The Best Enterprise Asset Management Software

What is Enterprise Asset Management Software?

Enterprise asset management software (otherwise known as EAM software) manages the lifecycle of your physical assets in real-time, including maximizing their lifetime through maintenance management, tracking their physical movement around your facilities, the condition they are in, and the operational costs of asset maintenance. An EAM system can streamline your workflows by preventing downtime from equipment failure.

In comparison to asset tracking software, the enterprise part of EAM refers to the scope of assets being tracked. Everything from equipment to vehicles can be tracked across multiple departments and locations, from manufacturing and procurement to human resources and finance. Additionally, you can measure asset performance to know how to plan out preventive maintenance schedules.

Enterprise asset management software can help keep your assets running with high reliability and little to no outages. As an extension of CMMS software, EAM can streamline higher production levels and increase revenue. It can also help keep your business in check when it comes to regulatory compliance, as EAM software keeps detailed records on maintenance history to ensure you keep up with the latest safety standards.

Features of Enterprise Asset Management Software

• Asset Lifecycle Management: Monitors the health of assets from end-to-end to help increase its lifespan. Includes risk and operational reviews of assets. Stores detailed records on the history of each asset and work performed. Optimizes the profit generated by your assets.
• Work Orders: Create a trackable document identifying what work needs to be done and how it should be accomplished.
• Inventory Management: Tracks information on spare parts and equipment used in maintenance and repair operations. Automatic alerts can warn of low stock levels to ensure the proper materials and tools are always available.
• Preventive Maintenance: Create schedules, track procedures, set maintenance routines, balance workloads, and more.
• Predictive Maintenance: Scans equipment data for performance trends and uses condition-based monitoring to alert the appropriate staff of any potential issues in real-time.
• Warranty Management: Track asset warranties, process claims, and provide warranties against any asset. Increase the return on assets and ensure your business can reclaim warranty-related costs.

Benefits of Enterprise Asset Management Software

Enterprise asset management software will bring together the financial and operational side of managing your equipment and assets in one place. In order for your enterprise asset management software to function in a way that improves the quality of business you can provide, you'll want to take advantage of the top benefits of EAM software:

Manage All Assets in One Program

Enterprise asset management software will provide a view of all physical assets your company owns throughout their entire lifecycle. From initial research and design, through procurement, operation, and disposal, EAM software will store asset data and documentation all in one user-friendly program. No more filling out spreadsheets to calculate KPIs manually - review those performance metrics instantly with automated EAM software!

Depending on the complexity of asset maintenance, some businesses may utilize customizable software setups to keep details separate, such as the location of spare parts and tools needed for maintenance, and the coordination and management of your resources (such as staff to complete the work order). The convenience of managing one asset database can make accessing conditions, locations, and schedules available at the touch of a button. And cloud-based EAM platforms allow access anywhere, even mobile devices.

Stay on Top of Inspections

The data captured by enterprise asset management software during regular inspections can help prevent unexpected or emergency work from happening. An example of data that can be captured is the type of maintenance performed on an asset and the employee who was assigned and performed the maintenance.

Checklists can also be created with checkboxes, text fields, and values that can have customized tolerances for pass/fail checks, depending on the desired state. Regular equipment inspections will help mitigate risks, ensure machines maintain as close to a 100% uptime rate as possible, and ensure your product team delivers quality products continuously.

Reduce Maintenance Costs

Users of enterprise asset management software can experience an increase in ROI by reducing the costs involved in your maintenance operations, such as labor and downtime. For example, in a situation without maintenance software, your company may not be aware of when critical assets are in need of routine servicing until after an equipment breakdown has occurred. The longer the downtime for reactive repairs, the less time it's being used for manufacturing.

Having a reliable enterprise asset management system in place can reduce maintenance overtime, labor costs, production downtime, and more by implementing a preventive or predictive maintenance schedule into your workflows.

CMMS Software vs EAM Software

As mentioned before, there are a lot of similarities between EAM and computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), to the point where the two are often referred to interchangeably by software providers. The biggest difference between CMMS software and an enterprise asset management solution is the scope of features. Computerized maintenance management systems were originally created to help automate the manual maintenance methods many companies had in place. This included functionality modules such as work order management, spare parts inventory, preventive and predictive maintenance scheduling, and more.

While a CMMS is used to schedule and dispatch maintenance work, an EAM helps create the optimal life cycle management of an asset. In addition to maintenance, asset management helps anticipate the replacement of all your company equipment, vehicles, and machinery. While EAM solutions do have common CMMS functionality, CMMS software will not have all features of an EAM tool.

For instance, while CMMS is a great tool for handling reactive repairs and planning preventive maintenance, EAM takes it a step further with a more extensive predictive maintenance capability. EAM software will actively collect asset information and data on how well your machinery is operating towards pre-set conditions. Machinery that falls below these outputs can have alerts triggered to management, which can help bring attention to faulty or failing assets.

Simply put, EAM is a type of CMMS software which focuses on additional steps throughout the lifecycle of an asset. An EAM is usually more appropriate for businesses tracking assets across multiple locations and requiring a large number of users. Companies will usually upgrade to an EAM software once they've outgrown an CMMS software.

Note: For those looking for software to monitor the health of buildings, spaces, and the related equipment, you may want to consider facility management software.

Using EAM Software Capabilities within Your ERP

Now that you know how an EAM differs from a CMMS, you might wonder how it compares to an ERP. How does an enterprise asset management solution, which focuses on controlling assets, tie in with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which helps streamline decision-making between the financial, distribution, sales, and other areas of your company? First, you need to know what functionality each offers:

• ERP has a broad scope which can cover anything from financials, manufacturing, human resources, and more.
• EAM is a more focused system with the single goal of making sure the organization's assets remain in working condition to aid in turning a profit.

Both on-premise and cloud-based ERP systems are popular as fully-integrated, "all-in-one" software solutions. Some SaaS ERP software will offer basic EAM capabilities, such as financial planning for the purchase of assets. However, EAM takes your asset management to the next level with maintenance management and asset monitoring; something an asset management module within an ERP will typically not handle.

When ERP and enterprise asset management tools are properly integrated, they can add risk mitigation to the industries most prone to having asset-related issues, such as oil and gas, manufacturing, utilities, and more. However, the pricing for such integration can lead to higher maintenance costs. As such, many companies prefer to invest in two separate solutions: one for managing business operations (ERP), and one for assets (EAM).