maintenance

Maintenance is very expensive when an asset is in a severe state of damage and far from ideal operational conditions. Through data analysis, preventive and predictive analytics, organizations with solid EAM initiatives are able to cut down their operational costs immensely. They can react to issues with assets before they become too serious, and ensure that interventions take place before they are too expensive. 

Preventive and predictive maintenance increases equipment reliability. This results in maximized asset utilization and minizmied equipment downtime. With enterprise asset management, organizations are able to schedule and perform maintenance on their assets long before performance issues arise and blow into significant problems.

The LiquidFrameworks FieldFX EAM Module

The FieldFX EAM (enterprise asset management) module radically improves the way enterprise organizations manage, track, utilize, and maintain their physical assets. As part of the LiquidFrameworks FieldFX suite, FX EAM delivers real-time visibility into all physical assets including their status, schedules, reports, recommendations, and more.

The FX EAM module enhances physical asset management by providing process and intelligence that allows for increased equipment reliability, systematic preventative and predictive maintenance, and efficient inventory management. The EAM module helps companies institute more effective and more efficient processes by digitizing and streamlining every part of asset management. Customizable to different user personas, the module ensures that maintenance managers, inventory managers, operations managers, and mechanics all work within one integrated system.