This insight paper will detail a new breed of enterprise solutions with integrated enterprise asset management (EAM) at their core. It will illustrate how such solutions can help asset-intensive companies to maximize capacity, increase asset utilization, minimize downtime, and provide transparency across all areas of the business.
ENTERPRISEASSETMANAGEMENT LAWSON INSIGHT
EAM-Focused ERP 2006
EAM-Focused ERP
The Best of Both Worlds The success of an asset-intensive company, and ultimately the bottom line, is dependent on the effectiveness of its maintenance strategy. In today's competitive business environment, maintenance strategies can no longer be focused only on preventing failures, they need to take into account a multitude of challenges brought about by increasing legal, environmental and social requirements. These demands have led many asset-intensive organizations to re-examine their way of working, their priorities, and the type of solutions that will support their needs and enable them to be successful in tomorrow's economy. Asset intensive companies are placing more emphasis on having integrated maintenance solutions that link maintenance with the other departments in the company. There are several reasons for this: the need for more agility to combat global competition; the pressure to achieve the highest level of productivity at the lowest cost; and the introduction of best practices such as Reliability-centered Maintenance (RCM) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). Essentially companies have come to realize that integrated solutions present more opportunity to increase revenue and profit. This insight paper will detail a new breed of enterprise solutions with integrated enterprise asset management (EAM) at their core. It will illustrate how such solutions can help asset-intensive companies to maximize capacity, increase asset utilization, minimize downtime, and provide transparency across all areas of the business. Analysts are calling these solutions EAM-focused ERP because of their ability to provide "Integrating fragmented business applications is a advanced maintenance management capabilities as well as support for all key business key strategy for mid-market companies in better processes. making use of the technology they have in place There is clear evidence that the need for EAM-focused ERP solutions is growing today. But the plan for smoother business opera- rapidly. Asset-intensive organizations are looking towards this type of industry-focused tions is not seen as simply pasting together existing solution for three main reasons: they lack a coherent corporate solution and are applications; companies seek to consolidate their therefore managing a range of disparate systems, their existing enterprise solution enterprise business applications across the entire does not provide strong EAM functionality, or they have a best of breed EAM company, and they are also turning to integrated solution that is not integrated with the other business functions and therefore can solutions. While 26% use an integrated ERP suite only provide limited benefit. today, 60% plan on employing such a solution Increased globalization has meant that many companies have invested in integrated within the next 12 months." corporate solutions. However there are those who still operate with multiple, disconnected best-of-breed solutions. Although rich in functionality, these stand-alone ERP in the Mid-Market Enterprise, The 2005 systems' lack of integration severely outweighs their benefits. In the asset-intensive Benchmark Report, Aberdeen Group, September 2005 area, a small number of ERP vendors have recognized this gap and developed EAM-focused ERP solutions which provide all the benefits of an integrated enterprise solution with best-of-breed maintenance functionality. There are also companies who despite having an integrated ERP solution have also implemented separate maintenance systems because their traditional ERP solution did not include all the maintenance functionalities that they required. Most conven-
MSR-06-101-1-en EAM-Focused ERP
tional ERP solutions were developed for traditional manufacturing environments where maintenance, although important, is not critical to the overall performance. Maintenance was just a "tick-in-the-box" among the list of ERP components, whereas EAM-focused ERP solutions are designed with the maintenance management capabilities at their core.
Benefits of EAM-Focused ERP Solutions Having a centralized, integrated EAM-focused ERP solution will provide a company with a complete view of its business information across departments. The system contains... [download for more]
