WHITE PAPER
ASPs for CMMS/EAM:
The Right Choice
William Russell
AssetPoint, an Integrys Company
Director of Marketing
Maintenance-Bred CMMS/EAM
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Quantum Leap: One Small Step for Man .................................................................1
Paradigm Shift No One Owns Software Anymore .................................................2
ASPs and the Plant Manager: Corporate Objectives
vs. Real World Challenges.........................................................................................2
Case Study: Do More With Less ..............................................................................3
Local Plant Champion....................................................................................4
Centralized Solution.......................................................................................4
Connectivity...................................................................................................5
IT Labor .........................................................................................................6
Limited Budget ..............................................................................................6
ASP Advantages and Prudent Questions Before Proceeding ....................................7
Summary and Close ...................................................................................................7
Quantum Leap
One Small Step for Man
As well as, providing measurable savings in
The ASP industry has transformed typical 9-to-5
of Ownership (TCO):
capital and time reducing the overall Total Cost
development-centric software companies into
24-by-7 service-centric businesses. ASPs are
No capital investment
now positioned to profoundly advance should I
Rapid startup
be so clich to say revolutionize? the ways
Faster ROI
companies reduce their technology investment
yet still have access to best-of-breed software
By capitalizing on the Internets popularity and
and IT best practices.
acceptance for its high availability and reliability
and relatively low cost, ASPs offer undeniable
Anyone who remembers the Time Sharing
economic advantages for leasing versus
Option (TSO) of the mainframe era knows that
purchasing software. The ASPs economies-of-
renting computer access is nothing new.
scale allows for a faster ROI model surpassing
However, the value proposition of ASPs is
any in-house alternative. There is a major
different, very different.
change in the software industry, as companies
increasingly obtain their software online, says
ASPs provide more than just an economical
Don Haig, vice president with Oracle Business
method of affording computer hardware; rather
Online.
they have introduced new services that
companies cannot easily duplicate:
As noted in a recent issue of Darwin magazine,
ASPs offer a way to keep your business
State-of-the-art data centers with
strategy from getting hung up on your own IT
unlimited bandwidth
departments ability to install and maintain new
Best-of-breed applications that are
software. Forrester Research further states that
available anytime and anywhere
ASPs can get companies up and running in one-
24x7 expert operational and technical
third to one-half the time required for
support
conventional implementations. For companies
Service level agreements (SLAs) that
struggling to remediate legacy systems, renting
guarantee competency and protect them
can offer a quick and cost-effective alternative.
from outages and disasters
ASPs for CMMS/EAM: The Right Choice
Average per seat cost per year: ASPs
reduce TCO by over 50%
$9,477 PC-based LAN hosted on-site
$4,500 ASP-hosted application
Source: Gartner Group
Paradigm Shift No one owns
software anymore
The business model of ASPs is simple they
rent access to an Internet-based copy of
software. Encapsulated into one monthly fee is
a suite of complementary services that most
companies arguably cannot afford to perform
themselves.
The customer needs only to provide access to
the Internet through a web browser, and the ASP
latest software. This advantage is the reason for
the ASP industrys anticipated growth. By
2005, the ASP industry will be valued at $18
billion with an annual growth rate of 54%,
says Rita Terdiman, Vice President and
Research Director, Gartner Group.
By letting an ASP manage the technical
component of a [CMMS/EAM] solution, it
allows a company to spend more time on the
other facets of a company, such as strategy,
process and culture, notes Lisa McClintock of
Intereliant.
ASPs and the Plant Manager:
Corporate Objectives versus RealWorld Challenges
does the rest. The rest is defined as the Software
Plant managers know there are two ways to
Application, Computing Infrastructure
make money: 1) You either reduce cost at
(Application, Database, Security and Web
current production capacity or 2) Increase
Servers), 24x7 Support and Disaster Prevention
production capacity at current cost. A corporate
and Recovery Plans all of which are
strategy to achieve lower cost is the consistent
guaranteed by a Service Level Agreement
application of best practices for all plant activity.
(SLA).
This strategy, however, erroneously assumes all
plants are created equal. They are not.
Todays economy of mergers, acquisitions and
joint ventures creates considerable challenges
when no two plants look alike. The
complexity of deploying an enterprise software
solution to multiple and dissimilar plant
With an ASP as their technology partner,
operating environments often leads to time and
companies no longer have to invest in
cost overruns, or even outright project failure.
technology, yet never forfeit the benefits of the
ASPs for CMMS/EAM: The Right Choice
Whether the enterprise application manages
production, operations or maintenance functions,
the challenges are the same:
Case Study: Do more with less
Imagine a corporate manager responsible for
maintenance who we will call Frank. Frank has
the task of selecting and implementing a
Local plant champion needed at each
plant location
automate and improve the efficiency of the
and ease-of-management
maintenance functions at each plant.
Connectivity to the corporate network
The reasons for this task:
Recruiting and retaining specialized IT
labor
System (CMMS). This system is expected to
Centralize the solution for consistency
and plant-to-plant connectivity
Computerized Maintenance Management
Limited budget
Up to 40% of manufacturing revenues
are devoted to maintenance, and up to
one third of the expense is unnecessary
ASPs offer solutions for each of these challenges
50% of maintenance is corrective, which
by using the Internet as a lower-cost
is 10 times more expensive than
collaboration tool.
predictive maintenance
More importantly, the plant manager can focus
25% of the time and is 5 times more
on the job of plant operations and not software.
Purchasers of ASP services recognize that
outsourcing certain applications enables
enterprises to focus their resources, capital, IT
and internal staff on managing other
applications critical to their core businesses,
says Greg Blatnik, Vice President, Zona
Research.
Preventive maintenance is performed
expensive than predictive maintenance
60% of preventive maintenance is
unnecessary
Source: ARC Advisory Group
Frank knows that the CMMS alone is not a
silver bullet. Without best practice methods as
the CMMS underpinnings, he knows software
I would never do this myself, says Dieter
Schoenegger, CTO of Adidas America, the U.S.
division of the European footwear and apparel
giant. To build the applications and the
infrastructure and manage it yourself it just
doesnt make any sense.
ASPs for CMMS/EAM: The Right Choice
alone will not meet corporate expectations.
Frank adopts an overall equipment effectiveness
methodology to ensure equipment availability,
capacity and reliability, and the CMMS will be
the tool to manage these best practices. Once
critical equipment is identified, a CMMS can
3
track all of its maintenance history. Properly
managed, the CMMS can assist each plants
maintenance manager by extending the lifecycle
of the asset, as well as predict maintenance
activity better.
Frank selects his software and is ready to deploy
the CMMS which will affect 10 manufacturing
plants situated across the U.S. and the company
headquarters in Chicago, IL.
Frank did not anticipate the complexity factors
with the CMMS he purchased. Each factor will
be examined and compared in a buy versus rent
model.
Local Plant Champion
The responsibility and cost of owning software
is substantial. The procurement and installation
of the hardware, configuration of the software,
coordination of training and on-going support
requires a local champion at each plant. When
Frank called each plant to talk to his local
maintenance manager, no one was home.
Unfortunately, Franks solution was not
implemented quickly enough. In order to reduce
the cost of the maintenance, the department staff
was reduced and/or outsourced. This left Frank
with no champion to support his CMMS.
ASPs eliminate many of the hassles of owning
software. There is no hardware or software to
buy, the software is centrally configured,
training can be performed over the Internet and
on-going support is available 24 hours a day.
Instead of a day-to-day champion, Frank can
serve as the evangelist about the CMMS value.
Centralized Solution
Frank knew that a centralized installation would
assure consistency, as well as ease-ofmanagement. Frank envisioned the ability to
report key-performance-indicators (KPIs) on
maintenance efficiency for all plants from one
database (not ten). The CMMS configuration
was very comprehensive and decisions such as
nomenclature and business rules should be made
only once. With common nomenclature and
business rules, all of the KPI metrics would be
accurately reported.
Frank met with corporate IT to decide how to
deploy the CMMS to each of the plants.
ASPs for CMMS/EAM: The Right Choice
Corporate IT offered two choices, both with
upgrade the WAN, or face the consequences of a
major shortcomings:
decentralized installation.
Centralized installation distributing the
A centralized installation is inherent with ASPs
application from the Chicago, IL
guaranteeing the consolidation of all plant data
headquarters over the companys wide-
and the ability to perform real-time KPI reports
area-network (WAN)
with a single copy of the software. More
Decentralized installation with each
importantly, ASPs do not require the capital
plant having a separate copy of the
expenditure for either hardware or software.
application
Connectivity
The decentralized installation was immediately
Most companies have a WAN that connects all
rejected because the value of the consistent best
of the remote plants to the company
practices would be compromised if each plants
headquarters. The underlying technology of a
software did not operate exactly the same way.
WAN may be dedicated T1s, and a surprisingly
In addition, the technical process of replicating
large number are private 56Kbs frame relay
all of the databases into one for the KPI reports
networks. Both are expensive to install and
is burdensome and prone to errors.
support and are almost always saturated or
incapable by design to support an enterprise
Frank hesitated at the enormous cost for
application.
hardware and software; nevertheless he chose to
implement the centralized installation which
Frank complained that the company WAN
took advantage of the companys WAN. The
should support his CMMS, and he should not
application was installed once, the nomenclature
have to pay for its poor performance and design.
and business rules established and the KPI
If he makes this connectivity investment, he
reporting system was designed.
wants a guarantee the solution will work. Frank
did not get what he wanted.
Despite the claims of the IT group, the capacity
of the WAN was not enough to support the
With no guarantee of success, Frank had no
additional traffic of the CMMS. Functions that
alternative but to pay the enormous expense to
took seconds in Franks Chicago office took
upgrade the WAN to support the bandwidth
minutes or even timed-out at the plants. Frank
required by the CMMS. Because IT could not
was then required to allocate additional cost to
dedicate the additional bandwidth to the CMMS
ASPs for CMMS/EAM: The Right Choice
traffic, the improvements to speed and overall
user experience were minimal.
Limited Budget
With enterprise software purchases and
implementations averaging $500 thousand to $1
ASPs are not dependent on a companys
saturated WAN; rather they only need a less
expensive, narrowband Internet connection. In
addition, the web communication protocols used
by ASPs are designed to require substantially
less bandwidth than client/server communication
protocols with no compromise of security.
IT Labor
IT labor has become the most difficult field to
recruit and retain. While Franks company has a
mature IT department in Chicago, skilled IT
help at the plants does not exist. In addition,
internal IT support comes with no service
guarantees.
million, companies must implement stringent
financial policies to ensure the most favorable
ROI. Time and cost overruns are generally the
fault of intangible costs and project
complexities. It is unlikely that Frank could
have proceeded this far if the true cost of the
project were revealed earlier.
As indicated by the graph below, Frank was
surprised by the total cost of the project which
uncovered many intangible expenses. Initially,
he only considered the software license fee and
the purchase price of the servers. Once the
project was underway, he discovered that these
expenses represented only a third of the projects
total cost.
Another unplanned expense was the
considerable cost required to train the IT staff on
application and database support. Even after
weeks of training, the IT staff was not experts on
the system. The first time Frank tried to get
support at midnight one Friday evening, he
discovered yet another limitation of internal IT
support.
At the heart of ASPs are IT best practices,
service levels that guarantee competency and
protect the customer from outages and disasters
and availability 24-hours-a-day.
ASPs for CMMS/EAM: The Right Choice
This example compares a capitalized Client/Server model
to a rented ASP model. The models assume a $99,000
client/server license fee, and $300 per concurrent user per
month rental fee for 10 users. This graph represents the
total cost for a 5-year period.
The ASP model enables companies to treat the
software purchase as a leased versus capitalized
expense. Leasing allows for monthly payments
as services are rendered, whereas a capitalized
expense requires a substantial up-front capital
outlay. Many intangible costs associated with
owning software are avoided such as technical
training, upgrades and on-going support. ASPs
promise a faster time-to-benefit by eliminating
the need to specify, procure and install hardware
and software.
The economic benefit [of the ASP model] is a
All ASPs are not created equal. The table below
represents the prudent questions to ask of any
ASP.
no-brainer for most Tier 2 and Tier 3
companies, considering that the Tier 2 average
selling price for EAM/CMMS software was
$205,000 in 2000 and the associated services
has an average selling price of $348,000, says
Steve Couther, Vice President, ARC Advisory
Group.
ASP Advantages and Prudent
Questions before Proceeding
This white paper has highlighted many of the
advantages of the ASP model. The table below
Summary and Close
presents the most important reasons for choosing
Lets not forget about Frank. Did he really pay
an ASP instead of implementing software in-
to upgrade the WAN and train his IT staff
house.
without any service guarantees? Or was this the
result of the meatball sub he ate for dinner?
Who knows?
ASPs for CMMS/EAM: The Right Choice
The bottom line is Do you want to be the
TabWare OnLine was the first Internet-based
next Frank?
ASP solution for asset maintenance. The system
simplifies the implementation of enterprise
Five years from now, if youre the CIO with a
software, while reducing the total cost of
head for business, you wont be buying
ownership (TCO) by dramatically cutting capital
computers anymore. You wont buy software
investment and support costs. Our proven and
either. Youll rent all your resources from a
disciplined implementation methodology has
service provider, says Scott McNealy,
evolved from project management experience on
Chairman and CEO, Sun Microsystems.
hundreds of maintenance software
implementations globally. To help you realize
As summarized in a recent CNN report, ASPs
the maximum benefit of your software purchase,
are not just a third party youre outsourcing to;
we share both technical knowledge as a
youre forming a partnership with the company.
developer and our management experience on
When you ask what theyll do for you, ask what
major projects. Our solutions save you
you can do to make the relationship work
significant time, cost and capital investment.
smoothly. Working with your ASP will increase
your confidence in them and make the
relationship, and your job of focusing on the
needs of your business, that much easier.
About TabWare
TabWare is a Computerized Maintenance
Management System (CMMS)/Enterprise Asset
Management solution designed, developed and
based on a 20-year history of asset management
solutions delivered to client projects worldwide.
TabWare is used by businesses maintaining
high-capital assets such as plants, facilities, and
production equipment. By managing inventory,
avoiding breakdowns on critical assets, reducing
AssetPoint
TabWare CMMS/EAM
770 Pelham Road
Greenville, South Carolina 29615
Telephone:
Fax:
864.458.3333
864.458.3301
Email:
Internet:
sales@[Link]
[Link]
2002 Integrys AssetPoint, LLC
work order backlog, and eliminating
unnecessary labor costs, TabWare becomes a
complete business productivity tool.
ASPs for CMMS/EAM: The Right Choice