As organizations proceed to demand extra from their constructed environments, expectations round asset uptime, power effectivity, and price management intensify. On the similar time, operational complexity is rising, pushed by rising occupancy, getting old infrastructure, and the necessity to meet evolving compliance requirements, in keeping with Eptura’s 2025 Office Index report.
Digital asset life cycle administration helps groups streamline capital planning, simplify preventive upkeep, and guarantee compliance with evolving requirements.
Key takeaways
- Digital options improve decision-making throughout the asset life cycle: By offering centralized entry to historic asset knowledge, digital platforms allow knowledgeable choices throughout planning, procurement, deployment, operations, and retirement
- Digitization streamlines processes and reduces prices: Digital instruments assist organizations shift from reactive to proactive upkeep, cut back downtime, and optimize asset efficiency, resulting in value financial savings and improved operational effectivity
- Built-in digital platforms help broader enterprise targets: By embracing digital options throughout your entire asset life cycle, organizations can improve asset efficiency, prolong lifespans, and help power effectivity and compliance objectives
“As companies grow to be ever extra aggressive, there’s a actual drive to maximise worth and effectivity, and to attenuate danger,” notes the report. In actual fact, when requested, “Which of the next is your greatest problem in relation to your asset administration operations?”, 40% of asset managers cite rising asset life cycles.
The answer is a transfer to an built-in platform that connects office, constructing, and asset knowledge, enabling smarter choices and extra proactive operations at each stage of an asset’s life cycle.
Planning and design: From missed alternatives to knowledgeable choices
Planning and design usually undergo from a scarcity of visibility into current asset efficiency. With out centralized knowledge, it’s a battle to forecast future wants precisely, resulting in over- or under-investment in infrastructure and tools.
Disconnected methods throughout departments additionally make it tough to align on priorities or simulate future situations, leading to inefficient layouts and missed alternatives for optimization.
Digital platforms allow centralized entry to historic asset knowledge, serving to you make knowledgeable choices throughout planning. With BIM modeling, ground mapping, and real-time state of affairs planning, you may simulate utilization patterns and anticipate future calls for, whereas knowledge from occupancy analytics can inform house planning choices, making certain new belongings are aligned with precise utilization tendencies.
Digital planning instruments help many kinds of modeling, forecasting, and simulation, together with:
- Life cycle value modeling to match long-term worth throughout asset choices earlier than buy
- Power forecasting primarily based on historic consumption patterns to information sustainable design
- Upkeep simulation to foretell service wants and keep away from future bottlenecks
- Cross-team collaboration via shared dashboards that align FM, IT, and capital planning
- Regulatory readiness by embedding compliance necessities into early design phases
By bringing these capabilities right into a single, related setting, it’s potential to plan extra proactively, cut back danger, and guarantee each choice helps long-term operational objectives.
Procurement and acquisition: From reactive Shopping for to strategic funding
Procurement is usually reactive, triggered by tools failures slightly than long-term planning. Many organizations lack standardized analysis standards, making it tough to match life cycle prices or assess long-term worth. With out entry to efficiency knowledge, groups could default to picking belongings primarily based on upfront value alone, as a result of they’re overlooking essential components like power effectivity, upkeep historical past, or system compatibility.
Digital platforms assist shift procurement from reactive to strategic. Asset administration options present visibility into efficiency tendencies, enabling groups to make knowledgeable choices primarily based on real-world knowledge. For instance, if an HVAC unit reveals a spike in corrective upkeep work orders, you may flag it as nearing end-of-life and leverage dependable knowledge to help a enterprise case for substitute, factoring in complete value of possession slightly than simply preliminary expense.
With entry to historic and real-time asset knowledge, you may:
- Evaluate asset efficiency throughout areas and distributors to determine which fashions ship the perfect long-term worth
- Monitor restore frequency and downtime to find out when an asset is costing extra to take care of than to exchange
- Consider power consumption tendencies to prioritize tools that helps sustainability objectives
- Align purchases with current methods to cut back integration points and enhance operational effectivity
- Construct a proactive substitute schedule primarily based on life cycle knowledge, minimizing disruptions and unplanned prices
By digitizing procurement workflows, you achieve the readability to put money into belongings that carry out higher, last more, and align with broader enterprise targets.
Deployment and set up: From disconnected groups to streamlined execution
Deployment delays usually stem from poor coordination between groups and inconsistent documentation. Guide processes can result in lacking or inaccurate information, complicating future upkeep and compliance efforts. And not using a centralized system, it’s tough to trace set up progress, confirm asset particulars, or guarantee adherence to security and operational requirements.
Digitization helps streamline deployment by connecting groups, standardizing documentation, and capturing asset knowledge from day one. Technicians can log set up particulars on-site utilizing a cellular app, for instance, making certain correct information for future upkeep and compliance audits.
With digital instruments in place, groups can:
- Seize set up knowledge on the supply, together with serial numbers, guarantee particulars, and configuration notes
- Guarantee constant documentation with standardized kinds and templates that cut back human error
- Monitor deployment progress throughout a number of websites, giving managers visibility into timelines and useful resource allocation
- Confirm compliance with security and operational requirements, utilizing digital checklists and automatic reporting
By digitizing deployment, you achieve management over the method, cut back danger, and lay the groundwork for extra environment friendly asset administration all through the life cycle.
Operations and upkeep: From expensive downtime to proactive efficiency
Many organizations nonetheless depend on reactive upkeep, responding to breakdowns as they occur, an strategy that drives up prices, will increase downtime, and places stress on groups to make fast choices with out with the ability to see the total context.
With out real-time visibility into asset well being, it’s tough to prioritize work orders, spot recurring points, or plan preventive duties. Guide monitoring of service historical past usually results in missed upkeep alternatives and compliance dangers.
Digital transformation delivers rapid returns by shifting upkeep from reactive to predictive. With entry to sensor knowledge, historic service information, and automatic scheduling instruments, groups can anticipate points earlier than they escalate, whereas AI-backed analytics detect patterns in asset habits and set off upkeep workflows, decreasing labor prices and avoiding expensive disruptions.
By digitizing upkeep operations, you may:
- Monitor asset well being in actual time, utilizing IoT sensors to detect anomalies and flag potential failures
- Automate preventive upkeep schedules, making certain duties are accomplished on time and decreasing reliance on guide monitoring
- Analyze service historical past throughout asset sorts, serving to groups determine which tools performs greatest over time
- Scale back labor hours and emergency repairs, as predictive fashions enable for higher planning and useful resource allocation
- Help compliance with audit-ready documentation, together with timestamps, technician notes, and accomplished checklists
With proactive upkeep in place, you may prolong asset life, enhance uptime, and make smarter choices total.
Retirement and substitute: From guesswork to life cycle optimization
Organizations usually make end-of-life choices with out full asset histories or clear analysis standards, resulting in untimely replacements or prolonged use of inefficient tools, driving up prices and rising environmental impression. With out visibility into efficiency tendencies or complete value of possession, groups could miss alternatives for reuse, resale, or recycling.
Digital instruments help extra strategic retirement choices by offering full life cycle knowledge. You possibly can determine the tipping level the place upkeep prices outweigh substitute worth, serving to them decide the optimum time for disposal. Historic utilization patterns, restore frequency, and power consumption knowledge all contribute to a extra knowledgeable strategy.
With digitized asset information, you may precisely:
- Analyze complete value of possession, together with upkeep, power use, and downtime, to information substitute choices
- Establish underperforming belongings primarily based on restore historical past and utilization tendencies, avoiding prolonged use of inefficient tools
- Help sustainability objectives by flagging belongings eligible for resale, reuse, or recycling
- Plan replacements prematurely, decreasing disruption and aligning procurement with funds cycles
- Guarantee compliance with disposal rules, utilizing digital documentation to trace decommissioning and environmental reporting
- Benchmark asset efficiency throughout fashions and distributors, informing future buying choices with real-world knowledge
By digitizing retirement planning, you may cut back waste, management prices, and make smarter choices about when and retire getting old belongings.
Digital FM transformation at each stage of the asset life cycle
By embracing digital options throughout your entire asset life cycle, you may remodel operations from reactive to proactive, data-driven decision-making. A complete strategy streamlines processes and reduces prices. It additionally helps you improve asset efficiency, prolong lifespans, and help broader enterprise targets. Because the business continues to evolve, facility groups that undertake built-in digital platforms shall be greatest positioned to satisfy rising calls for for effectivity, sustainability, and operational excellence.
Continuously requested questions
By Jonathan Davis
As a content material creator at Eptura, Jonathan Davis covers asset administration, upkeep software program, and SaaS options, delivering thought management with actionable insights throughout industries corresponding to fleet, manufacturing, healthcare, and hospitality. Jonathan’s writing focuses on matters to assist enterprises optimize their operations, together with constructing lifecycle administration, digital twins, BIM for facility administration, and preventive and predictive upkeep methods. With a grasp’s diploma in journalism and a various background that features writing textbooks, enhancing online game dialogue, and educating English as a overseas language, Jonathan brings a flexible perspective to his content material creation.
