As companies become more aware of the competitive advantage of effective physical asset management, information technology strategy is considered a critical element

Reliabilityweb.com, a web portal focused on industrial plant and facility maintenance and reliability announced the release of the first Reliability Roadmap e-Book titled  “A Strategic View of Enterprise Asset Information Management”. 

Terrence O’Hanlon, CMRP, Publisher states “There are major shifts taking place both in the increased corporate awareness of the need for effective and efficient asset management and in the capabilities of enterprise asset management systems that are part of an integrated suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) that enterprises use to manage all company activities including finance, human resource and supply chain. 

Previously, most enterprises found that specialized “best of breed” applications were a more logical choice to manage asset information because features, functionality and usability were generally superior.  Most recently – the gap between integrated suite applications and best of breed is shrinking. 

The intersections of these factors were the drivers that caused us to compile a report from several industry experts to examine these issues more carefully.”

Companies deploy investment capital in physical assets in order to generate a positive return for shareholders.  Managing physical assets to ensure the best return for the entire life cycle requires instant and accurate information in format that can be valuable to maintenance, operations, accounting and management among others.   To be competitive, companies will have to choose a strategy for managing this information. 

Contributors included representatives of Oracle, Indus, SPL Worldwide and Ivara in addition to commentary and best practices benchmarking study written by Mr. O’Hanlon.