Partner: serving clients via Asseti

Measure Australia (MA) is a data capture specialist organization working in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. From this vantage MA has consistently encouraged clients to integrate data-driven decision-making into business-as-usual processes, including utilizing captured data in an ongoing capacity. The company has cemented this orientation with its migration to the new asset performance optimization platform Asseti. MA reports client experience improvements, shift to a greater proportion of recurring client contracts, and an overall ‘stickier’ client relationship due to using Asseti.

Asseti is an asset performance optimization platform that consumes vast quantities of condition data, from own- and third-party image sources and sensors. Asseti sorts and layers data based on timestamp, to detect change at a granular level. Insights for single assets and sites are combined and enriched within the broader network, to evoke top-level intelligence and actionable insights that greatly simplify asset performance management and reporting.

PROBLEM

MA has avoided pigeonholing itself by data capture mechanism, instead focusing on the overall competence the company brings to data capture and utility. Since its inception MA pushed innovative platform solutions to enable clients to use data in more meaningful ways, thereby differentiating itself as a strategic partner. However, the 2010s saw a dramatic acceleration in data capture, transmission speed and accessible manipulation techniques. MA challenged itself to stay at the front of this emerging space, initially with home-grown solutions.

MA built and used its own custom platform, prior to the Asseti migration, to serve clients prioritised issue detection notifications and an enduring record of conditions. Market and landscape changes led MA to seek a specialist platform partner – only to discover that asset performance optimization with a geospatial foundation was a gap in the space. “Nobody was doing it,” Head of Client Services Andrew Burn said. “But we were guiding asset-heavy clients toward ongoing data capture use and layering and needed a more sophisticated platform built on modern data science.” Andrew further noted that MA had shortened its standards of data turnaround, in some cases delivering same-day services, so that clients could confidently make virtual real-time decisions.

SOLUTION

Asseti was conceived in 2018, with MA joining as a development partner in 2019. Through this partnership, MA was able to steer elements of Asseti’s development and bring selected clients on for the beta journey.

Orthographic maps, 3D models and spatial services

MA first transitioned its data processing to Asseti, for orthographic stitched maps and 3D models. Following optimization work during the beta, MA found orthographic maps and 3D models to process in two-thirds of the time required prior to Asseti.

The platform has since deployed distance, area and volumetric measurements, which has enabled these clients to cease stockpile calculations in other platforms.

Issue detection

Change detection is a key element of Asseti. Asseti offers manual, automated, or machine-assisted change detection and issue notification. Issues are categorized by type, priority, risk and rectification cost.

MA’s experienced business analysts use Asseti issue detection to streamline their value-adding operations. The combination of image processing and issue detection in Asseti assisted MA to expedite operations and deliver value-added client datasets on average 65% more quickly.

Asset network optimized data platform

Asset network condition was a new feature for MA to offer their clients, but was a logical extension of their message that clients should use data routinely in their operations. MA reports some clients to have quickly adapted to the new platform, using grassroots team members to input data that feeds higher level insights.

Early feedback demonstrates a 6–9-month optimization in works execution, entirely based on efficiencies in capture, review, and decision-making. One of MA’s early beta clients was running rectification works 15-months in arrears from time of incident, purely due to simplification of operations at scale.

RESULTS

Value delivery has focused on MA’s client users, assisting those end user clients to realize positive ROI. However, MA has also directly benefited from becoming an Asset partner.

More recurring data capture

Andrew sees Asseti as extending MA’s value-adds, enabling a deepening of strategic business partnerships. “An obvious tactical advantage to using and promoting Asseti is that we have materially changed the proportion of recurring business we conduct,” he said. “Previously about 45% of our non-real estate work was in one-off projects. Clients that have adopted Asseti matched that profile at the outset, but now average 30% one-off projects. Single captures are important and common – but Asseti helps clients realize opportunities in recurring data in circumstances they previously wouldn’t have.”

Andrew said that in addition to the proportion of recurring work increasing, gross numbers of data captures had also grown disproportionately for clients that had adopted Asseti.

Client experience gains

Clients that have adopted Asseti through MA have experienced greater satisfaction, according to survey results. The survey was anonymous but across a relatively small sample. MA has similarly seen no churn of clients that are on the Asseti platform.

“Clients are loving Asseti’s change detection and visualization,” said Andrew. “It provides a collaborative common platform so that stakeholders have a shared understanding of the status and expected works at sites. This streamlines direct operations, enables immediate reporting at a network level, and has overall been met with a great deal of enthusiasm!”

Closeness to clients

“Although less tangible, we consider the closeness to clients that Asseti enables to be a critical part of our value proposition,” said Andrew. “We’ve long been an advisor on how to capture and utilize data within a specific client business, and Asseti has expanded the scope we advise on. That puts us closer to the client with more conversations, and even more of a strategic partner in their business.”

BIG PICTURE

MA works with clients across the breadth of Australian industries, capturing data for use in agriculture, construction, renewables, professional services and more. Andrew says that it is very common for clients in all these sectors to use data once. “There’s a wealth of insight and opportunity for data-collecting clients to maximize the use of that data. We tend to work with large asset network operators, assisting them to overcome the inherent challenges of scale with faster and deeper site feedback. Asseti is able to evaluate exponentially more data sources and points, and seamlessly zoom from individual asset to global network. Asseti means we scale both data capture and utilization, and our clients are loving it!

“Asseti has amplified MA’s value to clients, delivering them intelligence and the ability to be agile at scale – we’ve expanded our client services and our clients are more satisfied,” Andrew said. “We encourage all MA clients, and businesses serving geospatial asset data to clients, to adopt Asseti.”

CEO Aonghus Stevens says that Asseti is designed for medium and large asset network operators. “We fill a need in the market in a way that other data platforms do not. The depth of geospatial knowledge and asset network performance optimization expertise we’ve leveraged is Asseti’s wedge in a space dominated by industry-agnostic data solutions,” said Aonghus. “It’s naïve to think that a standardized data platform can be optimized for disparate industries. Asseti is an asset performance optimization platform, that makes data useful in a way impossible before now – and our client base is exploding!