MIPRO Unfiltered » EAM

Business Intelligence for PeopleSoft Maintenance Management

Larry Zagata — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:53:15 +0000

MIPRO is a nationally-recognized leader when it comes to the successful implementation of the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management (MM)/ALM suite. We have performed more implementations of this product than any other services firm out there. This is a bit of a bragging right, of course, but also an important fact to support our knowledge and expertise in the MM space. We have blogged about both ERP and Business Intelligence and the takeaways from those post is simply that ERP allows your organization to run your business and BI allows you to manage it. In this post we bring the world of BI to the world of PeopleSoft MM/ERP together in complete harmony.

At a high level, MM enables service requests, work orders, crews to be assigned to work, work to be executed and equipment maintained. Put simply, MM allows organizations to ensure their assets are kept functional and operational with as limited down time as possible.

As you might expect, there are some key operational reports required in order to ensure that all of the standard work activities are completed as efficiently and as effectively as possible. In addition, there are many management and true BI reports which can help answer those key questions around work orders, service requests, crews and assets.

Utilizing our BI requirements gathering process with our MM experience, we have put together effective BI for PeopleSoft MM. How? We look at the key business questions which must be answered and understand the different dimensions to the business question being asked in order to establish a clear picture of MM BI. It is important to understand that MM BI also has interdependencies with HR, finance and supply chain.

That said, let’s go graphical! A sample of our MM BI is outlined below. This example illustrates one sample BI question per subject area which may be turned into one or multiple reports or dashboards across functional business areas:

(Legend follows the chart.)

(Click to enlarge)

LEGEND: Maintenance Management Business Intelligence Chart

Business Process? This is the specific area of maintenance management impacted.

Business Question? This is the specific business question being posed which requires an BI answer. Remember, without answering a specific question, it is just a report.

Who is asking? Who are the resources who need to know the answer to this question?

What is the importance? What is the business value of having an answer to this question?

Who/What benefits from the answer? Are there others who may benefit from knowing this information? These may not be directly involved but can benefit from the information such as HR and crew information.

What is the metric/measure? Is there a specific tolerance or target? Top 10, bottom 10, etc.

Does this measure drive/answer additional questions? Other areas not directly involved in this business question may also find value. The answer may also lead to additional investigation and answers to other related questions.

Of course, this chart represents samples. In the real world, there will be much more detail behind each subject area.

If you would like to learn more about our maintenance management, BI or BI for MM capabilities, please contact us. We take questions from this blog all the time, and we’re happy to have even the quickest conversation with you.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More Business Intelligence posts.

Asset Intelligence: One of the 12 Most Important Technology Trends

Jeff Ventura — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:10:18 +0000

CIO Zone has a very good list of what they consider to be 12 of the hottest emerging tech trends for the enterprise. One in particular — Asset Intelligence — caught my eye. Here’s their synopsis:

Today, with advances in auto-ID, sensors, remotes and wireless devices, it’s now possible for any and all business assets to transmit data and initiate events. This provides companies with the opportunity to redesign their IT environment using assets — anything that’s important to the company. Asset intelligence provides information such as the temperatures and humidity levels of facilities and the location of raw materials. But being able to piece events together and respond to the signals generated by the assets proactively is what really makes this trend valuable.

A lot of companies look at asset maintenance and intelligence as a cost-conservatism function, which it certainly is. The more control and granular visibility you have over your assets, the better you can control depreciation rates, repair expenses and operational cost. This thinking is true, but nothing terribly new.

The part a lot of organizations miss is that technology now exists — really exists, not just in a fledgling state waiting for the brave enterprise to play with — to enable your assets to feed data into an intelligence/correlation/alerting engine. This means that very granular data can give rise to sophisticated events based on custom rules that allow your organization to respond to impending failures or problems before they occur. Your assets — once considered Excel-tracked inanimate objects that cost a lot of money per quarter to keep running — are now data nodes within your IT environment. Smart grid, anyone?

(A parallel: Consider the rules you likely have in place to monitor application performance. You probably have KPIs defined that are tied to alerts, and when one or two KPIs start heading south and tossing alerts all over your dashboard, you know you have an end-user situation imminent. But you can react and repair before the helpdesk lights up. Asset intelligence brings the same level of prediction and proaction to asset problems.)

We do a lot of work in the asset maintenance space here at MIPRO (you can download our widely-read whitepaper here). What we see, especially coming off the recession, is a tremendous surge in the number of companies who are pulling their assets into an integrated solution like PeopleSoft’s ALM suite. We’re seeing a migration away from best-of-breed solutions, mainly because the ability to integrate maintenance data into broader ERP systems like FMS, Project, Supplier and SCM pay huge dividends to the organization willing to do the governance and intelligence work up-front.

If you’re in an asset-intensive industry, asset lifecycle management is something you should check out, if you haven’t already (especially if you’re already a PeopleSoft shop). If you have checked it out but still have questions, email us and we’ll be happy just to chat with you.

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More PeopleSoft posts.

Unsung Value: Primavera and AutoVue Integration into PeopleSoft

David Brunet — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:37:33 +0000

Oracle has been on an acquisition hunt for the last four years and I thought it would be a good idea to talk about how some of these acquisitions are impacting the PeopleSoft customers we talk to every day, as well as to make others aware of some products that are now available to complement their existing PeopleSoft products.

So let’s begin, if you will, by focusing on one of the areas of expertise here at MIPRO. We have been working hard the last four years to raise awareness of our firm and the PeopleSoft EAM/ALM product suite. The ALM Suite introduced as part of PeopleSoft 8.9 was the beginning of a renaissance for PeopleSoft customers, as they could finally purchase a fully integrated Real Estate and Maintenance Management EAM solution. As we’ve worked with with more and more customers, we have seen some opportunities to integrate into PeopleSoft other products that have subsequently been acquired by Oracle. The two big-hitters that come to mind are:

Primavera
AutoVue

These two popular products are a valuable complement to the functionality provided in the PeopleSoft Financials, Supply Chain and EAM/ALM products.

Let’s start with Primavera first. This is a product that was, and continues to be, an industry leader in the Project/Program Management space. The blurb below extracted from Oracle’s website provides a good description of what the product has to offer companies:

“Oracle’s Primavera is focused exclusively on helping project-intensive businesses manage their entire project portfolio lifecycle, including projects of all sizes. It is estimated that projects totaling more than $6 trillion in value have been managed with Primavera products. Companies turn to Primavera project portfolio management solutions to help them make better portfolio management decisions, evaluate the risks and rewards associated with projects, and determine whether there are sufficient resources with the right skills to accomplish the work. These best-in-class solutions provide the project execution and control capabilities needed to successfully deliver projects on time, within budget and with the intended quality and design.”

We have seen many companies that currently have PeopleSoft Projects look to Primavera to complete the product portfolio required of project-focused organizations. With Primavera’s integration into both PeopleSoft Project Costing and PeopleSoft SRM, companies are better able to manage their project costs and get real time information about project costs and tracking.

The other product that we have seen plenty of traction with is the AutoVue Visualization product. This product was acquired via Oracle’s acquisition of Agile, and it provides the ability for organizations to share documents across the enterprise without regard to the document’s native file format. This is a very powerful tool, because (in an EAM/ALM context) if a user requires the ability to view CAD, or 3D type drawings, they only need access to the AutoVue tool, not the original content creation tool itself. Another benefit we have realized is its ability to offer print services to the ALM suite, so that we are able to print packages of documents for maintenance personnel.

So there’s two peripheral integrations that come as downstream benefits of PeopleSoft’s EAM/ALM suite. I say peripheral because they’re not considered first-line integrations, as some are.

If you would like more information about these products and how they can be integrated into your PeopleSoft backbone, please contact me. We’d be happy to have a conversation, even if you’re just wanting some additional information on the topics I’ve laid out here. If you’d rather discuss this in a community setting, you can chime in via the comments below, or catch us on Twitter or Facebook. We pay very close attention to these social channels, as more and more of our customers are engaging with them.

(Incidentally, to get more information on these products, Oracle’s website provides some additional information about Primavera and AutoVue.)

Thanks for reading.

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Our Most Popular Oracle/PeopleSoft EAM Posts

Jeff Ventura — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:25:56 +0000

Interested in Oracle/PeopleSoft Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)? Attending this year’s Oracle Maintenance Summit and looking for more information about asset maintenance and reliability? Given that EAM is our specialty, below are our top posts about EAM/PeopleSoft Maintenance Management, as decided by (a) pageviews and (b) inbound search terms. Hopefully you find them useful as you conduct your research.

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Linkology: The Best of the Internet for 2/19/10

Jeff Ventura — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:31:26 +0000

Before we get to the links, one reminder: if you use PeopleSoft Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) or are considering it, I cannot encourage you strongly enough to attend the Oracle Maintenance Summit. This event is being held on March 9-10 in Redwood Shores, CA, and has 117 companies and nearly 300 attendees so far. If EAM is in your plans this year, you simply won’t find a better community-driven networking and discussion event than this. Full stop. I know travel budgets might still be tight, but this will be worth it if EAM is on your radar.

That said, here’s the best the Internet had to offer this week. I doubt you’ll disagree.

Speaking of tight travel, The NYTimes Frugal Traveler blog has a detailed piece on how to find the cheapest flights online amidst the myriad travel sites, plans and choices. EAM tire-kickers, take heed!

A conversation I have every month or so. Fellow iPhone users, this is our pickle.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Marianas Trench, the deepest recorded part of the ocean just off the coast of Japan. I think of this 36,000 ft. deep trench as a sort of inverted, underwater Mount Everest, and I remember watching a PBS special when I was a kid in which a giant white ‘sea spider’ was found in the trench, and it was 8′ tall and ghostly and grotesque and otherworldly. The potential for horrifying sea monsters and undiscovered species aside, the vast, crushing depth of it is actually mind boggling. How mind boggling? This much. Note the infinitesimal dot sitting atop the water. That’d be you.

The One Who Got Away: a wonderful feature from Pictory that features lost loves, roads not taken, former friends and difficult choices.

As a parent of a five year old who views Daddy’s phone as nothing more than a portable gaming machine, I was thrilled to find Matt Haughey’s list of recommended kids games for the iPhone. (Although he forgot Skee-Ball and Ramp Champ, both of which entertain my son endlessly.)

John Updike: “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

The NY Times interviews George Cloutier, author and CEO of American Management Services. Interesting take on management theory, no doubt from the Atilla the Hun school of business. I wonder how much of his perspective is shaped by a lack of children and the accompanying obligations that come with parenthood?

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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The One Event You Don’t Want to Miss If You’re Interested in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

Jeff Ventura — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:33:05 +0000

But first, what is Enterprise Asset Management? Good question. There’s always the Wikipedia definition, and then there’s our perspective given what we’re hearing from our customers and prospects.

From where we sit, there’s a lot of buzz in the market about EAM, which is logical given the economic conditions we have just experienced. Organizations today, more than ever, want to control costs and fully understand the economics of their capital assets. EAM solutions do exactly that: help companies monitor and maintain their assets during their useful life. This includes functional areas like capital planning, budgeting, constructing, servicing and maintaining these assets.

Combined with strong financials, project, and supplier/supply chain management, EAM is a powerful approach to an organization’s capital infrastructure management strategy. And it’s being considered more than ever by companies in asset-intensive industries (manufacturing, hospitals, utilities, real estate and complex IT shops).

On March 9-10, 2010, in Redwood Shores, CA, Oracle is hosting its 4th Annual Customer Maintenance Summit. In particular, for anyone interested in PeopleSoft’s EAM solution suite, this show is 2010’s best venue to meet with other Oracle maintenance practitioners. There will be a plethora of best-practices information shared among attendees, and you’ll have a prime opportunity to provide product-specific feedback to Oracle.

“Oracle recognizes the maintenance community with an event specifically designed for them. All three EAM software packages were represented, with users presenting applications in a variety of industries. It was a ‘no spin’ zone, with project leaders framing their company, business issues, architecture, and results while also discussing the lessons learned. This was a refreshing and very credible approach.” — ARC Advisory Services on Last Year’s Summit

The agenda for the event has just been released, and here’s what it looks like:

KEYNOTES

Ralph Rio ARC Advisory Services “Asset Management Directions”
Bill Polk Gartner/AMR “Advantages of ERP for EAM”

EBS SESSIONS

Smarter eAM with OBI-EE Barrick Gold
Multi-Org, Multi-Site, Multi-Planet: Customer Panel with Simmons Foods, Alcoa & Jet Propulsion Lab
Keeping EAM on the ERP Radar: Customer Panel with Corrugated Services, Charter Steel, Accellent & Hercules Offshore
Powering Up with R12 Sunflower Electric
Expediting Point System Replacement with Mobile Enterprise Products
Digging for Implementation Lessons Bridger Coal

PEOPLESOFT SESSIONS

From Point Solution to PeopleSoft: Practical & Cultural Issues East Kentucky Power
Benchmarking Your Project Drummond Co & Kansas City Board of Public Utilities
From Resistance to Respect: Winning Over Maintenance Deloitte
Driving Capital Program & Facilities Management Success MiPro
All New! PeopleTools Capabilities Oracle
9.1 EAM Demonstration

JDE SESSIONS

JDE Strategy Lyle Ekdahl Oracle Group Vice President
EAMgreen: LEEDing you through Asset Management Orlando Utilities Commission
Engaging the Team: Increasing User Adoption and Integrating Contractors Canadian Natural Resources Ltd
Advanced Resource Scheduling Prairie Mines
Practical Solutions for Real Life Problems Baxter Healthcare
9.0 CAM Demonstration

Of course, there will be more. Oracle’s engineering team will present the future product roadmap. EAM partners (including us!) will be present at the reception and session breaks to answer questions and share information. There will be customer forums.

It’s just a fantastic venue for any organization interested in Oracle/PeopleSoft EAM. Summit attendance is complimentary for Oracle customers.

If you’re interested in attending, there is still some space, but you have to hurry. Contact Oracle’s Dave Loesch [email link] by February 20, 2010 to confirm your spot. Dave will also be able to answer any questions you might have.

Hope you can make it. We’d love to sit down and talk to you about your maintenance plans.

Other EAM posts that may be of interest:

INTERVIEW: Dave Loesch, Oracle’s Sr. Director of Enterprise Asset Management (Part 2)

Jeff Ventura — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:27:56 +0000

This is part 2 of our exclusive interview with Dave Loesch, Oracle’s Sr. Director of Enterprise Asset Management. Part 1 can be found here.

Part 2

MIPRO Consulting: What would you say to a customer about PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM versus, say, a best-of-breed MM solution?

Dave Loesch (Sr. Director, Enterprise Asset Management at Oracle): Pay close attention to the integration. When creating our product, we had to build over 40 separate integrations from PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM to the rest of the PeopleSoft Enterprise ERP suite (for example, Human Capital Management, Financials, Projects) and every single one of those interfaces has to be tested each time the ERP side or the EAM side issues a new releases (and in most cases, even a patch). There is no such thing as productized integration between different vendors’ application products. And, with an application as complex as EAM, integrating multiple business processes can result in very high IT support costs and complexity that keep customers from upgrading. With PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM, we take on the full burden of developing, testing, and maintaining that integration for customers.

MC: Realistically, what options do customers have for implementing an EAM/Maintenance Management system?

DL: For the most part, they can acquire an EAM module as part of their ERP acquisition (PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, SAP, etc.) or they can license a standalone product from a specialty vendor.

MC: What are the key benefits that an asset-intensive PeopleSoft shop can expect after implementing Maintenance Management?

DL: If a customer already as an EAM/CMMS system in place (which probably 85 percent of the Fortune 2000 do) our benefits will come primarily in the form of lower IT costs (interfaces, upgrades, simplified tech stacks); better information (integrated enterprise view of information, process standardization and apples to apples comparisons of departments/plants); and more rapid response to changing market dynamics (easier upgrades, integration of new technology etc.).

There is also the value in the long-term stability and partnership that a company like Oracle offers. When a customer partners with Oracle, they know they’re buying from a company that has made a major long-term commitment. Virtually every informed analyst or thought leader will acknowledge the days of standalone EAM specialist vendors are numbered because once an ERP company like Oracle has a functionally rich EAM system, the cost of maintaining the integration far outweighs the marginal benefits of “bells and whistles” functionality.

If the customer doesn’t have an EAM or CMMS installed, Oracle’s EAM system offers the standard benefits of increased asset capacity (lower capital budgets); lower maintenance and material operating costs and improved regulatory compliance (and penalty/fine avoidance).

MC: Related specifically to PeopleSoft, what is your main challenge in selling the product?

DL: Awareness. Oracle likes to spend its money on developing great products so customers don’t see us as much in regional or industry-specific shows that appeal to the maintenance folks. Because PeopleSoft got its start in HR and financials, many people don’t even think to ask if we have an operational solution like EAM.

MC: OK, final question. Why is it important to choose an experienced implementer/consulting company like MIPRO for an application like Maintenance Management? What sets one implementer apart from another? Is who you choose really important?

DL: Picking the right integrator WILL BE the difference between a successful EAM project and a failed one. Unlike HR laws or GAAP accounting principles, the “best” maintenance practice depends on a number of variables (repair cost and priority, equipment type, skills sets, plant configuration etc.) that are different for every industry, every plant and even between departments in the same plant. That means there is no cookie cutter way to implement an EAM system. Your integrator must not only understand the EAM product and its underlying technology, they must understand how to apply EAM to a wide range of customer circumstances and requirements.

MC: Dave, that about wraps it up. Thanks so much for your time and information you’ve provided. Hopefully, it has made for a valuable series of blog posts for our readers.

DL: You’re more than welcome. Thanks for giving us the chance to talk about PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM. We are very proud of the system and excited about the value it can bring to our customers.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized specialist in PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM implementations. If you’d like to learn more about PeopleSoft EAM or would like to learn how it can help your organization, please feel free to contact us or download our whitepaper, entitled PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits.

INTERVIEW: Dave Loesch, Oracle’s Sr. Director of Enterprise Asset Management (Part 1)

Jeff Ventura — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:10:00 +0000

As mentioned yesterday, here is part one of our exclusive interview with Dave Loesch, Oracle’s Sr. Director of Enterprise Asset Management. Dave was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to talk to us about what EAM is, who should use it, its challenges and how quickly it can provide value to organizations. Oracle’s official webpage about its EAM technology is here.

Stay tuned for the second segment of this interview, slated to appear over the next 7-10 days. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to start a discussion in the comments.

Part 1

MIPRO Consulting: Dave, thanks for joining us. Let’s start with the basics. Tell us a little about your background. How did you get involved in Maintenance Management?

Dave Loesch (Sr. Director, Enterprise Asset Management at Oracle): After growing up in the Navy’s preventive maintenance program as a sonar technician, I joined a maintenance management software company called The System Works in 1986. That company was ultimately acquired by Indus (now Ventyx), but I still think it’s the best name for a maintenance software company.

MC: What is your mission at Oracle?

DL: To deliver seamless, robust Information Technology (IT) solutions that deliver actionable business intelligence at the lowest total cost of ownership.

MC: So let’s back up for the folks who aren’t familiar with maintenance software. Why do people buy EAM systems? In plain English, what benefit do they get from them?

DL: Maintenance software – or what is often called Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) or earlier, Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) – helps maintenance and repair professionals organize the people, material, tools, space, and asset access to perform preventive, corrective and predictive maintenance activities. Having a well-organized maintenance strategize helps organizations in 3 primary ways.

First let’s talk about cost. Maintenance trades people and contractors are expensive (often over $100K per year in loaded cost) and when you plan their work well, they get more done thereby reducing OT and staff augmentation requirements. Well-maintained equipment consumes less energy, lasts longer and breaks down less. Emergency maintenance can cost 3-10X as much planned maintenance because of the additional costs you incur for emergency freight charges, OT, contractors etc.

Next is capacity. In a continuous process environment—pulp/steel mills, refineries, electricity generators, wastewater treatment, mines, cement etc—equipment downtime costs thousands of dollars per hour because revenue stops when the equipment does. In other kinds of industries—fleets, transmission and distribution networks, even classroom space in a university—if I don’t have a well planned maintenance and construction strategy I will not be able to fully utilize my assets. Unutilized asset capacity is expensive especially in increasingly competitive markets.

Finally, maintenance software helps insure compliance. Maintenance folks often work in hazardous environments. This can mean worker safety or hazardous chemicals used in cleaning or special production processes. There are numerous regulatory agencies—OSHA, FDA, MSHA, EPA, FERC—that have a specific and direct interest in maintenance activity. A maintenance system helps companies organize their maintenance practices so workers remain safe and fines avoided.

MC: Did Oracle/PeopleSoft always have its own Maintenance Management software? It seems many folks think this is a v1 product.

DL: Oracle has had an EAM solution since 1992. That was the year we first shipped an EAM product embedded in the JD Edwards ERP platform. In 2000, we partnered with Alcoa to deliver EAM for the ERP applications within the Oracle E-Business Suite. In 2006, we shipped PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM, which started with the JD Edwards design model and was enhanced by the Oracle E-Business Suite team. PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM is currently on its third major release (the product initially shipped in 8.9). It’s important to keep in mind that when PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM was first released, it really wasn’t a v1 product. First of all, it leverages significant components of the PeopleSoft Enterprise suite (HR, Asset Management and Projects to name a few) that had already been deployed and tested by thousands of customers. Furthermore, the product took full advantage of our nearly three decades of experience delivering EAM to JD Edwards and Oracle E-Business Suite customers.

MC: At MIPRO, we call Maintenance Management the “hidden gem” within the PeopleSoft product suite. Why is it that relatively few PeopleSoft customers know about the product?

DL: We are committed to promoting the value of our EAM offerings and make sure that our huge base of global customers is aware of the benefits they can achieve with our PeopleSoft Enterprise EAM offerings. We find many customers have been very focused on a number of other topics, like compliance, the economy, and security, in the past few years, and maintenance hasn’t grabbed the executive attention it deserves. We see that changing now.

MC: Speaking of customers, what types of clients should be looking at Maintenance Management?

DL: Any company that employs skilled trades people like plumbers, electricians or mechanics. EAM can provide value to customers that contract its maintenance to 3rd parties, but in that case it’s not so much a workforce management tool as it is a solution for ensuring the capture of complete information to drive better asset-related decision making and for managing supplier relationships.

(Part 2 Coming Soon)

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UPCOMING: Interview with Oracle’s Sr. Director of Enterprise Asset Management

Jeff Ventura — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:24:45 +0000

Tomorrow, I will post the first segment of our exclusive interview with Dave Loesch, Oracle’s Sr. Director of Enterprise Asset Management. Dave was kind enough to accept our invitation for an interview about the Enterprise EAM market, Oracle’s role within it, the challenges customers face and how quickly organizations get value from a mature EAM/Maintenance Management solution. If you have any interest in asset management or reliability and the technology used to track, monitor and validate such things, this will be of interest to you.

Here at MIPRO, we have something of a specialization in the Enterprise EAM segment of the larger PeopleSoft market, and we talk to clients every week about PeopleSoft’s Enterprise EAM solution suite. We’re excited that Dave accepted our invite to have a candid conversation about technology many people need but don’t know where it fits into their application ecosystem. It’s not often that Oracle grants blogger interviews like this, and we’re thrilled to have him.

Check back tomorrow for the first part!

Ditch Your Spreadsheets! Why PeopleSoft Retail and Hospitality Industry Customers Have an Opportunity Right Now

David Brunet — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:23:00 +0000

PeopleSoft retail and hospitality industry customers: it’s time to ditch your homegrown, sprawling spreadsheet farm and start enjoying the benefits of PeopleSoft’s Real Estate Management (REM) solution. There is an easier way, and it’s here, now.

It’s an understatement that the tough economy is severely impacting the retail and hospitality industries. The consumer is scared and discretionary spending has been cut to the bone. In the words of a good friend of mine, 2009 is turning out to be a “character building” year.

If you are PeopleSoft customer, PeopleSoft’s REM solution provides you with a very cost effective way to manage what is likely to be your largest asset — your individual store locations. While the benefits offered to retail and hospitality customers are significant and covered in more detail below, allow me to take a small step back and provide you with a quick history lesson.

Prior to the JDEdwards acquisition, PeopleSoft didn’t have a real estate management solution. JDEdwards on the other hand had a great solution. Originally developed in the 1990s, JDEdwards had developed a robust solution for real estate management. The solution was so well accepted in the marketplace that JDE created a separate business unit and field sales organization to focus solely on real estate management opportunities.

After acquiring JDEdwards, PeopleSoft realized they had a great opportunity to increase the value of their retail and hospitality customers’ investment in PeopleSoft applications. PeopleSoft quickly made the decision to rewrite the JD Edwards Real Estate Management solution in PeopleTools and integrate it with the PeopleSoft Financials, Supply Chain, and HCM applications.

Fast forward to the realities of a challenging, uncertain 2009. PeopleSoft customers have the opportunity right now to really manage their real estate portfolio and not just throw hordes of spreadsheets at the problem. If you’re not convinced and still think spreadsheets are good enough for your organization, have you considered the following?

Can your spreadsheets manage common area maintenance costs accurately so you can ensure you are not overpaying?
Can spreadsheets effectively ensure FASB compliance?
Do your spreadsheets alert you to impending events such as lease renewals?
And speaking of lease renewals, do your spreadsheets capture the information you need so you are sufficiently prepared for a lease renewal negotiation?
Are your spreadsheets integrated into your PeopleSoft Financials systems so you have true enterprise visibility of your real estate portfolio?
Do your spreadsheets provide you with the reporting and business intelligence capabilities needed to make smart decisions?

Still not convinced? Well, it could be that your competitor is convinced and has already invested in real estate management solutions. Consider this quote from an excellent 2008 AMR Research report entitled Retailers Take New Approaches To Real Estate Management:

“The retail industry is making a massive shift from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and homegrown technology to packaged applications for managing the entire lifecycle of properties. In 2006, 25% of retailers used enterprise software applications for the purpose of real estate management. That number grew significantly to 36% in 2007.”

That’s a 44% year-over-year increase!

Have I piqued your interest?

For more information on the benefits of the PeopleSoft Real Estate Management solution, please email me or give us a call at 800-774-5187. In addition, you can check out Oracle’s website and download some of the collateral related to the product.

Of course, if social media is more your thing, you can follow us on Twitter or become our fan on Facebook. Or, if old school RSS is your gig, you can subscribe here.

Previously:

The Value of Integration for PeopleSoft Customers in Asset-Intensive Industries
PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Real Estate Management: A Deeper Look
An Introduction to PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management
Sneak Peek: PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.1
PeopleTools 8.5: A Look Inside

Related whitepapers (PDF):

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits

Related web content:

MiPro Consulting: PeopleSoft Services
MiPro Consulting: Resources