Mastering Facilities Management: CMMS AI & Predictive Insights

How can you apply AI tools in Ecotrak today, and what functionality are we developing for your organization tomorrow? Read on to understand Ecotrak’s AI approach, insight tools available to Ecotrak users right now, and how predictive facilities management can influence your operations in the future.

Ecotrak’s AI Philosophy

In the fast-paced world of facilities management, AI tools are most helpful if they are meaningful, automated, and easy to execute. Ecotrak’s goal for AI in our CMMS platform: Automation that works. Insight that you can act on.

The day-to-day operations of facilities management generates large amounts of data that can fuel insights. Data from assets, invoices, images, and work orders, if captured correctly, can create a strong foundation for AI tools to surface insights more efficiently, making execution faster. AI automation can use accurate data to detect patterns, predict outcomes, and recommend next steps.

Ecotrak Insights

At Ecotrak, we like to say "AI doesn’t create intelligence - it amplifies the quality of your data." Ultimately, with clean data, operators should not only be able to make fast decisions, but also feel confident that they are making the right decisions.

Ecotrak's Insights transform your facilities data into actionable intelligence, helping you make smarter decisions, faster, in areas like:

• Predictive Maintenance

• Spend optimization

• Real-time trends

• Performance benchmarking (against both your own organization and peers)

Today, Ecotrak customers can use AI-powered Insights tools in three different categories: proposal, asset, and location insights.

Proposal Insights

Proposal Insights allow you to compare your Service Provider's proposal against regional and national benchmarks. The data set for this tool pulls from anonymized Ecotrak custom data, giving you access to trends beyond your own facilities. This tool is meant as a guideline, not a decision-making replacement — but it can empower your operators with another validation point as they build their service strategy.

Location Insights

Ecotrak's Location Insights leverage AI to automatically surface anomalies and trends across all your locations, so you can catch issues early and keep operations running smoothly at scale. Common pain points can be identified through insights such as:

• Tracking on increases in spend or work order quantities

• Flags for recurring issues or stagnant work orders

• Real time data insights comparing specific metrics across all locations

Predictability

Ecotrak uses three predictive models that are always learning from asset and work order history data. Our models can predict what is failing, how much it will cost, and potential downtime using several variables:

• Asset groups, manufacturer, model, and history of equipment failures

• Cost of historical failures

• Time to complete or correct historical failures

The Ecotrak team has developed this predictability model with statistical 90% accuracy over 18 months of trend data, and this model will continue to learn from itself. Future developments may include introducing predictability tools to service providers, supporting insight into the potential failure mode so technicians have a better opportunity to fix the issue at the first dispatch.

Managing Warranties

To help optimize your potential savings in your CMMS, invest in getting your asset warranty data set up within Ecotrak from every area of your assets:

• Manufacturer Standard Warranties

• Software Warranties (for assets that use software, or IT equipment)

• Service Provider Warranties

• Component Warranties

• Service Provider coverage assignments

How to Maximize Ecotrak Insights

Ecotrak Insights work best when your data is structured, complete, and ready to drive intelligent recommendations. To get the most value from this tool, consider investing in these areas:

• Track clean and up-to-date asset data, including Estimated Useful Life (EUL) and replacement cost (based on original value)

• Monitor budget and spend information for every asset class, as input for Repair vs. Replace recommendations

• Standardize inventory and parts information, including consistent naming conventions, statuses, and storage locations

• Centralize location & lease information for fast reference

• Leverage Asset Surveys and QR Codes to ensure operators submit service requests for the correct asset

And finally, strategic operators review location and asset dashboards regularly. Daily reports give real-time insight into work order volume, urgency, and SLA performance so teams can prioritize effectively. However, the real value of these reports is not just reading them; be proactive about what you can do with these insights!

Functionality Under Development

Ecotrak continues to invest in new and updated tools for facilities management, including AI image recognition, embedded GPT, and smart service provider suggestions.

AI Image Recognition

Ecotrak uses Image Recognition technology to pull data from records and will connect to GPT to interpret and take action in areas such as:

• Reading asset nameplate information to find manufacturer, model, serial and age of asset

• Reading proposal and invoice to data to record spend information (replacing manual entry with submission validation)

• Reading insurance information to help customers achieve compliance

Embedded GPT

With accessible GPT within the CMMS platform, Ecotrak users will be able to describe what they want to accomplish, and GPT will suggest next steps and take action. Professionals can explain goals or tasks using natural language, and GPT will generate recommendations and required records automatically. Users are then guided directly to the created records from the dashboard, streamlining workflows and removing manual navigation steps.

Service Provider Suggestions

Users will receive vendor recommendations best suited to support the required work, based on machine-learning predictions about vendor specialties, as well as each vendor’s historical responsiveness and performance in the system.

Conclusion

Ecotrak is committed to supporting our customers with intentional, impactful AI tools within the CMMS platform. To learn more about how AI tools can support your facilities management strategy, check out Ecotrak’s on-demand webinar, “Mastering Facilities Management: CMMS AI & Predictive Insights”, hosted by Matt Singer, Ecotrak’s CEO and Rubilyn Loanzon, Ecotrak’s Director of Customer Experience.