“It’s Like Having Another Brain”: Why Princess House Relies on Asset Essentials to Plan for the Future

Building and maintaining an effective PM program 

Before coming to Princess House in 1993, Young had worked in facilities maintenance at other companies. Through that experience, he learned the importance of an effective preventive maintenance program, and he wanted to build such a program at Princess House. 

For 10 years, Young reviewed multiple computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) each year, trying to find one that would be the right fit. Many of the tools he looked at required customers to purchase a number of separate modules to achieve the full solution he wanted. When he found Brightly’s Asset Essentials in 2003, “I realized this was the tool I’d been looking for,” Young says. “Asset Essentials included all the modules we needed in one package.”   

Young implemented the program, entered all the assets, and launched a preventive maintenance plan that has been going strong for 22 years. “Our PM program is our biggest success with Asset Essentials,” he says.

The ability to track the history of each piece of equipment is very helpful, and we’ve also come up with a creative way to track where all our calls go and how much time we spend on them.  

Planning for succession 

After 31 years at Princess House, and more than 40 years in the facility maintenance industry, Young has become increasingly interested in passing down his knowledge to prepare for his eventual retirement. Over the past three years, he has trained Maintenance Mechanic Ean Joseph to learn the functions of the maintenance department, and Asset Essentials has been instrumental in that process, he says. 

Asset Essentials has made it very easy to learn. We’d be nowhere without Asset Essentials. It’s like having another brain.

In addition to training Joseph in various maintenance techniques including carpentry, millwrighting, and cabling, Young has instilled the importance of using the software to track maintenance work. “The people in the corporate office don’t usually come down and see what you’re doing, so it’s very important to know how to track your time and your labor,” Joseph says. “Tracking your work in the software is the only way to prove that you’ve done the work.”  

Overcoming challenges 

When Young faces a challenge or has a question about Asset Essentials, he says he’s always able to get the answers needed quickly.  

“Brightly’s customer support is the most important aspect of our relationship,” Young says. “With the online chat function, I can solve the problem 99.9% of the time. If not, the help guide resources are available, or I can always pick up the phone and talk to someone in person if I need to.”  

After using Brightly products every day for more than 20 years, Young says he would recommend Asset Essentials to his peers in facility maintenance. “It’s a very robust system and you’ll get a very good ROI,” he says. “If you stay with, manage it, and get your team on the same page, you’ll have very good success.”