Every day, we use more dashboards and tools than ever before to help us manage our personal and professional lives. It’s increasingly common to have a platform to track everything—from our work tasks to how much sleep we got last night. Managing so much information on so many platforms can be a bit overwhelming at times.
We understand that it would be almost impossible to combine all these various platforms into one mega system…but how about centralizing all commercial and project management aspects into one platform to make your work quicker, easier and more effective? Not convinced that this is going to help you save time and energy? Read our top five reasons on why you should have one asset management platform in your renewable energy organization.
1. See what you need at a glance.
Think for a moment about what you do when you first step into the office every morning and turn on your computer. You probably start by opening various spreadsheets, tools and dashboards. If you don’t have solar or wind asset management software, you might even start with a data dump from your monitoring systems. Not to mention your email, your project list, and perhaps an Excel file or two. We’re sure that throughout the day you probably toggle back and forth between these tools quite frequently—making notes in your to-do lists, checking your monitoring platform, or sending a file to a colleague.
This can be a lot of work that doesn’t contribute to getting…well, anything done. You’re spending more time searching, opening files and closing tabs than you are working. Doesn’t a centralized platform where you have access to all information at a glance sound enticing? A place where you can see your tasks, the performance of your projects and even outlying tickets at a glance, so you can easily plan your day, know what needs to be top of the list and what can wait. A platform that makes you an all-star on the job.
2. Key information at your fingertips.
Searching through various documents and forms for information can quickly bog down work productivity, especially if there are multiple versions in multiple formats. We’re sure you can understand that this is probably not the most effective way to get work done. When you move onto a centralized platform, it helps alleviate some of this searching and puts your documents exactly where you need them. You always know which are the final versions of a document, and you can create standardized formats so that you can quickly and easily find the information that is important to you. Not docs, and sharepoint, and personal laptops, and dropbox—just one library, period. Using a centralized platform will also allow you to aggregate information across various projects in your portfolio, allowing everyone to always be on the same page.
3. Never forget anything.
Let’s face it: keeping on top of your to-do list can be challenging sometimes, especially when everyone in your organization is using a different platform. Looming deadlines can be forgotten about, tracking yearly milestones and contractual obligations can be difficult to keep up with…especially when everyone is juggling multiple tasks and duties (and who isn’t?!). By moving onto a centralized platform, it can help keep you and your team members on top of everything that is important to you and your project. Set up email notifications for your maintenance checks, input your important tasks and milestones, and always know what is coming up for your project. Ensure that important information about your specific project is always up-to-date, so you can answer any question quickly and easily.
4. Automation is key.
We can probably take an educated guess that you spend at least a few hours a week creating and re-creating the same reports, performing the same data imports or exports, and perhaps even creating reminders for yourself for tasks and duties that you frequently must keep track of. If this sounds like you, it’s time to embrace some automation in your workflows. Although automation won’t be able to do all the work for you, having all your key information in a centralized platform that allows you to automate the repetitive tasks will help you focus on the output instead of the process. Stop spending precious hours pulling together the same monthly report—automate it and simply change the line items that need to be updated. Start using automation and we’re sure you will never look back.
5. Know who is working on what.
Having all your team members working from one playbook helps not only keep everyone on the same page, but also allows you to focus your teams. As we already said, having all your key documents, information and tasks in a centralized platform allows for greater collaboration and helps fight the growing concern of corporate amnesia (don’t know what corporate amnesia is? Read our blog on it here). When you know which team member is handling which job, it helps you avoid doubling up on work and can alert you to who might need some help in completing their tasks. When everyone is using one playbook, everything flows more smoothly, giving you more time to focus on what is important in your job.
At PowerHub, we believe that integrating different tools and platforms together can alleviate day-to-day stresses and make you more productive. Book a demo with PowerHub today and learn how we’re working with the renewable energy industry to create a product that works with you.
