asset management

Managing
Complexity
EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT ASSET MANAGEMENT IS —
THEY’RE JUST NOT SURE WHAT TO CALL IT.
By Warren Causey
Asset management seems to have as many names as there
are vendors promoting it and utilities buying it. That’s because there
is no one over-arching definition of the discipline. Is it enterprise
resource planning (ERP)? Is it enterprise asset management (EAM)? Is
it a system that produces process improvement from generation to
the field? Is it inventory, financials, warehousing, wires and pipes, or
people? What exactly constitutes an asset? Increasingly, utilities are
determining that virtually everything they possess is an asset — from
the information stored in automated systems, recorded on paper, or
even communicated by word of mouth.
The definition of asset management has shifted considerably since the
early days when SAP, based in Germany, introduced the idea of “enterprise
software” to U.S. companies back in the early- to mid-1990s. Considered
prime targets, utilities were just coming out of a long slumber as regulated,
protected, quasi-governmental organizations with great resources.
Facing the very real risk of competition, utilities quickly realized that the
“silo structure” of their information technology solutions wouldn’t work
in the proposed new environment; nor would existing haphazard systems
of locating, moving, and accounting for all kinds of assets.
Thus, SAP and other vendors began expanding their footprints to
compete with SAP. They expected to take the industry by storm and
eventually drive out niche players with all-encompassing, tightly integrated
software packages. However, some strange things happened
along the way to this planned vendor nirvana: collapse of deregulation
in California; the demise of Enron and other corporate malfeasance;
and the implosion of the wholesale energy market. One interesting
phenomenon that resulted, besides the splintering of the enterprise
asset management computing market, is most “energy companies”
40 ENERGYBIZ MAGAZINE July/August 2005
now want to be called “utilities” again. They also want to define,
configure, and determine management of assets on their own terms
— not as some large vendors decided they should be defined.
As a result, not only have SAP, Oracle, J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, and
several others opted against creating monolithic “enterprise computing”
empires at utilities, but also utility IT seems to be as splintered as ever
— at least in the United States. The lineup of vendors also has changed
considerably. First PeopleSoft acquired J.D. Edwards. Then Oracle acquired
PeopleSoft. Traditional CIS/CRM vendor SPL WorldGroup acquired a smaller
ERP/EAM vendor, Synergen, plus an OMS vendor, CES International, and
now is playing in the “enterprise” asset management space.
Several other ERP/EAM vendors have continued to broaden and
expand their offerings to encompass more assets. Indus International
of Atlanta, for example, acquired a CIS from SCT and now calls its
overall package “Service Delivery Management.”
Utilities did catch on to the idea of having their systems communicate
across the enterprise, but they have done so much “picking
and choosing” that many enterprise or asset management vendors
find themselves having to link to their competitors’ products at the
same utility. One example of that trend is evident at Nashville Electric
Service, which acquired Mincom software, an enterprise software
vendor, and integrated it with PeopleSoft/Oracle. National Grid of New
England is another case in point. Its U.S. operations run primarily on
PeopleSoft, but its United Kingdom parent has a former (before the
PeopleSoft merger) Oracle EAM solution. Lattice, a newly acquired gas
subsidiary, employs SAP.
The idea of enterprise asset or resource software has split into
competing ERP and EAM paradigms. Both have enthusiastic advo-