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Survey: Industry Executives Find Integrating EAM Systems Challenging

A recent survey finds that manufacturers find enterprise asset management integration a major obstacle toward optimal investment value.

According to a survey conducted by Impress Software, a maker of project integration software, integration between two enterprise asset management (EAM) systems is a major challenge that hinders organizations from achieving optimal value from their investments. According to the survey, more than 70% of executive respondents claim top business challenges of EAM projects to be financial control, timely visibility into project costs and status, and accuracy of project information.

In announcing the survey results, Warren Utt, president and CEO of Impress Software said, "The recent survey shows that when executing large projects like construction, plant turnaround, or plant shutdown, information sharing between departments is the key to success. In order for projects to stay on-time and on-budget, project managers and finance executives must be able to share accurate and timely data. With a high volume of projects taking place at many organizations, fully automating the links between systems is the only way to make sure that happens."

The survey found that EAM projects are constantly in progress, with the most commonly executed activities relating to routine maintenance work (82%), followed by turnaround/shutdown/outage projects (74%) and construction of new facilities (58%). It's important to note that most organizations execute more than one type of EAM project. In fact, nearly half of the respondents reported completing more than 250 routine maintenance projects per year, and more than half of the respondents complete between 1-10 turnarounds/shutdowns/outage projects each year.

With more than 80% of organizations using more than one system to accomplish EAM projects, the integration challenge is wide-spread. Nearly half of the respondents that use multiple systems reported that they either employ a manual process to transfer data between systems, or that their systems share absolutely no data at all.

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