With no end in sight to the era of austerity, organisations across both the public and private sector are having to rethink investment strategies. For the past five years, those tasked with asset management have played a vital role in extending the useful life of key assets – from IT to manufacturing equipment. But with organisations facing many years of reduced capital investment, senior management is set to rethink the way assets are not only maintained to maximise value but also procured.
Growing numbers of organisations are exploring finance leases as an alternative to full purchase; many – especially within the public sector – are also being offered third party outsourced services, where a provider will retain ownership of an asset and simply deliver it and maintain it on site as and when required. The challenge for asset managers will be to retain control within this new, complex business environment.
It is time for asset managers to take a far more proactive role and to demonstrate the value being delivered to the business by effective, intelligent asset management. Asset teams have worked phenomenally hard over the past few years to ensure items are not swapped out until they have delivered maximum value for money and to balance asset performance with risk, age and innovation.
The continued pressure on capital budgets is already having a direct impact on the role of managers with the potentially expensive possibility that outsourcing could become an increasingly attractive option. It is time to stand up and be counted, to take advantage of the improvements in asset intelligence of recent years and to deliver robust, demonstrable arguments for asset replacement based on performance, maintenance history and of course, expert insight into new ideas.
Managers need to be able to exploit business intelligence to extend asset life without compromising safety, performance or innovation and to deliver effective asset management based on an overview of the entire estate, so enabling the organisation to adopt radical new approaches to capital financing. It is by taking this proactive approach managers will be able to demonstrate quantifiable, long-term business value to the organisation.
Member Blog content provided by BASDA member Real Asset Management