subject: Comparing A Spreadsheet To Online Asset Management Software [print this page] Who really wants to be an executive these days, as there is so much to try and take into consideration, to keep the company buoyant? Every opportunity for consolidation needs to be considered and efficiency is the absolute byword of business. As the recession continued, every management metric within their reach needed to be considered and reconsidered as opportunities for improvement became critical. Now we're beginning to see how all those old measurement methods are fully inadequate, even though they may have been considered to be "essential" for many a year.
If you think about it, the total efficiency of the business is related to the combined efficiency of each and every one of the assets in possession. Every piece of equipment has to conduct a certain task and is responsible for a contribution. It used to acceptable for efficiency to be measured in relation to performance returned against designed purpose. This is an insufficient metric to consider alone. We need to look at online asset management software solutions as we try and get actionable data in as near to real-time as possible.
If we cannot determine how a piece of equipment works, we can't hope to contain the amount of energy that it uses. We are far too used to old recording methods such as spreadsheets, as we log the existence of the asset, any associated maintenance issues and its perceived performance. As spreadsheets are very static, they are hardly suitable if we are to try and keep on top of pure efficiency.
Spreadsheets were invented back in the 1980s and have certainly improved since that time. However, the underlying problems remain the same insofar as we are only able to monitor asset performance as a "snapshot." Online asset management software solutions are able to give us a much better insight and a greater visibility into the absolute efficiency of the equipment.
We can use online asset management software to look at every piece of equipment and can establish benchmarks in order to trigger alerts, alarms or warnings. The better software solutions can send automatic messages to appropriate service providers in advance of any major issues. We want to avoid excessive downtime as much as possible.
It's amazing to realize that most organizations do not have truly effective means of recording asset inventories. Several different systems may be in existence and if they do not work together well. We cannot be efficient if we do not know what pieces of equipment we have in our possession. Online asset management systems begin by comprehensively tagging and identifying each.
Energy can represent more than one third of monthly expenditure for the typical business and its cost is rising dramatically. The call for sustainability requires us to control our energy usage, at the same time as we cut back on our associated carbon emissions. In order for us to achieve this, we need to control the performance at the asset level.
Online asset management software is a far more dynamic tool when compared to the traditional Excel spreadsheet-based approach. It enables much better visibility across the enterprise and helps to eliminate confusion.
