Four elements that impact the total cost of ownership of data centers
Learn how facilities management technology can be used to optimize four dimensions of total cost ownership to improve data center profitability and increase uptime.
In the high-stakes world of data centers, decisions surrounding the maintenance and upkeep of your assets are often shortsighted, with your facility management (FM) teams focusing on today’s urgency rather than long-term outcomes.
Now, leading data centers are reducing risk and cost by adopting the total cost of ownership approach by investing in innovative tools that capture data and provide analytics-driven insights to streamline FM and reduce human errors and operational costs for the long haul.
What is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)?
The total-cost-of-ownership management approach boosts performance by integrating every aspect of your data center’s lifecycle. The TCO approach helps you avoid fragmented, reactionary decision-making that can lead to overall higher costs than necessary—and a loss of uptime.
Adopting the TCO mindset means making maintenance and capital investment decisions based on long-term return on investment and risk mitigation rather than immediate results. The right FM technologies can make your data center more competitive in the marketplace and improve uptime.
The four elements of TCO
FM technologies can be used to achieve four important dimensions of TCO that can make your data center more competitive in the marketplace: reducing human errors, improving decision-making, boosting reliability and uptime, and increasing productivity. This guide highlights the FM technologies that power these benefits.
1. Reducing human error
Deploying smart building technologies can reduce TCO. As every data center operator knows, even a simple mistake can lead to costly downtime—and most errors are human-made. Digitizing documentation and automating FM processes helps reduce the risk of human error, contributing to a lower TCO.
2. Improving decision-making
Through digitized FM operations, data capture and documentation, you can create a holistic asset management program that prevents unplanned capital investments and establishes an accurate TCO. A cloud-based, mobile CMMS will centralize operations, asset and work-order management.
3. Boosting reliability and uptime
Traditional FM maintenance programs focus on equipment service, upgrades and replacement schedules dictated by equipment manufacturers or corporate standards. However, the conventional, calendar-based approach contributes to higher-than-necessary expenses. Managing equipment with the right data-driven maintenance strategies reduces both capital and operating expenses— and improves uptime.
4. Increasing productivity
Digitizing documentation and automating FM processes helps reduce the risk of human error, contributing to a lower TCO. In addition to reducing opportunities for human error, advanced FM software can boost staff productivity—another TCO element—by automating data center operations, and centralizing and standardizing information. Streamlined FM operations reduce time-consuming, manual processes that create a drag on efficiency and productivity, and free staff to focus on more strategic activity.
Download our eBook to understand how FM technologies will unlock deep, dynamic performance trends about your building equipment and data center facility.
