Understanding Asset Lifecycle Management

This chapter provides an overview of Asset Lifecycle Management and the Asset Repository Manager.

Understanding the Asset Management Lifecycle

An asset-intensive enterprise requires controlling and managing assets throughout the asset lifecycle: procurement, deployment, maintenance, update, retirement, and analysis. PeopleSoft delivers the Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution to provide complete access to an entire asset portfolio, regardless of asset class, and creating visibility into total cost of ownership by enabling cost tracking associated with acquisition as well as lifetime maintenance and performance of assets.

Enterprise assets cover a broad spectrum of categories including heavy equipment, technology assets, facilities and real estate, and transportation fleets and vehicles. These functionally specific asset categories requires software tailored to the unique requirements of each asset category. To address asset differences, specific applications are available within ALM to meet the explicit business processes for each asset category:

Asset Management
IT Asset Management (ITAM)
Maintenance Management (MM)
Real Estate Management (REM)

The foundation product of the Asset Lifecycle Management solution is Asset Management. Asset Management provides a common Asset Repository Manager (ARM), which stores all asset data. The repository provides a single source of truth for physical, financial or operational asset data.

The Plan to Retire business process spans from the initial planning and budgeting stage to the end-of-life disposal of assets. Whether the asset lifecycle spans three or thirty years of operational life, the operational components remain the same. Asset Lifecycle Management, in partnership with the entire suite of Financials and Supply Chain Management product solutions, provides the information necessary to maximize the utilization of assets.

PeopleSoft defines five phases within the Plan to Retire business process:

The Plan phase includes the prioritization of asset needs and utilization in alignment with corporate objectives. ALM enables you to collect asset requirements and performance information, forecast asset requirements, assess these requirements to assets currently available and establish an asset plan and budget in line with your strategic direction.
The Acquire phase enables different acquisition processes depending upon asset needs defined in the planning process. Buildings, equipment and other resources may be purchased, leased, constructed, or repurposed.
The Deploy phase focuses on minimizing ramp-up time for getting assets into operation. This may include construction for real estate; setup, configuration and testing for IT assets; or retooling, insurance and certification for major equipment. Additionally, ALM enables assets to be assigned to users prior to deployment.
The Maintain phase includes capturing and tracking maintenance activity, costs, time and expenses, as well as forecasting maintenance requirements. ALM allows you to set maintenance budgets, negotiate service level agreements, and plan preventive maintenance schedules.
The Retire phase allows expeditious disposal or sale of assets no longer meeting performance targets set in the planning phase for specific asset types.

Using Asset Management with the Budgeting, Project Costing, IT Asset Management, Maintenance Management, or Real Estate Management products, you can manage and maintain asset acquisitions, deployment, maintenance and disposal as separate projects or as part of ongoing operations.

The pillar of the ALM product suite is the Asset Repository Manager (ARM). Once the Asset Management product is established, the asset repository is available to all PeopleSoft Enterprise products that integrate with Asset Management.

Note. Without this product, you cannot have access to the asset repository.

Understanding the Asset Repository

The Asset Repository is the database of assets stored within your Asset Management system. The Asset Repository Manager accommodates all asset classes: IT, property, and plant equipment, with complete operational and financial data. The Asset Repository provides a single, centralized database that stores and tracks organizational assets physically and financially. Maintaining asset identifying information within a common repository allows sharing asset data across the PeopleSoft FMS, SCM, and HCM Enterprise suite and with third party applications. Enabling integrated access to asset data accommodates the level of detail preferred by the calling application; for example, some applications require the ability to identify assets at a very high level while others prefer data to be highly granular, thus requiring many asset records to identify all components. The asset repository is required to realize PeopleSoft’s ALM solution across all product suites.

The Asset Lifecycle Management solution provides an integrated framework to manage the physical and financial aspects of organizational assets for the lifetime of the asset.

This centralized repository offers a single source of the truth for organizational asset data eliminating redundancy and inaccuracies in asset reporting. Assets can be associated to represent a hierarchical schema, like components of plant equipment, or a structural breakdown of properties, like a building broken into segments such as floors and office spaces. The hierarchical display of assets can be viewed graphically by associating the highest-level asset to its subordinate child and component assets. The repository houses a complete history of acquisition details, maintenance history, and cost history for each asset over its operational life.

PeopleSoft currently stores asset information in different databases serving different business process requirements:

The PeopleSoft financial and distribution management (FDM) database stores financial asset data.
The PeopleSoft human capital management (HCM) database stores employee assigned assets.

Each database essentially stands alone, has its own unique identification structure and level of data granularity. The shared asset repository enables PeopleSoft to manage the operational requirements of all assets, provides a holistic view of any asset, from any perspective (financial, operational, technical, or custodial) to reduce redundant data, and facilitates sharing common asset information across PeopleSoft’s databases and with third party utilities, such as Centerstone CAFM and Altiris Discovery Tools.

This diagram demonstrates how the asset repository serves the PeopleSoft enterprise:

Asset Repository in the PeopleSoft Enterprise

The FDM database identifies capital assets that are typically carried at a summarized level to reduce the amount of data required for financial record keeping. For example, a computer workstation is carried as a single asset in the financial asset repository representing all of its components and associated costs.
SCM carries inventory and spare parts used in the lifetime maintenance of capital assets. The relationship of critical spares to mission critical assets is required for operational and insurance reasons. Organizational assets can be held in inventory until put into service.
IT asset software utilities like auto-discovery, software delivery, license tracking, usage monitoring, configuration management, contract management and self-healing utilities and maintenance management require a technical view of an asset to maintain appropriate spare parts lists and to facilitate maintenance scheduling of materials and labor. The asset view required by a maintain, repair and operate (MRO) system is more granular than its financial designation, which is summarized to its highest meaningful financial category.

To accommodate the holistic management of disparate asset data requires reconciliation of key structures and maintain the ability to define asset hierarchies, PeopleSoft rolls up asset components to a single Asset ID. The asset data stored in the Asset Repository includes:

FDM’s fixed asset data.
HCM’s employee's asset data.
Asset warehouse; available for reassignment to new custodian, (including non-capital assets assigned to custodians for tracking purposes).
Non-owned assets (such as field service installed products).
Spare parts lists, for single assets or asset types.
Warranties and contracts data elements, for single asset or asset type.
License information including software license information.
Inspection schedules and records.
Preventive maintenance schedules (either manufacturer or user defined), for single asset or asset type.
Recorded inventory numbers, serial numbers and lot number on those asset components issued from inventory or manufacturer for tracking purposes.
Technical asset characteristics to identify technology assets, software, and plant equipment.
Asset configuration information, version control information, usage information, and production history (units produced, hours of operation, and so on.)
Asset spatial dimensions to accommodate space and computer aided facility management (CAFM) software requirements.
Reservation information allowing asset to be reserved for specified time period and retaining all existing financial fixed asset accounting information.
Custom attributes that you define to apply specific or unique characteristics to an asset.

The asset repository accommodates many distinct asset groupings including Parent-Child, group assets, composite assets and multiple organizational perspectives: for example, by custodian, department, asset component, and financial class.

Consult all of the product PeopleBooks cited for comprehensive information about specific functionality, features and business processes used in conjunction with the asset repository.

Implementing Asset Lifecycle Management

PeopleSoft provides a set of documentation components that complement each other to present all the information you need to implement Asset Management.

To implement Asset Management, you will find the information required to set up the tables and options used by Asset Management and the other ALM products in this PeopleBook as well as the following resources:

PeopleSoft Enterprise Application Fundamentals PeopleBook.
PeopleSoft Enterprise Global Options and Reports PeopleBook.
PeopleSoft Enterprise Asset Management PeopleBook
PeopleSoft Enterprise IT Asset Management PeopleBook
PeopleSoft Enterprise Maintenance Management PeopleBook
PeopleSoft Enterprise Real Estate Management PeopleBook

Because the information you may need to fully implement Asset Management involves more than one PeopleSoft product, you need to refer to the Getting Started chapter in each PeopleBook for specific implementation and integration information.

Use the PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications Fundamentals 8.9 PeopleBook to find detailed information about the following functionality and processes:

Defining financials and supply chain management common definitions.
Setting installation options for PeopleSoft applications.
Defining user preferences.
Securing your system.
Defining and using ChartFields.
Editing ChartField combinations.
Configuring ChartFields.
Summarizing ChartFields using trees.
Using entry events.
Using alternate accounts.
Defining accounting calendars.
Setting up ledgers.
Using journal generator.
Using interunit and intraunit accounting and ChartField inheritance.
Processing allocations.
Setting up on-demand processing.

Use the PeopleSoft Enterprise Asset Lifecycle Management Fundamentals 8.9 PeopleBook to find detailed information about setting up the following functionality and processes:

Establishing asset management business units and cash generating units
Establishing asset processing, including defining asset attributes, profiles, ownership and reporting options.
Setting up accounting entry and financial processing.
Setting up depreciation processing.
Setting up tax processing and tax reporting.
Integrating with other products.
Configuring background processing for assets.