Delivering MRO in the As-a-Service Economy

The first two Soundbites in this series on MRO (How to Make MRO a Proactive Contributor to Your Enterprise and How MRO As-a-Service is Changing the Procurement Outsourcing Market)explored the challenges faced today by MRO professionals and how enterprises can get more out of this function. This, the last in the series, will focus on opportunities that the emerging As-a-Service Economy will create for MRO to become much more of an agile capability for the enterprise. The new MRO requires digital platforms supporting on-demand analytics that are offered by service providers who use the smart insights delivered on the MRO process to create new commercial models for their enterprise clients.

The opportunity for the enterprise to get greater value and agility out of MRO by moving away from legacy processes is fuelled by the more agile and dynamic plug-and-play digital platforms available today. These platforms deliver MRO services with a one-to-many model that delivers an end-to-end process. An As-a-Service MRO provider will structure the capability to focus on business outcomes for the enterprise that go beyond product purchase price to deliver value—a key differentiator from the traditional distribution models. Enterprises get these results for MRO by plugging into high quality, reliable, standardized business processes delivered through integrated technology platforms that deliver as-a-service. The key to the success of these platforms is usability, it needs to provide users access to all their process needs in one spot. To be most effective, an as-a-service platform will collect all of the relevant data, link to all the available material catalogues, empower requests via mobile channels, support advanced inventory management, warranty tracking, and enable connectivity with the organizations full range of other enterprise software.

These new technology platforms are making it easier to deliver and manage MRO processes across individual locations and the enterprise, but achieving the business outcomes is also dependent on providers who have an end-to-end vision for MRO, a clear roadmap to achieve that vision and the identification of best practices across the MRO processes. Leading technology is not enough, instead its value is enhanced by having skilled professionals owning MRO for the enterprise and having engineering capabilities to support product development and maintenance as well. As this model evolves, the new platforms will be able to help enterprises by allowing integration into additional services like predictive analytics and the management of end-to-end capabilities without being reliant on legacy or clumsy ERP systems. Partnering with service providers who are already looking ahead will help manufacturers accelerate beyond traditional labour arbitrage and transaction processing towards more effective, adaptable, fluid and well-defined supply chains.

The availability of new digital platforms is not the final end state for technology adoption within the MRO process. In some ways this is just about creating a new technology baseline capability against which future innovations that impact MRO can be better integrated and managed. For instance, when HfS Research discussed with enterprise MRO buyers the next major innovations coming into their businesses the top three they mentioned were: predicting stock, localised part provision through industrial vending machines and 3D scanning/printing. Holding unnecessary stock is an expensive part of MRO, but not as expensive as not having a crucial part when needed, so these predictive analytics tools that monitor stock requirements are seen as incredibly value to MRO professionals. Similarly, giving staff easy access to frequently used and critical spares and components, close to the point of use via smarter automatic cribs was also seen as of great potential, particularly when coupled with RFID and predictive stock replenishment solutions. Finally, although a relatively nascent technology, 3D scanning/printing has enormous potential. With buyers excited by the ability to create parts/tools on-demand, plus extending the life of equipment by producing parts that are hard to find, that require customisation or are end of life.

HfS will shortly be bringing together a comprehensive report on the impact of As-a-Service on MRO and the opportunities created for the enterprise is working with service providers who are focused on making an impact on an important process area too often overlooked in recent years.