What Is Facilities Asset Management?

In this article, we discuss what facility assets are, what managing them means, and why you should use a facility asset management software solution. Let’s get started.

What are facility assets?

Regardless of what domain your company belongs to, you will have several resources that fall under the facility asset category. These assets underpin business activities. It takes a substantial investment to acquire them and incurs additional operating costs as you begin to use them. Here’s an example of some assets that are termed facility assets:

• HVAC systems
• Lighting fixtures
• Electric appliances
• Plumbing systems
• Buildings
• Infrastructure
• Vehicles

 

After the initial purchase of these assets, they depreciate in condition and value over time. You will need to maintain and replace your assets at some point in their life cycles. When such moments arrive, it is a smart move to ensure that you do it in a streamlined manner. 

What is facilities asset management?

Facilities asset management is the active management of facility resources to ensure smooth business operations. It helps oversee assets with a systematic approach. In that way, facilities asset management helps mitigate risks, minimize expenses and improve revenue.

 

Facilities asset management can be fragmented into 4 phases - purchase, usage, maintenance, and disposal. Let’s take a look at each of them in detail.

Purchase

Assets incur expenses even after you purchase them. If they are not taken into account, they can add strain to your expenses. So there are many factors to consider before purchasing a facility asset. You must:

• Assess if the purchase of a new asset is essential
• Develop an asset register that contains all asset-related information like service schedule and estimated lifespan.
• Understand the value it will add to your operations.

Usage

Once your facility assets are in use, you will need to keep an eye on how they are performing. This is the point at which they can change places, succumb to over usage, develop issues, and more. For those reasons, it is crucial to carry out regular audits, assess risks and continually optimize asset management strategies.

Maintenance

Maintenance is a major component of asset management. An effective maintenance strategy will keep assets in working condition, extend the lifespan of assets, as well as curb expenses. To achieve all of these benefits, you will need to adhere to every asset’s maintenance plan. Proactively maintaining assets, instead of waiting for them to develop problems, will ensure uninterrupted business operations.

Disposal

No matter how good your asset management strategy is, there will come a time when you have no option but to dispose of the asset. Continuing to retain such assets at the end of their life cycles will result in compliance and liability issues.

What is a facility asset management software solution?

To carry out asset management functions, you will require an asset management tool. It can be as simple as a paper-based strategy. Or, you can use a spreadsheet software solution. However, both of these are manual methods of managing assets. While they can do the job, they are inefficient, error-prone, and time-consuming to use when pit up against an asset management software.

 

Facility assetmanagement software solutions merge all asset management components into one software window. They contain easy-to-use features that make adding, modifying, transferring, allocating and disposing of assets an incredibly simple task. Furthermore, they can perform a myriad of complex asset management functions autonomously. Let’s take a look at what can they do.

What can facilities management asset tracking software do?

Facility asset tracking solutions make managing assets a breeze. They are the best solutions for overseeing facility resources for many advantageous reasons. Here’s what they can do.

• Track location - Asset management solutions can integrate with location tracking technologies like GPS. This allows you to track assets in real-time.
• Track asset condition - Facilities inventory tracking solutions can keep a check on the physical condition of assets. They gather health data via sensors and other IoT technologies.

• Receive notifications - Whenever asset maintenance is approaching or overdue, the asset management program can remind you using notifications and alerts.

• Access software from anywhere - Modern facilities asset management software solutions are cloud-based. That means you can access your asset details from anywhere as long as you have a device that supports a browser.

• Ensure compliance - Asset tracking software keeps a check on the latest compliance updates. They can show you what assets are non-compliant.

• Predict asset lifespan - Based on all the asset details in the software’s database, the system can assess the lifespan of assets. In addition to that, they can calculate the exact value of asset depreciation.

• Forecast budgets - Asset tracking solutions can accurately forecast upcoming maintenance expenses, asset acquisition expenses, and more.

• Get insights - Finally, you can get comprehensive asset reports and analytics that show you what assets are most frequently used, what assets are over and underutilized, and more.

Benefits of using facilities management asset tracking software.

Organizations that use facilities asset management software outperform their competitors. As a result, they enjoy a better position in the market. By choosing to invest in an asset management solution, you can also climb up the ladder and leave the competition behind. Here are the various business benefits that come with using a facilities asset management software:

• Increased productivity
• Minimized errors
• Reduced expenses
• Enhanced operational efficiency
• Larger returns on investment

Conclusion

No matter what business domain your company belongs to, you can enhance your profits and curtail expenses by investing in a facilities management asset tracking software solution. This way, you won’t have to worry about unexpected asset failures and surprise costs. 

 

If you’re looking for the best facilities asset management solution, then look up SmartAMS. It is a world-class asset management software from SmartPoint. It is automation-enabled, cloud-based, mobile-friendly, and has all the latest asset tracking features. Contact them to book a free live demo today.