IBM Tivoli: Better Asset Management, Lower Costs

Uncertain economy? Get a better return on asset investment.

Tivoli Beat - A weekly IBM service management perspective. In a time of economic turmoil, when revenues are threatened and consumer confidence is low, how can organizations best position themselves for business success?

That's a challenging question, but a 2009 IBM study suggests answers. Specifically, the executives polled at more than 500 organizations worldwide cited "improving efficiency and reducing costs" more often than any other immediate strategy.

It's not hard to see why. When organizations can accomplish more while using fewer resources, they not only maintain customer satisfaction and drive internal productivity; they also unlock funds for strategic, competitive innovation—the key to future growth.

Toward that end, optimized asset management can represent a powerful card to play. As organizational assets have become both more diverse and more complex, on and off the IP infrastructure, they have also become harder to manage for ideal business value. Why should this be so? Asset conditions and asset utilization change; asset status and performance levels change in parallel; business strategies designed to leverage assets also fluctuate. Over time, as a result, it's easy for asset management to fall out of close alignment with big-picture business goals. What organizations today require is a new approach, through which they can holistically monitor and manage the entire array of assets, from end to end across the organization, not just with respect to what class of asset they represent, but how they contribute to target service levels.

IBM Service Management can generate many compelling cost-reduction opportunities

“When organizations can accomplish more while using fewer resources, they not only maintain customer satisfaction and drive internal productivity; they also unlock funds for strategic, competitive innovation—the key to future growth.” Directly applicable in the pursuit of these goals is IBM Service Management, which helps by improving key elements of visibility (seeing the business), control (making changes to the business in real time) and automation (enhancing business agility through intelligent industrialization of operations). And as a way to fulfill these goals in the context of asset management, the best-in-class IBM Maximo family of solutions provides a strategic platform to track and adjust assets—both on and off the IP infrastructure—to ensure they align closely with business strategies and generate as much business value as possible, at every stage in those assets' lifecycles.

The business benefits of holistic asset management are diverse, powerful, and in many cases, directly applicable to cost-reduction initiatives. Consider, for instance, that when assets are managed optimally, their lifespans will increase. When assets generate business value for longer periods of time, the cycle of replacement becomes longer as well; this translates directly into deferred capital expenditures. Instead of allocating funds to new assets, in other words, organizations can continue to use existing assets longer. The funds originally earmarked for new assets can then instead be invested into strategic, innovative new services designed to pair well with customer demand.

Also helpful to cost-reduction strategies: new "accelerators" provided by IBM Global Business Services through which organizations can decrease time-to-value for their offerings. These accelerators—essentially, blueprints for containing costs while maintaining or increasing service levels—serve as pre-packaged configurations and enhancements. Asset management implies different things for different industries; these accelerators tailor IBM Maximo offerings within those industries accordingly, yet require little to no configuration and no custom code. Based on industry standards and proven best practices, they help organizations leverage IBM Maximo for superior return on asset investment—fast.

Consider also how asset management relates to inventory, a major source of costs in many cases. Organizations that optimize inventory management, reducing the amount of inventory they carry at any given time by aligning it better with shifting customer demand, can expect significant cost reductions as a result—up to thirty percent or more in some cases. Software inventory, too, is a particular area that invites optimization. All too commonly, organizations have not ideally tracked and maintained the software they own against changing organizational requirements; assumptions made in the past may no longer apply, yet software purchasing continues as if they did. By deploying and leveraging IBM Maximo offerings, organizations can often reduce the overall software budget by five to ten percent—a substantial improvement.

Asset management also comes into play as a cost-reduction strategy in subtler contexts. Many costs, for instance, may come as a consequence of business risks that could be better visualized, quantified and mitigated through improved asset management. Safety risks serve as a good example; when organizations minimize the safety concerns associated with different assets, the associated health costs will fall. Government regulations, too, can lead to substantial fiscal penalties if organizations are found to be noncompliant in an audit, and superior asset management can lead to simplified, more comprehensive compliance. Assets such as software may be underutilized for business value; asset management solutions can help pinpoint those cases, leading to better software utilization and lower subsequent costs.

How IBM Maximo reduces costs for Tube Lines

For a real-world example of how IBM Service Management can help today's organizations track and manage assets for an enhanced business outcome, consider the case of Tube Lines.

This company provides maintenance and upgrade work for two hundred miles of track, more than two hundred trains, a hundred stations and more than two thousand bridges and other structures—an astonishing and complex array of more than fifteen different classes of assets, and a formidable overall asset management challenge.

That challenge has been met with the help of IBM Maximo Asset Management. By deploying this offering as a centralized solution to span its entire enterprise, Tube Lines has streamlined its business processes, improved its operations and reduced its costs in many respects. Engineers can now, for instance, obtain mobile access to all requisite asset information—including rolling stock, linear assets and facilities—wherever and whenever they need it. This leads to more efficient job scheduling as well as reduced impact on the customer experience, both of which translate directly into lower costs.

And going forward, still more cost reductions will be achieved through minimized service duplication and trend analysis to suggest the best possible maintenance strategies, thus proactively diminishing costs before they can be generated in the first place.

Tune in to Service Management Jams for more info

For more information on the tremendous cost reductions IBM's asset management strategies and solutions can make possible, one excellent source would be the IBM Service Management Jams. These interactive sessions, hosted by leading IBM experts, give the audience a chance not just to learn but also collaborate. After a half-hour presentation by the expert, another half hour will be dedicated to an open question and answer session in which the audience can ask questions and get answers on any desired subjects, complexities or challenges.

Sure to be of interest to production, delivery and facilities management who seek cost reductions via improved asset management will be the June 16 Jam—Service Management in an Uncertain Economy—to be delivered by IBM Tivoli General Manager Al Zollar and David Williams, Research Vice President, Gartner Group as well as the June 23 Jam—Effective Asset Management in an Uncertain Economy—with David Berger, Partner, Western Management Consultants.