FMX vs Asset Essentials: Which is a better fit?

Ben: Hi, my name is Ben. I work at Pacific Galvanizing in Oakland, California. We have anywhere between 35 and 45 employees. And I would give FMX a five out of five rating. So when I started here, we didn't have any sort of management software at all. We were literally on pen and paper, and that's what they had been doing here since the '80s. Everything was hand drawn. I had a lot of Post-it notes stuck to a whiteboard. We were very disorganized, and it was very hard to find information quickly. When FMX was first introduced to us, I was very impressed with the way that the software was built. It was very streamlined, it was very user-friendly, and more importantly, it was a good forum for organizing information and tracking equipment in an efficient and quick manner. So when we first started with FMX, I found that the software interface was really easy to use and we did get a lot of support from their team and some resources in learning how to use it. The difficult part was taking our roughly 600 pieces of equipment and digitizing that and bringing it into the electronic environment. But what we found with the software was that the work that we put in on the front side of it has paid us dividends in return on the backside of it. Anybody who's considering a facilities management software, I would highly recommend FMX. In talking with their software engineers, they work with a lot of different companies and they get a lot of feedback from users like myself, and they've made a lot of improvements through the four years that we've been with them. They've taken a lot of our suggestions and made the software even better. It's a very comprehensive suite, and they even offer custom tools that they can build for your company if you have something specific that they need. We're currently running two custom modules that they handbuilt just for us. It's a great overall package and it really helps keep us organized.

Raul L.: Hi, my name is Raul. I work for NPS. My position is a Continuous Improvement Manager. Basically, my position is about improving everything in my company from operations up to logistic. I give Asset Essential a four out of five. Before having Asset Essential, basically we were using Excel spreadsheet to manage the maintenance department, which didn't work very well. As you can imagine, just trying to keep all the records of the different process, 70 plus some other equipment, was very difficult, not very visual. Also, there was no way to communicate what was next or what was pending to the team members. Even if we wanted to use something like macros or visual control or something like that, really the integration with daily activities was very painful. Once we discovered that Excel was really not that right tool to use because we were not really performing all the maintenance activities we had to do, we started looking in the internet for different software. We asked different people about what they were using, other maintenance managers in different companies, different sectors, and we evaluated easily about 10 different softwares. Of course, all of them have some pros and cons, but overall, if we put all those pros and cons in the balance, we found that Asset Essentials was one of the best in terms of managing maintenance activities, was able to handle all different 60 processes that we had in a very visual, easy way, not consuming more time than needed, keeping the records, and being able to expand to other activities that we were not thinking at the beginning. For instance, we were not keeping records of external people doing maintenance in our company regarding quotes, regarding all those purposes, we were not very good at that. Now, at Asset Essential, we have that basically capability in-house. Now, we can keep track on that and we can know exactly what we perform. For the next maintenance, what is next or what was missing. Once we selected the Asset Essential and we purchased a license, we decided to do a small test with very few people with very few of the equipment. We wanted just to start going slow. We didn't want to implement it in the whole company, which we have many sites and many people that could involved. We decided to do a pilot test in one facility. In this facility, we trained the maintenance people. We started putting information on the system, which wasn't very difficult really. We spent maybe like half day even training, putting all the records and setting up the equipment the way we wanted to do that report. All that set up took us maybe half day. After that we started using the 10 equipments on the following two weeks. Once we did that, after the period of time that we elect to do it, we evaluated our results. We as a technician, if using the software was something easy, something that I like and that the people say that they like it as well, is that they were able to use Asset Essentials in tablets or in the cell phone without a very difficult program or application. Once we went over that evolution period of time, we got together in the meeting room and we said, "Okay, is this something that we really want to do for the whole company or is it something that we are just trying and we are not going to use besides this site." I know that the team decided to go beyond and implement that software, that application on that site. Eventually, it took us maybe five months, but we implemented the software in all the facilities and we are talking about five different sites with about maybe 120 equipment and about 3000 people in total. It is a very good size company in order to do that deployment, which is good. That happened maybe a year ago. We are thinking now in expanding the capabilities over to other areas. We were using that software only to the equipment directly in operations but there are some other support equipment that we can use it as well, like tooling. They have also other equipment that we now know that we can expand that capability to that. Also, facility equipment like chillers, air condition, all those small support equipment, that's something that we are also implementing. The more time we spend with the software, the more capabilities we discover we can use in order to of course do better maintenance, reduce downtime, reduce defects and everything in using the so forth correctly. It depends on where you are coming from. It's the advice, but basically if you are coming from Excel spreadsheets or maybe in-house program, you'll see Asset Essential, initially it is a very big huge program, but you might feel afraid to use it because it has a lot of capabilities. I can tell you that maybe it's like coming from a 1970 Chevy to a brand new Tesla. Initially, you'll be afraid because there are a huge amount of report, teams, capabilities, Option that you can use. Initially you feel like, "Oh, come on. It's too much for me." But little by little, you'll discover that all those very big reports, very big capabilities, you need them. You didn't know it, you need them. Don't be afraid to try it slowly because if you want to try everything in one shot, it's going to be very difficult. It May be frustrating, but if you give it a shot and start using the basic function that you need and little by little discover what other thing that software can do, you will love it. Because for instance, that reports before we were using Asset Essentials, you can manage only reports that were saying, "Okay, we did the maintenance or we didn't do it. Period." But now we are able to say, "Okay, we did the maintenance but was it effective and what was the cost and how long did it took us to do another minor repair or minor activity?" With Asset Essential, now we are able to do a better tracking on that, not only to go black and white and say, "We did it or we didn't do it." We are able to expand the capabilities and knowledge and how wise we are spending the money. Initially, as I said, it's very frustrating. You want to use everything because it's a lot of information and new things that you didn't know you needed you but you wanted it. If you give it a try, I'm ensure that little by little, you'll love it. It will take some months to do it, and it's not because it's hard to use but it's because it's too much and you don't know at that moment when you start using the software that you will need all those capabilities little by little. It's a great software, just give time to use those capabilities. Of course, something that I like about the software is that you have to do it is you need to adapt it to your needs because it gives you some basic reports that you can use, but you'll discover that you need to tricky a little bit every one of those reports so it gives you exactly the information that you want and the software has that capability. It's just a matter of you playing with it, to do some trials and errors. Try something, you didn't like it, change it. The people that is going to use it didn't understand it, change it that way you need it, you want it. Eventually you are going to get a lot of gains, a lot of savings out of that really.