Assets are the tangible or intangible things possessed by organisations that help them to conduct their operations. This means any asset has an actual value to a business which might be reduced if it is depreciated, lost, or exposed to any risk. Some examples of assets are buildings, vehicles, furniture, electric appliances, machinery, inventory (which are tangible assets) and IT applications, data, leases, contracts, and intellectual property assets (which are intangible assets). Managing these assets while they are used or not used is crucial for organisations to maintain their performance and consistency. It ensures that assets efficiently fulfil the purpose or function in the way that they are intended to. While managing widespread assets is not easy for businesses, there is an asset management standard introduced by the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation), i.e., ISO 55001 which can make it easy. This blog explains how.
The purpose of the standard is performance oriented. It specifies the requirements for establishing and operating the Asset Management System (AMS). The AMS helps in managing your assets over their entire lifecycles, assessing risks and mitigating them. It is needed to ensure the assets perform well, achieve the intended objectives, and conform to your organisation’s asset management policy.
This ISO standard is applicable to every type of organisation regardless of the size or complexity of the assets. In the following section, we explain the key benefits that your business shall certainly get with the implementation of a comprehensive AMS and achieving the standard.
With the implementation of a robust and well-planned AMS, your organisation can increase awareness about the asset-related risks which makes employees accountable for alleviating or preventing the risks. The AMS also ensures transparency in the allocation and use of assets in different areas of the business. Therefore, reporting and responding to the risks becomes much quicker, which reduces any chances of financial loss for your business. All these result in enhanced performance of your assets without letting out any scopes for delay or interruptions and that brings operational efficiency.
This benefit comes directly from the improvement of your asset performance! When the performance of assets is optimised, your business can complete the tasks on time and provide services or products faster to the market. This enables your business to get more revenue than before at a time which means the productivity or performance of your business is improved.
A dedicated AMS makes conducting reviews and audits a compulsorily practice in your organisation. Audits at regular intervals would ensure the compliance of your asset-related activities as well as asset management processes with the applicable regulatory and legal requirements. It also ensures that your organisation meets the essential contractual requirements provided by partners or clients. Thus, with a standardised AMS, your business can achieve overall compliance.
Stakeholders are the customers and interested parties in your organisation who can be or are benefitted from your business. By ensuring consistency in the management of essential assets with the AMS, you can provide services/products faster to the customers, thereby increasing their satisfaction levels. Thus, they feel confident about buying products/services repeatedly from your business. Similarly, the stakeholders who work with any assets or have ownership of assets in the company gain confidence when they see that you have deployed a proper AMS. Effective ongoing management of assets results in risk minimisation, cost reduction and performance optimisation and all these directly raise the confidence level of your stakeholders.
Efficient and systematic management of all assets in your business helps to prevent both short-term risks as well as potential long-term issues on the assets. Thus, this results in sustainability of your operations ensuring financial stability and consistency in your business growth. Appropriate management of assets also ensures consistent availability of assets by tracking the inventory. Hence, your organisation never runs out of any when needed, which bring about sustainability of performance.
To achieve the asset management standard means that your organisation has implemented a robust AMS which helps your employees to monitor, evaluate, communicate, and manage the asset-related risks and performance aspects. These procedures ensure that all assets in your organisation are tracked and governed effectively so that they achieve the proposed objectives. To put it simply, the AMS shall help in the realisation of the value of assets for your business by making them operate at their full potential.
To get assistance in the implementation of AMS and making it compliant with the ISO standard, you can contact the consultants at Compliancehelp! Our consultants would evaluate your asset management needs and provide you with the necessary guidance to implement a feasible AMS and get it certified.
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