Imagine having a guardian angel looking over your shoulder, ensuring you avoid costly mistakes, or even worse, legal nightmares. It may sound hyperbolic, but that’s the role Aden Group’s technical asset management plays in many industries today. The value of a technical services partner isn’t just about optimizing systems and preventing technical glitches (although this is certainly one of the benefits). On top of this, we’re here to keep our clients safe and legally compliant. This is achieved through three pivotal elements: transparency, measurement, and accountability.
The High Cost of Neglect
We all understand that business risk comes in various forms. Financial, operational, and reputational risks are widely recognized, but what about compliance risk? Many decision-makers underestimate the price of non-compliance, especially when it comes to environmental guidelines. Site managers are often the legal representatives for their organizations, meaning they bear the responsibility for any missteps. The harsh reality is that neglecting to comply with these guidelines could lead to to heavy financial penalties and in the worst cases, even legal challenges and prison time.
Think about it for a moment. One big problem at a single site anywhere in the world can cause significant damage to a company’s reputation. More so, the financial implications of these incidents easily eclipse the cost of well-managed preventive and predictive maintenance. Proper planning and maintenance of critical assets might seem like an extra expense but, in comparison to the cost of a major safety incident or a legal and public relations nightmare, it is a small investment to make.
Compliance risk in the age of ESG
In the context of ESG reporting frameworks, compliance risk takes on an expanded meaning. It doesn’t just involve adhering to regulatory requirements, but also meeting the expectations of investors, customers, and other stakeholders for responsible environmental, social, and governance practices.
In Asia, where regulations are becoming far more stringent, the importance of managing compliance risks related to ESG factors is gaining recognition. As ESG reporting becomes increasingly standardized and expected, companies operating in Asia that fail to meet these expectations face heightened compliance risks. These could include not only regulatory penalties but also enormous reputational damage and loss of investor confidence.
By proactively managing these risks, companies can not only avoid negative outcomes, but also seize the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in sustainable business practices and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Harnessing technology for compliance
Aden’s technical asset management division has successfully removed the guesswork from compliance management by thoroughly integrating the digital twin SaaS platform Akila into its operations. With the portfolio of different apps ranging from ESG to energy, waste and facility management.
While Akila is known for its high-level ESG and performance analytics dashboarding, it also plays a vital role on the ground floor of facility O&M using the Asset SUITE, where it serves as Aden’s core operational tool. Aden technician’s working days are run by and through the platform and its mobile app for asset management, so that all work orders and work tracking involve scanning and data tracking, with a full data history for each asset and equipment’s servicing and performance history.
We are also able to prevent some of the most common misuses of digitalization, which historically have prevented many companies from achieving effective optimization and compliance. These include:
- Fake digitalization: In which the system can be gamed by technicians who simply tick whole lists of work orders ‘complete’ on a lunch break or some other pause in the day. We entirely prevent this problem, because each task in our digital platform produces a time and location stamp, and automatically flags suspiciously frequent completed tasks.
- Light digitalization: Digitalization by & for IT, not operations. In which a digital system is put in place but the data, service history and related communications are unstructured and mixed together, resulting in a data swamp. We prevent this as well, by tagging each asset or piece of equipment with its own qr code and structuring the data register and communications per asset.
With this robust digital base in place, all of our operations can be reliably tracked and reported for relevant compliance frameworks, while also providing the high-level “birds eye view” of site and portfolio analytics.
Honest Data, Honest Conversations
Our approach with this advanced digital platform offers clients a chance to understand the real cost of compliance. By providing solid, auditable data, we can work with clients to understand their compliance level and associated costs. This open dialogue helps prevent decision-makers at lower management levels from making decisions that can have costly long-term repercussions, such as neglecting indirect costs or focusing solely on short-term targets.
By ensuring that we’re all on the same page about compliance issues, we can then move on to discussing cost competitiveness. We are always ready to engage in these discussions with our clients. Our overarching goal is to maintain the big picture, to safeguard our clients from unforeseen liabilities, and to maximize their competitiveness.
In the realm of technical services and asset management, transparency and measurement aren’t just buzzwords. They are the foundation of robust compliance and risk management strategies. At Aden Group, we’ve mastered this and continue to use it to protect and enhance the value of our clients. Stay tuned for our next article in this series, where we will delve into more benefits of our technical services.