At least once in our careers, we’ve all been in a situation where something goes wrong that could have been easily prevented. Important milestones are missed, unexpected costs arise due to an error and other issues occur because of a lack of proper tools and systems. This is why, at PowerHub, we advocate for having an asset management software solution in place that canboth let you avoid costly errors and help your operations run more smoothly—whether you’re in solar, wind, hydro or any other business.

Below, we break down some of the most common errors we come across daily that prove how asset management software can help mitigate business risks. If you’ve been wondering why renewable energy asset management software is important, you’ve come to the right place.

1. Technical Defaults Lead to Hidden Costs.

Having proper financial records is key to any business—and there can be some serious hidden costs associated with missing payments. This is why it is important to work with asset management software to track all of your fees, property taxes and other payments that you need to make on a weekly, monthly or even yearly basis. When you work with asset management software, you have the ability to track you finances in one place, set reminders for when payments are upcoming, and even tie them to important tasks.

When you miss payments, they generally tend to incur interest and although it can seem like a low rate for a one-time missed payment, after four, five or six missed payments, the interest adds up quickly! By inputting your financial records into a central system, it will allow you to never forget a payment and never be surprised by a large bill again.

2. Poor Maintenance Records Lead to Poor Warranty Enforcement.

Keeping proper records of your projects is important for various reasons—not only to ensure that your site is working at full capacity, but it’ll be even more important when something breaks down. Keeping proper maintenance records tracked and all in one place allows your team to check when a site was last inspected, if there are any issues that could arise, and if there is an on-going issue to be dealt with.

As we see with future and current customers every day, these records are particularly helpful when you need to claim your warranty on a product. Without proper records of maintenance, your warranty will likely be considered void…incurring additional costs to repair or replace the broken part. Using asset management software to track your maintenance records allows you to keep all of the information for a project in one place, ensuring that everything is in good working order and that you won’t be stuck with additional costs.

3. Missed Milestones and Tasks Lead to Additional Time Costs.

Let’s face it: everyone gets busy with their jobs and it can sometimes be hard to keep track of everything, especially when juggling multiple projects for multiple sites with multiple stakeholders. Important goals or milestones are missed…perhaps an important SREC hedge was forgotten, an item was not delivered on site because it was not scheduled properly, or maybe there are overtime costs because a project was not tracked correctly and has begun running over the allotted time period.

Some of these costly mistakes can be avoided by simply using asset management software to track all of your project’s goals and milestones in one place. On PowerHub, for example, scheduled tasks can send assigned team members reminders and allow managers to keep track of progress. By imputing important dates and tasks into one platform, and sharing them with your team members, you all can ensure that the job is getting done on budget and on time.

4. Deadlines and Tasks Aren’t Fluid Enough to be Realistic.

Just like the saying goes—no man is an island. Every stage of a solar or wind energy project depends on many people, many tasks and many key dates. Your project’s plan and its goals should reflect that. By using Excel or another rigid system to lay out your project plan, you’re basically forcing yourself to either constantly update the plan as things change, or worse, you’re letting your plan get dated and inaccurate.

Platforms like PowerHub let you automate this whole process: create tasks with automatic reminders, connect those deadlines to other dates and tasks so they move as plans shift, and outline how these tasks feed into a larger project strategy.

Asset management is key to any business. Although software can’t prevent all the issues that might arise, it can help avoid some costly mistakes, mitigate risks and ensure that your project runs smoothly. Want to learn more about asset management software?