Leading Provider of Data Center Solutions Implements Connected Workplace Model

This data center solutions company provides premium infrastructure services to leading technology, enterprise, and government organizations. Their centers span more than 6 million square feet across 21 data centers in North America and 2 in The Netherlands. As you can imagine, facilities and equipment management are critically important.

Before Nuvolo, the facilities management teams used outdated software. The old software had different instances for each data center, couldn’t handle basic workflow automation, and didn’t handle work order management very well. Facilities teams would often revert to manual processes or spreadsheets.

To ensure premium data center services to its customers, this astute services company upgraded its data center facilities management software. They now run an efficient and comprehensive facilities and equipment management program with Nuvolo.

The Solution – Nuvolo Connected Workplace for Data Center Operations

Our client wanted a one-platform solution shared across their data center facilities teams. It was important to have a modern cloud platform, with mobile capabilities, that could handle all their service requirements.  They knew aggregating facilities data across their 23 locations would provide analytics for better business planning and cost savings.

After a thorough evaluation, the VP of Facilities determined Nuvolo was the only solution that could handle all their maintenance, workflow, auditing, and reporting requirements.

Today they use Nuvolo to:

  • Track and maintain 18,000+ facilities assets on one platform.
  • Automate preventive maintenance scheduling and work order dispatching.
  • Use online maintenance rounds to streamline facility compliance inspections.
  • Track and manage vendors by sharing the platform with them.
  • Provide detailed facilities and asset reports to their business managers.

Equipment Tracking and Work Automation

Today, our client tracks and maintains all data center facilities equipment on the Nuvolo platform across their 23 locations. They identify common equipment problems and measure maintenance costs over time.

Nuvolo’s asset tracking, along with our business rules and workflow engines, handles work order automation they previously thought was unattainable.  They used to schedule over 100,000 preventive maintenance work orders a year manually, now that process is automated.  Corrective workflow management is automated, too, saving precious time when there’s a critical issue.

For instance, when unmanned data center alarms are triggered, smart dispatching will automatically assign the work to the nearest technician in the field with the right machine certification, saving critical time and ensuring the right technician is dispatched. Work has improved and is done in a fraction of the time it previously took.

Maintenance Rounds

Our data center customers, this one included, leverage Nuvolo’s “Rounds” functionality. Rounds are utilized for compliance or custodial inspections. Rounds allow you to replace hundreds of individual tasks with a checklist of combined tasks. Nuvolo’s mobile application guides inspectors, asset by asset, as they complete the electronic checklists.

For example, this client’s maintenance crews use Rounds for their monthly circuit breaker inspections. As they inspect the breakers, they check off each task. If the maintenance crew selects ‘Fail’ on one of the checklist items, a work order is automatically generated and assigned.  Replacing this time-consuming manual task with an automated electronic checklist has saved significant time and resources for our clients.

Rounds functionality meets compliance guidelines, keeps the data centers in pristine shape, and improves the inspection teams’ job with automation.

Vendor Management

Like most services’ organizations, this customer uses vendors to perform a percentage of their equipment work. They recognized that internal and external technicians working from the same platform would capture all equipment work history in real-time and result in overall better vendor management.

They gave their vendors access to the Nuvolo mobile application. Vendors complete the assigned work directly from the app, submit invoices, and track their performance. They have instant access to asset service history, service manuals, knowledge bases, spare parts inventory, and training videos.

Having their vendors share the platform resulted in impeccably accurate asset work order history, resulting in impeccably precise business intelligence.

Better Analytics for Business Managers and Facilities Programs

The data center business managers are pleased with the level and accuracy of reporting they’re getting from the Nuvolo platform. The facilities teams are generating reports faster and have automated most of the reporting process.

Aggregate equipment, work order, and vendor data coming from 23 different data centers allows the business teams to,

  • manage equipment and parts costing
  • track equipment lifecycle spend
  • reconcile work orders against vendor services performed
  • track vendor travel costs and analyze overall contract spend

After implementing Nuvolo, this client’s Facilities Management Director discovered his team saved over 50 hours per month investigating device performance for compliance auditing.  The device data is now captured at the time of service and compliance reporting is automated.

This data center infrastructure provider runs impressive facilities and equipment management programs with Nuvolo.  And, they continually improve their programs through actionable business intelligence.  The cost savings they realize from implementing a connected data center solution carries over to savings for their customers.

Interested in learning more? Read about using Connected Workplace for data centers, and watch a video about how Nuvolo can help you maximize uptime and asset reliability for your data centers.