Schools Transform Asset Management for Insight and Value
Organization Profile
- Industry: School District
- Location: Cobb County, Georgia
- Number of Employees: 18,000
- Students: 106,000
- Tyler Client Since: 2011
- Tyler Products/Solutions: Enterprise Asset Management, Enterprise ERP, Workforce Mobile, Content Manager
With more than 216,000 active assets, the Cobb County School District’s scale presented unique challenges for asset tracking, maintenance operations, and financial planning. The district, which has a budget of roughly $1.7 billion, serves approximately 106,000 students across 112 schools. It was managing its assets with a dated work order management system that lacked mobile app functionality.
Before adopting Tyler Technologies’ Enterprise Asset Management, Cobb County relied on a legacy work order management system. Asset tracking relied heavily on spreadsheets and manual documentation.
“It really was just a ticketing system,” says Nancy Tolbert, director of financial systems and capital assets for the district. “There was no ability to tie any financial integration in with the work orders. The biggest challenge we have is with managing 216,000 assets in the system — the majority of them computers. There’s movement of the student laptops and the teacher laptops. It’s trying to keep track of where the assets reside, especially when we’re going out for inventories.”
This lack of visibility into asset condition, repair costs, and spending trends challenged budgeting and planning.
“Before the current level of integration, there wasn’t any direct indication other than the bottom line of how much was spent at the end of the year,” says Tolbert. “We could not really forecast how much we were spending on repairing a specific building.”
Enterprise Asset Management Provides Budgeting Insights
To meet these challenges, Cobb County School District chose Enterprise Asset Management, which integrates with the district’s financial software, Enterprise ERP.
“The reason why we chose Enterprise Asset Management is that it integrates with the financials. With Enterprise Asset Management, we’re now able to attribute the cost of supporting our district and our facilities. That’s our number one benefit.”
The system enables the district to isolate costs at various levels of granularity.
“If we want to report on the cost of work orders for all our elementary schools, for example, we can roll up all those costs and look at just elementary, middle, high school, or central office. We can also break it down by building and by the assets within the building.”
Mobile Technology Empowers Technician Efficiencies
The district also selected Tyler’s Workforce Mobile app to optimize field operations from any location. The app gives district team members the power to respond to and resolve issues reported in real time.
From their phone or tablet, team members can update issue status, assign issues to staff members, add notes, or request more information from the original submitter.
“Our technicians now benefit from a more intuitive, informative user interface with the ability to update work orders, add tasks, and manage assets directly in the field,” she says. “Because we have so many facilities, location is the key for the technicians. One of the key features of this new platform is the ability to filter and sort by their locations on their general list, so technicians can become more efficient in how they’re working from place to place.”
Improved Decision-Making and Strategic Planning
With the data integrations between Enterprise Asset Management and Enterprise ERP, decision-making and future planning have improved.
The reason why we chose Enterprise Asset Management is that it integrates with the financials. With Enterprise Asset Management, we’re now able to attribute the cost of supporting our district and our facilities. That’s our number one benefit.
Nancy Tolbert
Director of Financial Systems and Capital Assets
Cobb County School District
“It helps the district determine where the money might need to go,” says Tolbert. “For example, if we need to go and renovate a specific school, it’s going to give us the data so that we understand how much money has been spent on that school for repairs up to date, and to help with better decision-making on where we’re going to put the money moving forward.”
Workforce Mobile has also contributed to improved decision-making.
“Workforce Mobile has significantly streamlined our operations for leadership by combining approvals and work order management into a single, intuitive platform,” says Talbot. “Eliminating the need to log into and manage two separate applications saves time, reduces complexity, and allows leaders to focus on decision making rather than system navigation.”
Finally, Tolbert notes the importance of the districts’ collaborative relationship with Tyler.
“We’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with Tyler on product development and to provide feedback,” she says. “I think that as a client, any time you’re asked for that information, I feel like that’s a real privilege because that means that your vendor, who should be your partner, wants to listen to you and wants to make improvements to their products. It’s going to benefit your organization and all of their clients.”