Axima, a subsidiary of the French electric utility group Engie, represents the branch that deals with business services (B to B). Pierre-Etienne Lebeau, method and expertise referent within an Engie-Axima agency, talks about his experience with the CMMS Mobility Work.
Mobility Work: Can you introduce yourself briefly?
I am the point of contact and leader of the “method and expertise of the Lyon 2 agency” team at Engie-Axima. Our main mission is to help business managers and technicians by implementing organizational tools and providing them with technical expertise. As for me, I mainly work on the organizational side: maintenance and communication flows, CMMS (computerized maintenance management system)… These solutions are often at the heart of our activities: I work with commercial software as well as with CMMS (such as Mobility Work) or in-house solutions, for example, Excel.
How did you discover our product?
I discovered your CMMS thanks to a colleague: about a year and a half ago, he attended a presentation of Mobility Work given by your maintenance expert, Mr. Blanchard. At the time, I was commissioned to identify solutions that were cheaper and less complicated to implement than traditional software, so he suggested that I test the application.
Has the CMMS already been implemented in your company?
The solution has already been implemented at Arkema’s chemical site (near Lyon, France), one of our customers, since September 2018. We plan to deploy it at other customers’ sites, including one in particular who uses a traditional CMMS but, following a recent meeting with Mr. Blanchard, would like to try the Mobility Work experience.
According to you, what are Mobility Work’s main benefits?
Above all, Mobility Work stands out for its simplicity. The first advantage of this application is its user-friendliness for both technicians and customers when they need to report their troubleshooting.
Second of all, the tool can be easily and quickly deployed at a customer’s site. In addition, whenever we need to talk to your teams, we get an answer very quickly. For example, during the deployment at Arkema, the longest step was to create the Excel files needed to import all maintenance data into the CMMS.
To sum up, I would say that the application is easy to use, making it possible to implement a CMMS solution quickly and to engage users.
What is the most-used feature among your teams, the one they cannot do without?
On a daily basis, the teams mainly use the features related to intervention management and troubleshooting reporting. This maintenance flow is essential for us, so we appreciate the fact that we can access it directly from the newsfeed that is integrated into the application.
Mobility Work CMMS is based on a community of users who exchange and follow their plant’s activity thanks to the newsfeed
What features would you like to have us develop in priority in your CMMS?
I have identified two areas for improvement that I believe are relevant.
Firstly, when a customer reports a failure on a piece of equipment, I would like to be able to optimize the entire process so that the task is automatically assigned to my technical team. Currently, the customer must assign tasks to technicians manually. It is not complicated at all, but the client does not necessarily remember to do it and some interventions may fall through the cracks. So I think adding such a feature would be useful to our customers.
Secondly, I would like to access your database through APIs in order to be able to pair Mobility Work CMMS with a “performance management” tool. Here at Engie Axima, we have a very specific need since we have developed an energy and performance management solution (PEM – Performance and Energy Management) that allows central departments to monitor customer data on a daily basis, giving them the opportunity to react when a problem occurs. These services use the data they receive (which could therefore come, among other things, from a CMMS) to analyze energy consumption and technical events in order to alert the technical teams if necessary.
What are your projects concerning Mobility Work?
I would really like to introduce Mobility Work to all of our customers who need to analyze the performance of their equipment and to perform an operational follow-up of the maintenance activity.
Also, some of our customers would be interested in this possibility of tracking key equipment information to get a little more technical data on their machine fleet, for example by using labels or custom fields. I am thinking in particular of small structures that do not necessarily have their own tools, managers for large buildings or internal maintenance departments. These customers do not want to invest in expensive CMMS software but would rather adopt a solution that is easy to use and quick to deploy.
At the same time, I am trying to divert the tool a little from its initial industrial purpose. For example, we have real expertise with nautical centers or hospitals: each time we implement a traditional CMMS solution there, the result is always somewhat underwhelming. Its too heavy, too complicated, has a disappointing mobile application, and there’s ultimately little engagement from technicians and customers.
Are you happy with Mobility Work’s reactivity?
Yes, I am in regular contact with the team thanks to the integrated Intercom chat, and your team is really reactive! I would admit that I am still waiting for certain specific improvements, but overall I would say that I am very satisfied with the customer care and service.
What would be your last word?
I’m quite satisfied, once again!
If I am satisfied, it is because technicians, business managers, as well as our end customer, are. The application is very well accepted and it truly simplifies our customers’ and operational teams’ daily lives.
