Sleeping EAM Software Giants Wake Up To The Operational Risk Management Software Market Opportunity

Sleeping EAM Software Giants Wake Up To The Operational Risk Management Software Market Opportunity

In 2018, Verdantix identified enterprise asset management (EAM) software vendors as the sleeping giants of the operational risk management (ORM) software market and predicted their expansion in the area. In 2021, this trend is at full throttle with the inclusion of core operational risk management capabilities such as permit to work and incident management into EAM software offerings. Infor EAM, acquired by Hexagon in 2021, includes permit to work and incident management capabilities as part of its EAM software offering. DevonWay, a US-headquartered vendor, launched its EAM software solution in 2005, and expanded into EHS and quality management markets. DevonWay now sells a unified platform for both capability sets. The inclusion of ORM capabilities within EAM software has developed to enable operations and maintenance managers to have a single interface and set of workflows to ensure asset maintenance activities are carried out by frontline workers safely and efficiently.

This convergence of functionality for safety, risk and asset management has been ongoing for the last several years. While EAM software vendors are expanding software functionality to include ORM capabilities, process safety management software vendors are combining industrial asset management functionality such as asset health monitoring and failure prediction with worker safety to enhance their offerings. This convergence is also driving M&A activity. In June 2019, Industrial Scientific, an 800-employee US-headquartered firm owned by the Fortive Group, acquired Intelex, an EHS software vendor, to combine Industrial Scientific’s hazardous gas detection products with Intelex’s EHSQ software platform and create a real-time risk management platform. Prometheus Group, a maintenance work management software provider owned by private equity firm Genstar, acquired Engica, a control of work software provider, in October 2019, to seamlessly integrate permit to work into maintenance management workflows. These acquisitions are now showing results meeting a crucial customer need to gain a single view into asset and worker risks.

In the past technological barriers have held back the expansion of EAM software into the ORM market. In the Verdantix 2019 survey, 85% of the operations, maintenance, engineering and process safety executives agreed that fragmentation of IT systems made the implementation of a single platform for asset performance management impossible. This has now changed, with the explosion of innovative data management solutions such as data fabric and DataOps platforms that enable integration and orchestration of data across multiple enterprise, IT, and industrial systems. With this barrier declining, EAM software vendors can integrate worker safety data from EHS systems, with asset time series data from IIoT devices and historians, alongside digital work orders to gain unprecedented insights into production bottlenecks and risks to industrial facilities. The sleeping EAM software giants are now waking up to the operational risk management market opportunity.

For more information on industrial asset management and process safety management software market trends read the following Verdantix reports: Green Quadrant Process Safety Management Software 2021, Market Size And Forecast: Operational Risk Management Software Applications 2020-2026 (Global), Ten Industrial DataOps Platform Providers To Watch In 2022, Smart Innovators Maintenance Analytics For Heavy Asset Industries