Asset Audit Playbook

for Enterprise Facilities

Management
INTRODUCTION

Asset Audit Playbook

for Enterprise Facilities
Management
If you don't know where all your assets are within your
organization, trying to keep track of their performance and
prevent downtime can be ad hoc. For many in the facilities
management industry, this is standard operating mode.

Often, you only know that an asset exists because a problem

pops up and somebody needs to fix it. But today, there are ways
to evolve your program so that you can move into a proactive
and efficient new era.

Leading facilities teams are changing the way they work, from
being purely reactive to running fully optimized asset
management programs. Achieving that level of maturity requires
a structured and strategic approach. That means dedicating the
time necessary to gain complete visibility of the lifecycles of their
entire asset fleet and associated costs across all locations.

So, how do we get there? The first step is to know what assets
you have and where they are. Finding that out usually requires
an audit of all your facilities.

Based on our experience supporting enterprises with their

facilities management and operational needs, we’ve put
together a playbook for planning and conducting your asset
audit.

In order to get your fully optimized asset management program

up and running you will have further steps to take. But once you
have better asset data visibility, you can start managing your
assets and service providers from a centralized data-driven
platform.

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The Asset Management Journey
Whether you’re starting from scratch or ready to take the next step in optimizing your asset
management program, this guide provides strategies for planning and conducting an audit in a way
that suits your business. Once you complete the asset audit process, you will have a foundation of
asset data that will help you take better care of your facilities and your customers.

• Define Your Objectives

PHASE 1:
• Determine Your Current Position
Planning
• Choose Your Audit Model

• Conduct a Trial Audit and Tagging Project

PHASE 2: • Roll Out Company-Wide
Implementation • Move to Visible, Automated Workflows
• Integrate Condition Monitoring

• Streamline Regulatory Compliance

PHASE 3: • Advance Your Preventive Maintenance Program
Optimization • Optimize Spare Parts Management
• Modernize Lifecycle Management

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PHASE 1: PLANNING | DEFINE YOUR AUDIT OBJECTIVES

Understanding The Value of Asset Management

An asset audit is a major undertaking. You can help your team and key stakeholders stay the
course by keeping in mind that it’s about much more than just capturing and cataloging data.
The true value of your audit is what your business can achieve with the data you collect.

Organizations that leverage proactive facilities management to drive brand performance have
the competitive advantage. Ultimately, establishing an asset management program can help
you achieve the following business objectives.

Make Customer Loyalty a Given

Better visibility of asset data helps minimize downtime of
mission-critical assets across all your locations. When
everything is working the way it should, staff members
have more time to focus on delivering a superior customer
experience.

Lower Your Total Cost of Ownership

Asset visibility supports a preventive maintenance model,
helping ensure that revenue-generating assets operate at
peak performance through their entire lifespan.

Upgrade Your Capital Planning

Tracking the condition and service history of your assets
supports real estate portfolio performance and spending
prioritization for both new and existing locations.

Be a Lean, Green, Compliant Machine

Better tracking of asset performance (especially related to
energy usage and regulatory compliance) will help reduce
your carbon footprint and support a more sustainable
brand image.

Elevate Team Performance

With a single source of truth accessible to all stakeholders,
you can improve communication and speed up problem
resolution, which supports stronger relationships between
location staff and the facilities management team.

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PHASE 1: PLANNING | DEFINE YOUR AUDIT OBJECTIVES

An Asset Audit Supports Everyday Efficiency

Beyond these broader organizational impacts, there are exciting implications for the day-to-day
operations of your facilities program. Your team’s lives will become so much easier when full visibility
across your asset fleet enables:

Seamless Service Data-driven repair Streamlined

Provider Workflows or replace decisions Safety Inspections

When a service call is made, Gain real-time insight on the Ensure safety equipment is
the service provider knows most cost-effective decisions in top working condition and
what they are fixing and for struggling assets. that you are always compliant.
what skills, tools. and parts
the job requires.

The Asset Data Maturity Scale

Asset Management is a progressive evolution. The most important thing is that you start!

1 Beginner 3 Advanced

You have a basic inventory of Data from IoT-connected

assets, but information beyond equiptment drives work order
make and model is rare for older automation. The next step is
equipment. The next step is to digital twinning on interactive
begin tracking spend by floorplans.
connecting work orders to assets.

2 Intermediate 4 Leading

All critical assets are tagged with QR You’re leveraging real-time

Code, Bar Code, or NFC tags. The next asset data and AI modeling to
step is to improve lifecycle build dynamic maintenance
management with internal users and schedules and predictive
contractors. capital forecasting.

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PHASE 1: PLANNING | DEFINE YOUR AUDIT OBJECTIVES

Set Milestones for the Journey to Mature Asset Management

Advancing your asset manager program is a process that begins with increasing your asset data
visibility via the audit process. From there, you can advance to more proactive and automated
facilities management.

Get the Most from the Warranty Period

Centralizing asset data will help you ensure that assets are
always serviced by the manufacturer’s or dealer’s preferred
service provider until the warranty period ends.

Gain Control of Work Orders

When you can connect each work order to an asset, you gain a
better understanding of total cost of ownership. You also have
the power to hold service providers accountable by making
them validate that repairs were made to the right unit in the
right way.

Make Smarter Purchasing Decisions

The insight provided by asset data makes it easier to determine
how often to invest in repairs, how much to spend annually, and
when it’s time to invest in a newer model of an individual asset,
or an entire fleet.

Advance to Proactive Maintenance

When you have asset data visibility to support preventive
maintenance and automated processes, you can get ahead of
downtime before it happens.

Integrate Real-Time IoT Data

IoT technology is now more accessible and practical for use in
facilities management. The performance data collected from IoT
sensors can help you avoid downtime, make better use of
equipment, and improve energy consumption.

Leverage Predictive Analytics

Making accurate predictions is never easy. But with data to back
you up, your facility management team can make smarter
decisions in the short term and become more proactive in the
long term.

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PHASE 1 PLANNING

PHASE 1: PLANNING | DEFINE YOUR AUDIT OBJECTIVES

What Do We Mean When We Talk About Assets?

Parts Buildings and Building Systems

Installed parts that can be tracked Real estate-related assets,
as asset components, helping including buildings and major
technicians better prepare for systems such as roof and lighting.
service.

Business Critical Assets Fixed Assets

Revenue-generating assets; those Physical assets with a life of more
that Facilities and Operations care than one year that are reported
most about. on the corporate balance sheet.

Capital Equipment
Fixed assets that stand alone with
an acquisition cost over a certain
level, often $5,000.

Fixed
Assets

Buildings and
Building Systems

Capital
Equipment

Business Critical
Assets

Parts

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PHASE 1: PLANNING | DETERMINE YOUR CURRENT POSITION

How Much Data Visibility Do We Have

and How Much Do We Need?

Once you set your objectives, you need to assess your current level of asset intelligence. What do you
know today and how are you putting that data to use?

By identifying the crucial gaps in your asset visibility, from location to repair history to real-time data
on asset condition, you can then set clear objectives for what needs to be collected during the audit
process.

Location Warranty Current Preferred

Status Condition Suppliers

BASIC AUDIT COMPREHENSIVE AUDIT

Make, Model, Crucial Repair Expected

Serial Number Componenets History Lifespan

Should We Track This Asset?

Consider these factors when deciding whether you need to track the location, condition,
and repair history of an asset.

Customer Experience Cost

Does failure of the asset How much does the asset
interrupt customer service? cost to replace?

Consistency Compliance
Does the asset fail at least once Are there safety, regulatory, or legal
every five years or more? reasons to track certain assets?

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PHASE 1: PLANNING | DETERMINE YOUR CURRENT POSITION

What are Our Mission-Critical Assets?

You can divide your assets into two basic categories: Mission-
Critical and Non-mission Critical. Asset management gives
more power to maximize uptime for those mission-critical
assets.

If your restaurant is missing a few chairs, you can probably

get by. But imagine your AC is out in July, or that a walk-in
cooler breaks down overnight. Until those mission-critical
assets are fixed, you will see a serious impact on profitability
and customer satisfaction.

With a systematic approach to asset management, you can

work toward zero downtime for mission-critical assets and
have better control of capital expenditure for all assets.

Examples of Mission-Critical Assets

Retail HVAC
POS

Grocery / HVAC
Convenience Freezers
Refrigeration
POS

Restaurants HVAC
Freezers
Refrigeration
Kitchen Equipment
POS
Spa & Fitness HVAC
Essential Exercise Equipment
Showers
Sauna
Steam Room
POS

Financial Services HVAC

Connectivity

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PHASE 1: PLANNING | CHOOSE YOUR AUDIT MODEL

Who Will Perform Our Audit?

Once you decide what level of asset visibility you want to achieve, you need to determine who will
collect all that data. Will you perform the asset audit with internal resources, leverage your service
providers, or outsource to a specialist?

There are pros and cons to each of these approaches. Choosing the model that works best for you is a
balance of budgeting, staff resources and skills, and data quality.

Pros & Cons

Three Asset Audit Strategies

Self Specialist
1 Managed 2 Managed 3 Provider
Managed
Pro Pro Pro
Your staff know the They have the experience Service providers are already
equipment and facilities. and resources to get the job on location frequently.
done efficiently.
Con Con Con
The audit can distract from A third party will not be Their knowledge is limited
regular duties and customer familiar with your locations. and can’t provide a holistic
service. asset audit.

Build Your Asset Management

Foundation Faster

The ServiceChannel platform provides the tools needed to

collect and manage the data for a self-managed asset audit.
If you choose to outsource the audit process, you can work
with one of our proven service providers partners.

Our expert partners can visit your sites to capture data on

your behalf. Plus, they can regularly return to your sites to
make sure your records stay up to date.

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PHASE 1: PLANNING | CHOOSE YOUR AUDIT MODEL

What Data Capture Methodology Will We Use?

You’ve determined what data you need to collect and track, and who's going to collect that data.
Now you need to get into the details of how to capture it consistently across all your locations. This is
especially important if your in-house staff is going to participate in the audit process.

The basic audit will collect the make, model, and serial number of your assets. You’ll also want to add
a tag to the asset and note its location. If you have multiple units of a particular asset, photo records
can add a further level of clarity.

From there, you can collect asset attributes at a component level, including filters, fans, thermostats,
lubricant type, etc. If assets are hard to access, or require specialized knowledge, you may need
support from a specialist partner.

Increase Technician
Efficiency and Accuracy

Asset tags make it fast and easy

for location staff to scan and
create work orders using the
ServiceChannel mobile app.
This way, you always identify
the correct asset. So providers
know what they’re going to fix
and can have parts ready, while
your service records are
accurate down the road.

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PHASE 1: PLANNING | CHOOSE YOUR AUDIT MODEL

How Will We Tag Our Assets?

Placing physical tags on assets during the audit will speed

up asset identification and information collection in the QR Codes RFD
future.

Consistency is the most important part of an asset tagging

strategy. That may include creating naming conventions BLE
for your equipment, so everyone is always on the same
page when an asset needs repair or replacement. Bluetooth® Barcodes
Low Energy

Gain Big Value From Little Tags

The relatively small price of tags can drive big value

by making it easier for stakeholders across your
organization to access and edit asset data. With both
the ServiceChannel mobile and provider
applications, you can leverage bar codes, QR codes,
or NFC tags.

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PHASE 2: IMPLEMENTATION | ROLL OUT COMPANY WIDE

Build a Complete Playbook Based on Pilot Data

Once you’ve conducted your pilot program, you need to verify that the system you have designed
works at scale. Compile a list of what worked (and what didn’t) during your trial.

Remember that staff involved in pilot programs often put in a bit more effort than team members
might in their usual day-to-day work. So, take a hard look at all aspects of your system as you prepare
to scale up.

As you establish a deeper level of visibility across all your facilities, you’ll move closer to becoming
truly data driven. Now you’re ready to advance to the next phase of your asset management
program.

How to Evaluate Your Asset

Audit Strategy

Are we collecting the data we

need to make asset
replacement decisions?

Do we have resources to
finish the audit process on
the desired timeline?

Are we satisfied with the

quality of the data obtained
during the trial audit?

How can we streamline the data

collection process and scale up
company wide?

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PHASE 2: IMPLEMENTATION | ROLL OUT COMPANY WIDE

Kick Off Program and

Schedule Audits Across All
Locations

Now your organization is ready to take the next

step to scale your program. As you establish a
deeper level of visibility across all your facilities,
you’ll move closer to realizing the business
value of asset management.

The audit process is a crucial initial step in your

journey to advance asset management, but it’s
just the start. As you continue to advance your
asset management program, ServiceChannel is
there to provide you with support you need to
keep maturing over the long term.

Flexible Solutions to Meet Your Evolving Needs

Change is the only sure thing. As your business adapts and grows, we have services to help you out,
while you stay in control of your data and provider network.

FM as a service
The easy way to build Provider Provider Work Order Data Analytics
Managed Optimization Management Management
abest-in-class program & Admin
with exoert support

Sourcing as a Service
Find new providers to Marketplace Provider Search Provider Optimization
grow your network or
fill in the gaps

Software as a Service Locations Assets Supplies Service Providers Invoices

The single source of Platform
Work Orders Parts Inventory Site Audits Projects
truth for efficiency
and transparency Data + Analytics + Insights API + Integrations

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Start Turning Your Asset Data into
Business Value

Leading brands partner with ServiceChannel to have a

single source of truth for their facilities and asset data. As
frontrunners in enterprise asset management have rolled
out their strategies, we’ve empowered them step-by-step,
while providing a network of vetted service providers that
can help meet their needs.

With the solutions to manage all your locations and assets,

as well as the service providers who take care of them, you
have greater control over all the details that add up to a
superior customer experience. Get in touch to take the next
step in your journey.

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