Fayetteville State University Simplifies Facility Management with Asset Essentials

The Challenges

Fayetteville State University has a large number of academic buildings, as well as residence halls and dining facilities, spread across its 156-acre campus. In addition to ongoing facility maintenance tasks, the facilities team must also respond to almost constant requests from faculty, staff and students for maintenance and repairs. With a young staff managing communications among all the technicians, staying on top of all the work orders was an ongoing challenge.

The Solution

Brightly’s Asset Essentials is the glue that connects the maintenance team, the admin team, and the facilities spread across the campus at Fayetteville State University. Its user-friendly, intuitive interface has been the ideal solution to keep the facilities maintenance team on task, even with key team members who have little to no experience.

In 2022, Casandra Herrera-Ayala began working in facilities space. As administrative support specialist at Fayetteville State, she’s responsible for coordinating and facilitating requests from students and faculty while supporting the technicians who maintain the campus. She says the simplicity of using Asset Essentials made it possible for her to hit the ground running in her new job and keep the university’s facility team on track.

“As this is my first year coming into a workforce dealing with facility management, Asset Essentials has made it simple,” Herrera-Ayala says. “Our campus overall has maintained a good foundation and reputation because of using Asset Essentials; it couldn’t have made my job any easier.”

Our campus overall has maintained a good foundation and reputation because of using Asset Essentials; it couldn’t have made my job any easier.

Casandra Herrera-Ayala

Administrative Support Specialist, Fayetteville State University

The Results

To help keep up with all the maintenance requests coming in from faculty, staff and students, Fayetteville State launched its “Facilities Call 411 Team,” which is essentially a call center where they manage and track any incoming work orders. After becoming familiar with Asset Essentials, Herrera-Ayala created a maintenance request form that students and faculty can access from their Microsoft accounts, which is linked to Asset Essentials. When requests come through the form, they are automatically logged into the software system and Herrera-Ayala just has to make sure the work orders are routed to the correct teams. The automated form saves time for the requester and helps ensure that no task is overlooked.

Because Asset Essentials makes it easy to get visibility of all work orders, which tasks have been completed, and any challenges involved in completing work orders, it’s a lifeline for Herrera-Ayala and her team, who must communicate with both the requesters and the technicians. “We’re the middle ground people,” she says. “We are the customer service representatives in terms of reaching out to the students and faculty, but we also have to make sure that the technicians are receiving the work orders. For me, it really is just going back to Asset Essentials and making sure that everything is updated and on track.”

Herrera-Ayala, who was Brightly’s Excellence Award winner for 2023, says learning and navigating Asset Essentials has been easy and has simplified her job. However, when she does have questions, she loves the Brightly chat system. “So if you’re busy with other things and you can’t call the customer service number, you can just type in the chat and say what you need,” she says. “A customer service representative usually is there within the next five seconds and responding to your request.”

In addition to answering the question in chat, Herrera- Ayala loves that the chatbot also sends the screen recording, to save as a reference in case she has the same problem again. “Without Asset Essentials, my job would just be difficult,” she says.

We are the customer service representatives in terms of reaching out to the students and faculty, but we also have to make sure that the technicians are receiving the work orders. For me, it really is just going back to Asset Essentials and making sure that everything is updated and on track.

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