xECM Asset Management

In a number of capital intensive markets, such as utilities and the process industry, but also in discreet manufacturing for example, assets (infrastructure, equipment, and buildings) constitute a large part of the total value of an organization. These organizations operate in competitive markets where any disruption in the process will cost money, while jeopardizing the organizations' ability to comply with the strict legislation.

The objective of these organizations is to maximize the efficiency of these assets for as low a cost as possible, not just when purchasing them, also during production and maintenance. A hierarchical arrangement of these assets has been achieved in SAP (for example a plant breakdown on the basis of function locations and equipment), while the processes (for example maintenance) are also laid down in SAP. Within SAP, but also for technical departments, this hierarchical structure is the most important classification/search input.

During process implementation, a lot of important information is used, besides SAP data, such as documents, e-mails, images, drawings, etc. However, this information, which is often stored in an ECM system, cannot be searched at will on the basis of a hierarchical structure. Instead, the search must use (document) characteristics or content.

There are great advantages to be gained by incorporating ECM in your SAP processes. This can be achieved with SAP Extended ECM by Opentext. In practice an implementation will result in the following advantages:

1. Raised productivity and short response times as it is no longer necessary to search transaction-related information in several systems.
2. Improved reliability and shorter downtime due to maintenance, by employing a simpler process to collect, store and retrieve maintenance data.
3. Improved internal and external cooperation by making specific functionalities such as approval workflows and documents storage available in hierarchical objects, safe extranet, project team environments, etc.
4. Improved operation as built-up information, such as maintenance history and failure-cause analyses, is easily available.
5. More sustainable solutions since the need for paper-based information and associated costs will be reduced.
6. Less risk of non-compliance with regulations since records management can support the complete lifecycle of your information.
7. Lower costs through reduced administrative overheads and lower storage costs thanks to efficient archiving.

Delaware Consulting has built up a very broad experience in Enterprise Asset Management applications and can support you throughout the implementation process.