Phil Schwarz, Industry Strategist – Energy, OpenText
Data, it has been said, is the ‘oil’ of the 21st century. Everything runs on it, and it can be mined for value.
But there is so much data that it is becoming difficult for companies to manage it. To thrive in this new age of information, any organisation that runs on data must transform their infrastructure in a way that makes data easily accessible, without exposing it to risk.
That’s no mean feat given the rise of big data and all the digital applications and devices we use to manage our lives and work. Those applications produce massive quantities of information that must be stored somewhere, and then getting to that information and parsing it to deliver ongoing and optimised services can feel overwhelming.
What is asset information management?
In answer to this challenge, asset information management is becoming increasingly valuable to all kinds of businesses.
In simple terms, asset information management encompasses all the processes and solutions companies put in place to manage all their assets. Digging deeper, it’s about making sure they can rely on being able to access the data about those assets in a timely and accurate fashion to make the best possible decisions about how to deploy those assets.
Doing so means companies can manage assets and work tasks safely and effectively throughout the lifecycle of those assets – and with so much of today’s information stuck in siloes, that’s an important capability to realise.
Why is it important?
Asset information management systems are vital because they enable project collaboration across teams. They give greater visibility over the status of assets to capital project teams, operations and maintenance personnel and even external collaborators if required.
Why does this matter? While data is vast abundance, energy is not. We currently live in a world where energy supply is limited and data must be organized, integrated, automated, and secured so that it moves effectively and efficiently across and outside the enterprise all in effort to reliably, sustainably, and cost-effectively deliver energy to the world. This greater visibility will enable organisations to be more proactive in how they maintain and deploy assets, leading to greater resource efficiency and less downtime. And when you add those things together, the cost saving potential is high.
But the right kind of tools for asset information management can also help to drive revenue by facilitating better integrations between teams and therefore more holistic business decision making.
Asset information management in practice
Saving money and driving incoming revenue is a sure tell that asset information management has a lot to offer businesses, no matter the sector.
Sure, sounds good. But how does it work in practice? Here are my 5 tips to optimise the way you manage your asset information.
- Leverage deep integrations
Asset-intensive industries often struggle with efficiency due to siloes and disparate information sources. To get over this, organisations can take advantage of advances on content and enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions with deep integrations. This can break down information siloes and ensure information on assets is surfaced when and where needed.
- Improve cross-team collaboration and process automation
Legacy processes like manual document review cycles can cause extremely expensive project delays. Now, technology exists to avoid those slowdowns, and companies should be looking to deploy technology to automate exchange, collaboration, review, and markup processes to shorten feedback cycles and accelerate task completion.
Also, online collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams should be integrated into information management applications to ensure the seamless flow of information across systems. This enables better collaboration and visibility over how resources are being deployed.
- Enable progressive handovers
Seamless handover of either physical or digital assets at the end of projects or allocations is crucial. To save time during this process, companies can again leverage EAM structures to enable progressive handovers. Progressive handovers enable teams to get digital twins of the asset prior to receiving the actual asset, and source documentation is integrated so that all stakeholders maintain visibility over status and performance of the asset.
- Adopt advanced technology
Digital strategies that connect EAM with critical business processes should form the backbone of operations going forward. Cloud-based information management systems are opening new opportunities for the enhancement of processes using data science, machine learning and AI.
Advanced data capture, ML and AI can help organizations automate data extraction, enrich content, enable bulk loading, and reveal better insights about assets. Employees can then be empowered to make better business decisions, improving operational efficiency, and simplifying workflows.
- Automate policy-driven processes
Last on the list of tactics to optimise asset information management is the automation of processes subject to regulatory or compliance requirements. Companies should institute optimized processes for the governance of data, putting compliance best practices in place.This not only protects the business from liability, but also ensures employees have safeguards in place so that they don’t use the company’s information in the wrong way. Many policy-driven processes, such as auditable documentation, can be automated to save time, with a human-in-the-loop approach to ensure everything remains compliant.
The key to mastering modern work
Companies can master the modern approach to working with data taking these small but significant steps towards better asset information management. Some of them involve the deployment of advanced technology, for which partnering with an expert vendor may be the best options. Others involve the implementation of best practice processes.
When so much of business relies on data in today’s world, getting to grips with your data and what it means for the business’s assets can mean the difference between make or break.
