Technology management vital for asset delivery
January 1st 2006 Organisations increasingly depend on technology for every aspect of their business. Managing the technology and ensuring assets deliver in line with organisational goals is of growing importance, says MRO Software.
Technology is everywhere; you can't escape it no matter where you are, at home, at work, at play.
Organisations increasingly depend on technology in every sphere of their business. It is represented in sophisticated assets in all areas of their organisation, and they depend on these assets performing effectively. Managing the technology, and ensuring the assets deliver in line with organisational goals is of growing importance in the search for business efficiency, cost control and financial viability.
Traditionally, each group of assets has been managed in isolated silos within the business - production, transport, facilities and IT assets each viewed as separate unrelated entities. But no matter what type of asset, within these segments every company has critical assets - assets that have a direct and significant impact on corporate performance and profitability. It is a company's assets that create competitive advantage and earnings. If your company is not getting the maximum from its asset base, opportunities for maximising performance, efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment are being missed.
An organisation runs physical assets (regardless of whether these are production, facility, transport or IT assets) for the services these assets deliver to power the business. And increasingly, in recognition of this, asset management needs to focus on ensuring this service is delivered in line with the goals of the business. Taking the service management perspective on asset management enables organisations to ensure they derive the maximum value from their investment. This trend creates a number of different dynamics, both within and outside the organisation, including the need to integrate external suppliers into daily activities and to create new lines and mechanisms for reporting and control.
Service Level Agreements (SLA), Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Penalty Clauses become part of the daily language of interaction between the service providers, whether they are in-house or outsourced, and the business.
By managing all assets, regardless of their type, within a single unified system, organisations can benefit from a single view of the truth for all asset management, enabling best practice to cross the notional boundaries, and reducing the costs of maintaining a range of diverse asset and service management solutions into one. Across the asset classes, the processes contained within the 2 disciplines of ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) and EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) are converging. In the IT space, views of the traditional ITIL model for IT service delivery begin to incorporate preventionbased routine tasks (e.g. performance monitoring, patch application, back up strategies etc) while within the EAM space, the shift in focus from asset-centric processes to service-orientated approaches means that the concepts of problem and change management are more relevant than ever before. All processes, regardless of whether they are ITIL or EAM based, access and contribute to a single underlying Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This common repository enables interrelationships between different asset classes to be maintained and gives a single view of the truth unlike any other available on the market today.
Maximo Enterprise Suite, from MRO Software, recognises both of these realities and provides the service management tools that enable you to run your business more effectively and appropriately. It is the first (and currently only) cross discipline unified platform for managing IT, Facility, Production and Transportation services. By drawing together the people, assets and processes that combine to impact the delivery of these services, Maximo Enterprise Suite enables asset managers and service managers to react quickly to changes and unplanned events, evaluate performance and continuously implement improvements to their service delivery.
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