What is a Ticketing System?
As anyone in the oil & gas, transportation, utilities, logistics, or manufacturing industry will know, effectively maintaining enterprise assets throughout their lifecycle is a demanding task. To avoid downtime, and thus a loss of revenue, asset management, preventive maintenance, and predictive maintenance have to be ‘front and center’ of company policy.
A ticketing system goes some way in aiding reliability centered maintenance, as well as aiding the quick resolution of any issues.
But, what exactly is a ticketing system? A ticketing system, also known as a ‘service desk ticketing system’, is a series of management tools and information technology software that help resolve service requests. These service requests are generated by an external client or within the business itself. As well as generating service requests, a ticketing system also ranks the importance of these service requests.
A ticketing system is therefore essential to resolving maintenance issues. This is due to the data attached to each ticket when they are generated. For example, any newly developed ticket will contain information about the client, the overall importance of the service request, and who needs to resolve the issue.
Moreover, in the case of repetitive work orders, any newly generated ticket contains details about the problem and the known solution, which is vital to shortening periods of downtime as the information is already on-hand.
A ticketing system also centralizes maintenance efforts/operations and streamlines workflow significantly. With a sound ticketing system, every technical interaction for a specific service request is placed on the same ticket, meaning that data can be shared between workers and customers quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, as we shall see now, companies can integrate the data on the ticket with other applications and software solutions (such as Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft).
IBM Maximo: The Best Ticketing and Asset Management Solution
To understand why IBM Maximo has the best ticketing system, we need to understand first why IBM Maximo remains the best asset management solution for many companies.
To review, IBM Maximo’s base product remains Maximo Asset Manager for enterprise assets, while the IBM Control Desk continues to be the base product for dealing with Information Technology issues.
However, there are significant add ons – such as IBM Maximo Anywhere and IBM Maximo Everywhere. Additionally, IBM users can also enjoy the benefits of the IBM Maximo Application Suite.
The IBM Maximo Application Suite includes many applications that facilitate preventive and predictive maintenance. This suite includes applications that support mobile maintenance operations, worker safety, asset management, mobile Enterprise Asset Management, visual inspection, and remote monitoring.
Your business will have a robust asset management framework with these applications integrated. However, your business will also have access to powerful ticket-solving capabilities. Essentially, with IBM Maximo, your business can use every tool to resolve these tickets seamlessly.
For example, the mobile Enterprise Asset management application (from the IBM Maximo Application Suite) facilitates a mobile workforce. This means that technicians can receive ticket details no matter where they are instead of waiting to receive instructions manually.
Additionally, IBM Maximo applications allow custom integration with other management systems – such as Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP. In turn, integration with software like Oracle and SAP will enable companies to further optimize their maintenance efforts and operations.
As mentioned, the oil & gas, transportation, logistics, manufacturing, and utilities industry can all resolve their tickets quicker should they be using the IBM Maximo Application Suite and IBM Maximo add-ons, like IBM Maximo Anywhere and IBM Maximo Everywhere. In addition, the starting price for the IBM Maximo Application Suite is $250.00/month, thereby making it an attractive proposition for many companies.
How Can IBM Maximo Ticketing System Help You?
In addition to the applications offered by IBM Maximo for asset maintenance, the features of IBM Maximo’s ticketing system ensure that customers, clients, and mobile workers are all ably supported.
More than 30 Languages
For a start, IBM Maximo’s ticketing system supports more than 30 languages – within these languages, regional dialects and variations are available, too. This makes the user interface especially easy to use; additionally, reports can also be generated in the selected language, making IBM Maximo a genuinely global solution.
Integrated ViiBE’s Ticketing System
The integration of IBM Maximo and ViiBE’s ticketing system now offers users even more support when resolving tickets! With this integration, IBM Maximo users have access to real-time video calls; essentially, these video calls can assist technicians when resolving a ticket.
Users can also share files/documents, snapshots, and share screens while on a video call. All of the data shared/gathered during these video calls can be integrated onto the ticket, which is particularly helpful for new technicians and for efficiently resolving the problem.
Enhance Customer Retention
It goes without saying that quickly resolving tickets leads to a higher customer retention rate and clients willing to use your services in the future. Thus, with IBM Maximo, you can boost customer retention by quickly identifying and managing issues that Maximo’s ticketing system facilitates.
Quick Identification and Management of Issues
IBM Maximo’s ticketing system is ideal for managing repeating and new issues. When clients/customers create a new ticket, there is a high chance this is a repeating issue. Thankfully, IBM Maximo enables users to attach known solutions to new tickets. Being able to attach these solutions ensures that these sorts of problems are quickly resolved.
Additionally, IBM Maximo Applications provide a solid foundation to improve the mobility of your workforce. This mobility is supported by the ‘mobile EAM’ application, which enables field technicians to receive directions to the work site, and access information about the ticket while on the move.
Efficient and Time Saving
Of course, when these repetitive tasks are automated with the help of software systems, key workers can spend their time on more challenging and revenue-generating activities. Additionally, it also leaves time for management to focus on the performance of critical assets and to implement/formulate preventive and predictive maintenance strategies.
Yet, workers and management need to maintain and manage an up-to-date knowledge base of known solutions to repetitive problems to reap these benefits of a ticketing system. With IBM Maximo, any business can easily search for these solutions, saving even more time.
Reported and Performance Monitoring
To make the most of your ticketing system, companies should deploy software and tools to monitor the performance of assets. Should the performance of assets fall, these tools can automatically alert the ticketing system, which can then create and send a new ticket to the appropriate staff.
When you monitor asset performance like this, maintenance operations will be significantly more accessible and efficient!
What Kind of Information Does IBM Maximo Ticketing System Collect?
The IBM Maximo ticketing system collects any technical interactions related to the ticket. Ideally, all the data should be available in one place to support the technicians assigned to solve the ticket.
With the integration of IBM Maximo’s system and ViiBE’s visual solution, video interactions are also collected. As mentioned earlier, colleagues can share information such as files/documents, screengrabs, and document annotation. This will be collected by IBM Maximo’s system and help technicians manage the ticket.
Wrapping Up!
As we have seen, the benefits any business (and even industry) can derive from IBM Maximo Asset Management (and its ticketing system) are enormous.
However, navigating IBM Maximo successfully to experience the benefits fully can be a daunting task. This is why you need help from Banetti – an IBM Maximo Consulting Services organization with over 25 years of consulting and training experience. For any company in the oil & gas, logistics, life sciences, manufacturing, transportation, or utilities industry, contact Banetti today!