Choose an Enterprise Asset Management System - COTS vs. In-House

Enterprise Asset Management systems are often one of the few critical operational support systems in an organization. They not only are used by many cross functional teams, but also connect to many other critical systems such as ERP, Procurement, Accounting, and Financial Reporting.

The decision makers on this should be the business owners, who have the accountability for the financial results of managing physical assets. They should lead the evaluation process, and they should ask the question: Should we buy it off-the-shelf or build it in-house?.

This white paper was developed after encountering these questions many times. We developed the framework for study and some key questions for the organizations to use, in order for them to assess the costs and benefits of “buy vs. build”.

There are many factors to evaluate when choosing an enterprise asset management system:

• Expertise in enterprise asset management business processes and best practices
• Expertise in software development and asset tracking technologies
• IT resources for application development and ongoing support of the application

Of course, there is the question of “total cost of ownership”. But the Total Cost of Ownership can’t be determined unless you have thoroughly evaluated these factors.