Local governments in South Africa have a vast number of assets that they need to manage, from small internal assets such as computers, through to significant external assets such as water pumps, tanks and so forth.
These assets are proving to be a nightmare to manage as there is no formal methodology and process defined to manage them and, to make matters worse, the staff tasked with looking after them are often unskilled and untrained.
This lack of management capacity not only leads to assets falling into disrepair, but also allows for moveable products to be stolen, often without anyone knowing about it until a crisis arises. And then it’s too late to try to trace who was responsible as there is no record of who delivered it, installed it or was supposed to manage it.
“FLUX has developed a solution that allows local governments to manage and control their assets effectively with the assistance of common mobile devices,” explains Werner Le Roux, managing director of Flux Interactive.
“We understand that local government employees are not always able to keep up to speed with their assets out in the field and have developed a solution that helps them keep accurate records of all of these assets.”
When wanting to examine the history of an asset to determine if it needs maintenance or replacement, assuming it’s still there, the general process is that someone has to search for the paper trail, which may or may not exist, before they can go and examine the equipment.
The benefit of keeping electronic records accessible from a mobile is that a simple request will deliver all the relevant details of the asset to the user’s phone in an instant. Additionally, any reports the user enters into the mobile device can automatically be saved in the organisation’s database.
Le Roux adds that FLUX understands that local governments have existing financial and business applications, such as SAP, SAGE X3 or others, and they need to use these applications to manage their assets.
“We have therefore ensured our asset management system runs on the latest mobile hardware, while integrating seamlessly into these applications. MobiFlow functions even in a disconnected environment making it possible to work anywhere.
“Should any action be required when examining an asset, the report and suggested follow-up can immediately be integrated into the local government’s business application and planning system.”
Due to the fact that the system offers bi-directional communications, field workers can be sent instructions to check assets as necessary as well as the attributes they are to report on. For example, it is not sufficient simply to check that something is there, the report must also specify its condition; is it in working order, does it require maintenance or does it require replacement?
For employees to ensure that their assessments are correct and accurate, the instructions on their mobiles can include pictures and specific checkpoints. Equipment can be labelled with barcodes or QR codes that modern phones can read to further assist staff in identifying the correct assets and reporting on their status, along with GPS positioning and timestamps.
“Implementing a system like this is not difficult since FLUX’s mobile application, called MobiFlow, can be integrated seamlessly with the organisation’s existing back end after the auditing processes have been defined,” concludes Le Roux.
“Once implemented, asset management becomes easier, more accurate and more reliable as you always know who was tasked with managing the asset, making disappearing equipment a problem of the past.”