Over the last year, Progressive have seen their clients across asset-intensive industries embrace cloud computing as part of their digital transformation strategies.

There are a range of business benefits and cost savings to be made by choosing SaaS (Software as a Service) technology for your Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution rather than traditional on-premises models. Here are Progressive’s top eight reasons why you should consider moving your asset management to the cloud.

Up-to-date software

Software updates can occur as soon as they are available, enabling you to take full advantage of the new functionality, maintain compliance with the latest regulatory changes impacting asset management and protect your systems with up-to-date security patches. Traditional on-premises customers may have to wait 12-18 months for the rollout of these changes, setting aside time for implementation. In contrast, cloud customers have access to the latest changes as soon as they are ready with zero downtime for upgrades.

Gain powerful data insights

Many organisations would like to employ advanced data analytics for a deeper understanding of and control over their assets. Innovative cloud solutions enable you to analyse huge volumes of data. Data Lakes, such as that included in the Infor OS operating platform, can be used to combine unstructured data, including video, texts and emails, with structured data such as Internet of Things (IoT) sensor and financial data, overlayed with other key Infor EAM data. The Infor Data Lake can be deployed as a service, avoiding the need to implement complex additional infrastructure. Infor Coleman, an AI and Machine Learning tool can interrogate the data held in the Data Lake. This enables you to analyse asset performance and inventory usage patterns and ultimately make better decisions about asset maintenance and procurement.

Free up your IT team

Employing Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions means that your service provider can take on your IT department’s ongoing non-strategic activities, including software, server and IT infrastructure maintenance and management tasks. By taking this day-to-day IT maintenance requirement away, your team can focus on asset performance management and activities that improve your operational efficiency.

Reduce CapEx

Cloud subscription models avoid significant upfront capital expenditure on both software and associated hardware. The SaaS model offers a more flexible monthly or annual payment plan based on what you use. This enables a smarter spending strategy and more agility in your IT budget.

Scalability and agility

A flexible EAM Cloud solution can grow and scale to reflect the changes in your organisation. Through time, organisations may onboard new assets or make divestments, move into new regions, or take their EAM solution into new areas of the business. Cloud EAM can smoothly transition to incorporate new EAM services and users. From day-to-day, the SaaS infrastructure provides scalable storage, opening up new virtual servers when needed, for example, to accommodate data from asset sensors and IoT.

Reliability, disaster recovery and availability

A multi-tenanted cloud environment ensures business continuity with a secure, reliable platform. Copies of your critical applications and data are backed up and mirrored so that if the unexpected happens, everything crucial is still there. Cloud services offer disaster recovery – if the primary system fails, there is an automatic transference over to a secondary site. Another upside of cloud is that you do not have to experience any downtime during upgrades; these take place in the background whilst the system continues to perform.

System security

In a SaaS environment, the service provider will constantly monitor your systems for security breaches and threats, reducing the need to implement costly internal security resources and cyber experts to safeguard against external attacks. As an example, Infor partners with recognised cyber security experts Amazon® Web Services (AWS®), delivering the latest in cybersecurity with appropriate regulatory compliance. Rather than incurring additional internal costs to safeguard your system against outside threats, your EAM system is protected by your cloud service provider.

Accessibility while on the move

Technicians responsible for the monitoring and maintenance of your assets may need access to EAM data to assign, perform and update activities and work orders whilst on-site. Inventory Managers may need to record stock levels from warehouses and stores. Supply chain and finance managers might have to approve purchases whilst travelling – the Infor cloud enables these users to seamlessly roam between connected and mobile environments. They can access and input data into the EAM through their web browsers or mobile devices wherever they are working.

The Infor cloud in-action

Long-standing Progressive TSL client Sparrows Group has engaged Progressive to transition their on-premises Infor EAM asset management system to the Infor cloud platform.

Sparrows Group is an engineering and maintenance services specialist for the global energy and industrial sectors.

Sparrows Group have benefitted from the rich functionality of Infor EAM for many years. They have decided that now is the right time to take advantage of the benefits a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution brings.

The Infor cloud solution will support 400 Sparrows asset management and procurement users. Sparrow’s remaining on-premises systems will be integrated with the new cloud EAM.

The move to the multi-tenant Infor cloud brings Sparrows Group the potential for significant cost savings and business benefits, including:

• Reduced total cost of ownership
• Seamless access to the latest updates and innovations
• Enhanced performance, reliability and availability
• Greater scalability

Michael Reid, Finance Systems Manager, Sparrows Group, commented:
“We are delighted to have agreed to move to the Infor cloud. The benefits of the SaaS offering were clear, with automatic software updates and cybersecurity compliance being just a few of the many advantages. We are now looking forward to working with Progressive to transition from our current on-premise solution.”

Making the move to cloud

By transitioning your asset management systems to the cloud, you are strengthening your security, keeping on top of valuable functional and regulatory updates, reducing total cost of ownership (TOC) and replacing out-of-date technology with robust, reliable solutions which will scale with your business for many years into the future. To take full advantage of the benefits a cloud EAM solution offers to asset-intensive industries, talk to Progressive TSL.

KeyFacts Energy Industry Directory: Progressive TSL