THE INNOVATORS
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Compatible with mobile devices, Assura’s software can be used anywhere.
How Assura’s Configurable Asset-Management Platform Can Help Water Utilities
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Hamish Howard: Most people’s asset management starts and ends with their accounting system. They record their assets when they purchase them, the assets depreciate, and eventually either their book value is zero or they are sold. However, every asset has a life cycle, and during that life cycle, it may need to be audited, repaired, or serviced. There may be legislative requirements relating to health and safety. If an organization doesn’t really have a process other than recording an asset in a book, log, or Excel spreadsheet, things often get forgotten or overlooked, even though the asset might be quite valuable, both in dollar terms and in terms of the potential effects of failure.
Kris Polly: Please tell us about Assura Software.
Kris Polly: How can Assura’s software help solve that problem?
Hamish Howard: Assura Software is a New Zealand–based software company. I’m the managing director, a position that would be equivalent to chief executive officer in the United States. I run the business, and I’m also one of the owners. We’ve got solutions for a number of different business problems from complaints to management, health and safety, and asset management. They’re all built on a workflow platform. It’s a highly configurable solution. We don’t turn up and dictate how you should manage assets or how you should handle complaints or any other business process. Instead, we ask you how you do it at the moment and then work with you on how technology might help improve the process. Then when we put the Lego pieces of our software together to achieve that solution.
Hamish Howard: Since the solutions are built on a workflow platform, once the asset is registered in the system, life cycles can be set up. That ensures that a person or group within the business is always responsible for that asset and the maintenance tasks that need to happen during its life cycle. When they perform the tasks and update the record, that triggers the next cycle so that it happens again in the future. If those things aren’t done in time, they are escalated within the system to the person’s manager. Managers don’t have to deal with every asset; they just see the things that aren’t getting done. The software also helps increase efficiency. A water utility has assets spread out geographically. The software displays all the things that might be due to be performed in a particular area in the next week. You can do them all when you’re in the area rather been coming back multiple times.
Kris Polly: What are the main asset management problems that your clients are trying to solve?
34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ASSURA SOFTWARE.
ssura Software is a Christchurch, New Zealand–based technology company that builds highly configurable asset- and case-management solutions. Its products are used by several large irrigation schemes and businesses to manage their assets and record health and safety risks and hazards. Using Assura’s platform in the office on a computer or in the field on a mobile phone app, employees can keep track of what tasks need to be done and the current status of their assets. In this interview, Assura Managing Director Hamish Howard speaks with Municipal Water Leader Editor-in-Chief Kris Polly about Assura’s platform and how it stands to benefit municipal water utilities.
