A quality maintenance budget solution will enable the asset intensive organisation to approach maintenance as a financial equation in both the tactical and strategic planning horizons. Implementing a solution for the whole business requires targeted thinking about how to approach change, including allowing the customer voice to form the basis of your design. This is the story of how BHP recently went live, globally, on a new approach to budgeting for maintenance.

Maintenance budgeting systems and processes in asset intensive organisations lack efficiency, are heavily driven by manual data collation and are inconsistent across the enterprise. This limits the organisation’s ability to provide visibility into expenditure, adequate cost variance reporting and ultimately, its compliance to strategic plans.

Delivering an enterprise grade maintenance budgeting solution is the path to address these issues. Success of such solution can be measured through high levels of user adoption and executive support. Both of which can only achieved through a successful organisational change management program that supports people, standardises processes and simplifies the technology stack.

• Executing an Organisational Change Management strategy
• Securing senior leadership support for an investment in a maintenance budgeting solution
• An unrelenting focus on customer voice
• Aligning the global process and approach for maintenance budgeting

Know who your key customer is. Then talk to them, bring them along the journey and always advocate to have their voices heard. This will allow you to focus on the fundamentals and simplify your scope and build a quality solution. If done well, then once the solution goes live, it can be a springboard to massive organisational value.