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An international resort that is a global brand committed to providing its guests with the most relaxing accommodations for a trip. They offer vacation ownership, with lodgings in more than 300 different destinations across the world. The quality of their service and their resorts is on par with the best in the world. But despite their prestige in providing a luxurious resort experience, the company came to us with a myriad of problems to be fixed.

This is their asset management success story, after all the challenges they faced.

The following problems, or rather, opportunities for improvement, were compiled by the company’s stakeholders:

Assets are unaccounted for after initially receiving them.
Assets are moved from place to place without change in the system, eliminating visibility as to where an asset has been moved.
Asset inventories are such a time-consuming process that they are bypassed completely.
In possession of several thousand “high-value assets” that were not located.
No control of goods, their whereabouts, stock, etc.

Fixing all of these issues ultimately contributes to a greater level of efficiency with assets and their transportation and tracking, checking inventory, asset location, and taking stock. The labor costs and inventory costs that are minimized through fixing these problems make up the largest percentage of the opportunity to save money.

AB&R’s recommended solution: an RFID Asset Tracking System.

The program serves a diverse set of needs, coming with a PC program that links to a SQL database for data storage, a handheld RFID reader and software to take inventory quickly, a web site for quick access to the data captured from the software, and the physical RFID tags needed for each asset.

The goals for a project of this caliber include providing instant asset location and information capabilities, asset inventory capabilities, asset management platforms, asset location software, and for the Oracle software system to work in sync with ABR. An effectively used asset management system can deliver results of inventory visibility and manageability, real time data for analysis and insurance of assets, minimized asset location time, labor savings, and more contributions to the overall efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the company.
Making it Happen
The implementation process is complex: before any solution can be put in place, the inventory of all existing assets must be tagged. Once that is complete and a reader infrastructure has been set, the benefits can start rolling in.

Tagging every asset on site, however, is a formidable task for any company. With the placement of a pre-encoded tag on each asset, the asset manager must fill the asset’s information into the database. For every asset that must be tagged, its information must manually be put into the database.

With the addition of any new assets, RFID tags must be attached to maintain the level of data accuracy that is being achieved with an RFID system. From the point that an RFID system is implemented, all new assets will be stuck with “Pre-loaded” tags, or pre-printed tags that are already in the database.

The web and PC application will allow the user to look up the status of any asset in the system, and depending on the security levels/permissions, edit the details of an asset or move an asset in the system. The web application makes it so having the software downloaded on the computer is not necessary.

AB&R projects the full implementation of the project to be done over the course of a few months, ranging from an estimated early September start to completion by January. The implementation process can be broken down into major milestones:

SRDS/ Site Survey
SRDS revisions, planning
Export from Oracle
Import, System goes online
Training for the readers, infrastructure, tags, etc.
Existing asset tagging begins
New asset tagging process begins
Take inventory after all assets are tagged, training must be completed
All items tagged and ready for inventory, system operating smoothly.

The majority of implementation costs lie in the day of implementation – labor costs and infrastructure setup – and a high remaining percentage stems from the cost of the RFID readers and the hardware for the computer. The tags themselves are a fairly low cost, but they add up over the course of time as their usage numbers in the tens of thousands.
Benefits Seen Today
The company’s implementation of the system – about 6 years ago – came in the same timeframe as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Companies were committing fraud by listing assets that they did not have and taking tax cuts on them. This act made it so each company’s CEO has to sign off on the financial statements for the company, assuming all liability if fraud is found in the asset report.

With this act came a big boom in the growth of the asset management industry. The resorts company came to AB&R originally having no idea where many of its assets were. This not only was a liability financially due to Sarbanes-Oxley but a huge detriment to efficiency. Since implementation, the company has enjoyed calmness of mind in regards to ensuring accurate asset reports, minimized costs, and a greater general knowledge of the location, stock, and movement patterns of their assets. They’ve even enjoyed the pre-loaded tagging system, saying that it works great and discussing orders for the future.

The implementation process may seem rigorous, but the benefits far outweigh the burdens. A high return on investment ensures that the system will pay for itself in time, and ultimately yield a higher payoff for the company. Gain the competitive edge now and invest in a smarter, faster, and safer future for your business.

For more information on asset management systems, go to our Asset Management Solution Page.