When Facilities Director Steven Bastean heard he would be taking over vehicle maintenance for his county, he wasn’t sure how to tackle it.
Eight months later, his team is managing vehicle maintenance with the help of Asset Essentials and they’ve already seen $100,000+ of savings for his department and organization.
6-year history with Brightly
Medina County first chose MaintenanceEdge (legacy system) by Brightly in 2014, when they needed a way to make their paper processes digital to save technician time and streamline work.
When Steven joined the Medina County team in 2015, they weren’t using the software to its full capacity.
“When I took over, it was paper processes, even though MaintenanceEdge existed,” Steven says. “None of us had any kind of good technology. They were using the program to keep assets going and creating paperwork orders for all of the technicians.”
They soon switched to using smartphones so everyone could see their work more easily. But, they needed a better way to track data on maintenance work and expensive assets. That’s why they made the switch to Asset Essentials in 2019.
“Asset Essentials allowed us to check and balance the programming of all of our assets. It gave us a fresh start,” Steven says. “We’re starting to collect a lot of good data.”
They now have 860 assets in the software and they’ve added 100+ vehicles to manage in the system since the beginning of the year.
A better system for vehicle maintenance
In January 2020, police facility management and vehicle management was added to Steven’s team’s full plate of managing the maintenance, cleaning and capital improvements for the county’s 26 locations. But with Asset Essentials, “vehicle maintenance is easy to track and understand,” he says.
Where their transit department had been outsourcing vehicle maintenance to contractors, Steven began to see major savings by using his technicians instead and utilizing the software to keep up with all maintenance and even attaching images to work orders for evidence. Before, they were not tracking contractor maintenance and would run into repeat vehicle problems.
This year so far (January-October), we’ve completed 457 fleet work orders and saved the county $180,000.
This savings has allowed them to buy $80,000 in new equipment for the garage, like two new lifts and new lighting and wheel balancing machines.
“This savings will continue to be there every year,” he says. “It’s a true savings of $100,000 every single year as long as we maintain our diligence.”
Steven says there’s also savings in being able to extend the life of each vehicle.
“The real savings overall is the longevity of vehicles, come two, three or five years from now. You’re either going to get more money for selling them or your fleet is going to last longer.”
How Asset Essentials + Brightly made the difference
Steven says Asset Essentials really helped them work smarter and realize the savings.
“It allows us to track the assets. We understand from mechanic to mechanic what’s happening to those vehicles,” he says. Additionally, it helps them to bill back repairs to individual departments and better understand costs.
He says Asset Essentials gives them “the ability to track, bill and see where and how we’re spending money.”
“I’m much more confident today saying this is what we’re spending, this is what we’re doing and what it’s costing us,” Steven says. “We have a better way of understanding the data through Asset Essentials.”
Steven says this is crucial for today’s operations professionals.
“If you’re not in an electronic system, then you have no ability to go and tell someone you need more funding because this is where you’re spending money. If you don’t have those statistics, then you’re always in a losing battle.”
In addition to improving their data and decision-making, the software has also made their team more mobile and helped them manage COVID-19 operations.
“Asset Essentials has allowed us to continue to operate without any hiccups through an event like COVID-19,” he says. “Although, none of this is possible without the dedicated team of people who actually do all of the work. Thanks to them, we can experience these successes.”
Steven says he not only relies on Brightly for software, but also for education and support. From working with our Legendary Support Team to attending Dude University, he says, “Brightly is fantastic.”
