Digital Transformation of Asset Management Will Improve Many Outcomes For Businesses

The traditional thinking on asset management has been limited to hard goods, whether that be products that businesses sell to customers, materials used in manufacturing, and/or tools used to provide services. Recently, forward-thinking companies have expanded upon the premise to include more abstract concepts like the management of personnel and time.

The next innovations in asset management aren’t focused on what assets to manage or how to manage them, however. Those innovations center around transforming the entire concept of asset management to become an entirely digital process.

Converting asset management to a digital system lowers overhead, hastens delivery of products and services plus eliminates human errors. The “secret” is all contained in the power of Kubernetes technology.

How Kubernetes change asset management systems

Whether it’s materials, personnel, products, or all of those a business counts among its assets, management goals are very similar. Businesses want to know where their assets are and how they are performing. Kubernetes can provide solutions to both of those queries and do it in real-time.

A business that has a system for managing assets that are either offline or based on physical servers encounters three problems. First, setting up such a system can require a lot of resources. Secondly, it’s prone to human error in its operation. Finally, maintaining a group of physical servers can eat up a lot of labor and other resources.

Cloud platforms like Google Cloud Platform provide the alternative of virtual machines that management systems can live on. Even deploying separate processes on virtual machines doesn’t really fully streamline management systems, however.

For example, suppose a business has a cloud-based barcode system that tracks the location and number of materials used to provide a service. That may be sufficient for its own purpose, but what about when that same business needs to communicate the need for more of that material to personnel in charge of replenishment? That’s when businesses need the power of Kubernetes.

Kubernetes shift the emphasis away from each individual virtual machine to put all the individual components of asset management into one containerized process. At the same time, cloud technology retains the advantage of each part of that process not relying on all of the others functioning at their peaks in order for the whole thing to work well.

So Kubernetes is the best way to go in terms of the creation and maintenance of asset management systems. How can digital transformation of asset management actually lower overhead though?

Cutting costs with digital tools

Kubernetes and cloud platforms assist in lowering overhead in a couple of different ways. They can provide event logging and reporting as well as automate processes to eliminate or reduce labor.

The first way that systems like the Google Kubernetes Engine can lower overhead is through recording and then interpreting potentially thousands of data points. For example, if a business has a perishable asset, the GKE can enable virtual machines to simultaneously monitor for shelf life and provide alerts as to when those assets are about to expire.

Over time, businesses can use that information to reduce waste and improve processes to ensure they get the full value of perishable assets. The second way that Kubernetes lower overhead is equally important.

Suppose that the same business has personnel manually log and report each instance of wasted materials and how they were disposed of. Businesses could save on that labor by automating that process so when an expiration alert event occurs, the same container produces a separate alert that provides information about wasted materials and their removal from service.

By coordinating actions with data in one process, there is no need for additional compliance labor. Maximizing asset management isn’t only about digital processes and cutting costs, however. There is value for businesses in the actual delivery of their products and services as well.

Making products and services more efficient for end consumers

No matter how reliant upon digital technology the asset management system is for a company, the actual collection of revenue is what drives the business. This is where GCP and GKE can be of greatest aid in managing consumer-facing assets.

If a business primarily deals in services and has multiple individuals or teams out in its field simultaneously, that’s a tremendous opportunity to use digital tools to manage those assets. It’s possible to build systems on GCP that can track those assets, monitor their progress, enable communication, and measure efficiency.

GKE enables all those services to coordinate together and form a cohesive view of all those assets. That, in turn, facilitates the intelligent deployment of those assets to maximize the potential capture of revenue. This is true for other forms of asset management as well, however.

Businesses who primarily deal with consumer goods can generate more revenue with digital asset management as well. For example, a GCP-based system can record the number of customer interactions and time necessary to sell products. It can also measure the performance of different products in the field, then GKE containerizes all those processes into one user-friendly system.

One industry, in particular, has made great use of cloud platforms and Kubernetes to reduce overhead and maximize benefits. It’s a tremendous example of how transforming asset management with digital systems can improve outcomes.

Inside solar energy’s digital transformation

Photovoltaic cells are a popular option for renewable energy. There is labor associated with not only maintaining but maximizing them, however.

Manufacturers embed devices within the cells that aim to monitor performance and the environment. The best hardware, however, is wasted if the management system attached to it isn’t optimal.

That’s where GCP and GKE play vital roles. Systems built on the cloud can collect and organize all the data points simultaneously, providing real-time information that is also useful.

Other virtual machines use that information to provide alerts that cells are dirty, in need of maintenance, or simply not properly positioned to maximize their collection. It’s even possible to automate the repositioning of those cells to adjust to the sun’s position using GCP-based systems.

Kubernetes orchestrate all those processes so they run seamlessly. While not all businesses literally look to harness the power of the sun, Cloudmatos can use cloud- and Kubernetes-based solutions to give all business systems that feel as powerful as the sun.