Moving Asset Management processes to the cloud has become an ever-increasing necessary step. However, many organisations seem to struggle with the idea of moving away from their known systems, however outdated and ineffective these systems may be. In exploring the benefits of moving Asset Management systems to the cloud Shanon Ramdaw, Business Development Manager at iOCO, within iOCO Software Distribution, the local Infor Master Reseller, outlined Infor’s nine essential reasons for moving to the cloud.
The first reason as indicated by Ramdaw is that moving to the cloud allows organisations to dedicate their time and energy to their area of specialty. Utilising on-site EAM solutions means time and money spent on updating and managing this system. With a cloud-based system this management time is practically erased, allowing for more time to focus on pivotal business processes that generate revenue for the organisation.
Secondly, adopting a modern software as a service (SaaS) solution means that payments are based on a monthly or annual fee based on consumption. This means that unlike capital investments in software licenses, hardware, and IT support, payments are not done upfront with SaaS. This contractually agreed predictability allows organisations to better manage and maintain their budgets and make effective investments in business growth.
The third benefit is that businesses can exponentially increase their ability for agility. This is due to cloud-based EAM services offering the option to instantly offer new services such as, opening new plants, expanding into new areas, adding additional application functionality, and onboarding new enterprise assets. “Additionally, Cloud vendors allow for the ability to automatically give subscribers monthly and quarterly updates. These updates include releases of new capabilities, allowing clients access to these features as soon as they are released.” Continues Ramdaw.
Fourthly, Utilising the most up-to-date Cloud-based EAM solution is imperative as organisations often have difficulties when utilising transactional relational database management (RDBMS) systems as EAM services, as they are unable to store all the necessary data. Whereas, advanced cloud-based EAM solutions allow for the storage of large amounts of data from various streams of input. This allows organisations instant access to their entire ecosystem. This accessibility and increased manageability enables businesses to capture and deliver big data to power their analytics and machine-learning strategies.
The fifth benefit indicated is the ability to leverage greater scalability. Businesses have the opportunity to scale their capacity up or down depending on the current need. Storage is a scalable element with cloud-based EAM as well, enabling for the capacity to store large amounts of data collected from equipment sensors and IoT applications, and this data capacity can be increased at any time.
The sixth benefit is that cloud-based EAM solutions offer organisations enhanced reliability, availability, and disaster recovery. In comparison to on-site EAM solutions, organisations utilising cloud-based solutions do not need to worry about the effectiveness of their back systems should an error occur after hours. Ramdaw advises “The best EAM solution must function in a multi-tenant cloud environment and must be advanced enough to ensure business continuity This means that it must offer copies of critical applications and that all data are backed up and mirrored globally. Further, disaster recovery must be effective and efficient should the primary system go down.” These cloud-based solutions should also offer upgrades that have zero-downtime so organisations do not have to deal with unscheduled time loss.
The seventh benefit indicated by Ramdaw is that cloud-based EAM solutions assist in keeping organisations secure. This is achieved through availability of greater resources for a higher level of security, as well as taking on the various security-related tasks that are demanded by various regulations.
The eighth benefit is the wider range of accessibility provided to organisations through cloud-based solutions. Managers and technicians are able to better function in their roles through being afforded continuous access to EAM data. Cloud-based EAM also allows for data to be easily exchanged between
EAM and other enterprise applications.
Finally, Cloud-based EAM allows businesses to easily adapt and comply with regulatory demands and data sovereignty requirements. Cloud-based EAM solutions are updated on a monthly or quarterly basis to accommodate the continuous regulatory changes for FDA Title 21 CFR Part 11 for life sciences, the Joint Commission for healthcare, State of Good Repair for transportation, and others. Further, these solutions allow organisations to stay up to date with the sovereignty requirements.
Utilizing advanced and state-of-the-art Cloud-based EAM solutions allows organisations the opportunity to move their businesses to the next level. Procedures and processes are easily accessible, reliable, and efficient. This allows for better organisational asset management, which means better functionality, the potential for increased performance, and thus revenue.
