Real-World Stories of Strategy to Action

Transcript

Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining us today on our panel discussion of real world stories of strategy to action, driving change towards operational excellence.

My name is Kristen Drake, and I am the vice president of customer success here at Limble. I've been with Limble a little over two years. And in my role, I get to work with all of our customers globally, hear their stories, and and see the great successes that we've been able to achieve together. So I'm really excited excited today to have a couple of our our customers, both long and short tenured, on the call. So we'd love to have them introduce themselves, and then we'll get started.

Josh, do you wanna kick it off?

Yep. My name is Josh Gala. I'm the engineer and maintenance manager here up at, Island Abbey Nutritionals. We're based out of, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

We're a food manufacturer. We manufacture vitamin gummies, different supplement gummies.

I've been with the company now six years, and we we adopted Limble twenty twenty. It started twenty twenty one.

That's great. Thanks so much for joining us today, Josh.

Thank you.

Jonathan, over to you.

Yeah. My name is Jonathan Di Benedetto.

People just call me Debo as a nickname, because there's always too many Johns in the room, so Debo just stuck.

I am the solutions developer at Grove City College. Solutions developer is kind of a catchall phrase, so I do a little bit of everything, whether that's flying a drone, working on three d printers, working with Limble, organizing maintenance crews, changing lighting, you name it. It's kinda other duties as assigned is my whole job.

We are a small private Christian school about an hour north of Pittsburgh. We have a little over two thousand students in around, like, thirty something buildings on campus.

So yeah.

Great. Well, thanks so much everyone for for joining us on the panel discussion. I think we'll kick it off at the beginning.

Let's talk about the foundation of bringing in Limble to your organization. What were some of the primary reasons that you decided to pursue a CMMS? And let's talk a little bit about what you were dealing with before you implemented Limble and and some of the pain points that that actually drove you to make a change.

Josh, you wanna kick it off?

Yeah. For sure. So when I started back, with this company in twenty nineteen, the the system that they were using, there was no there was no app. There was no central database where people could go and put information in. So it was it was purely paper based.

Handed printing out paper at the start of each day was time consuming.

Guys had to use the paper out on the floor. Things are getting ripped, covered in oil, grease, and then all that information had to go back into the system. So it was such a time consuming, piece. So we started to look for a solution to come away from all that.

So we we adopted Limble, and one of the one one big thing as well was was audits. We really struggled when we had audits from different certifying bodies that they were coming, looking for information, kind of going through a filing cabinet. You know? You're trying to find something.

You think you're doing a good job storing paper at the time, but you're rushing and things get mixed up. So that was really painful for us. So having everything in one place just, you know, we reference work orders now as part of batch paperwork. And if an auditor has a question, we just punch in the digits of the work order number, and there's the information.

So it just saves so much time and energy, you know, right the way through the department from from the ground all the way to the top. So they were our real pain points, just paper and time. It it was it was off.

Yeah. And, honestly, a lot of our customers are coming from that same that same point even today, Josh. We we've got a lot of folks that are transitioning over from paper or maybe a little bit of a step up in Excel.

But but, Debo, how about you? What were you guys using paper still, or were you you had a I think you had a start of a system already.

Yeah. I was gonna say, so unlike Josh, Josh had to, like, figure out how to centralize everything. We had everything centralized, but it was in a CMMS that just wasn't working really well. It kinda just looked like Windows ninety five.

So we had a lot of issues with the users not understanding how to get the information out or the reports ran on Flash, which was deprecated, like, in the early two thousands, and they had just not updated it. So a lot of pain points for us was just we can't get the information, and it's really clunky, and there's no app, and there's no updates to this. So we were looking for, like, one our main thing was, like, something really good for users. And then I my thing is I came from the res life side.

So, you know, for college campus, we have over two thousand students and, like, five hundred faculty and staff that can request at any time. So we wanted something that they didn't need to be trained on and that they could easily access.

So that's where I was really excited because I came from that side of the pond over to, okay, now I'm on maintenance. I wanna make something that's super easy to use and that students feel really comfortable filling out at any time. So that's what we are really looking forward to find a new system, and Limble's nailed it.

So Well, I mean, actually, that's a that's a really great transition over into my next question was, what kind of resistance did you have?

Right? Like, going from an old system where people are are kind of using it all, they're used to it. Right? Don't wanna necessarily change to new technology or even the jump from paper to technology is even bigger. So how how did you approach that, Debo?

Yeah. So on the user end, it was really great. Or on the requester end, it was really great because students I mean, if you think about it, every four years, we turn over the entire, you know, requester base, basically. So we added QR codes into each of the rooms, and so it basically was just a little wording that said, need to submit a work order, scan here.

That has made it so that incoming freshmen like today, you know, football players are moving in. They can be a brand new incoming freshman football player, and they see that, and they're like, yeah. My window's busted. I can't get it open, and it's really hot.

They scan the QR code. They submit a work order. It takes no training, and now they're able to directly tell us even before they've met an RA or an RD or anyone else that can help them. They can scan that QR code.

So on that side, no resistance. Everything's been great. They really love it. Good communication.

On the staff side, you know, Western Pennsylvania, we're Steelers fans for five generations, and I've done the same job for five generations. So, you know, getting getting, techs on board was a little tougher.

But a little bit was a dance where I just they wanted to I first of all, I always make that statement. Like, I wanted I want you to know how much I care and that I I want, you know, you to know that I'm not taking making change just for the sake of making change. So I got to know them. I interacted with them on the day to day, see how they're doing things.

And then when I made a change, it was a little more like we had a relationship where I could talk through them. I knew what the pain points were gonna be for them. And so that sometimes happened on an individual level. But as a group, they saw the benefits, pretty quickly, and so they realized this isn't just change for change sake.

And then I was also really clear to tell them timeline. Like, hey. We're gonna do this in a month. So, like, emotionally prepare for the change to happen now.

So when it goes live, you know, it's it's coming, but I'm not throwing it at you today. We made a major change. I'm giving you time to prepare. So that was also helpful for them.

And then we had some follow-up training sessions to kinda tweak it. We also made sure not to heap too much on them at one time. So we didn't, like, kinda really nail them on making sure they log their time right away. We we really wanna just get them comfortable in the system.

And then after a few months, we're like, alright. Let's add this piece. Now let's add parts and inventory. Let's add over time, we've kinda added elements so that it took about a year or two for us to really roll out all the elements of Limble that we wanted to.

Yeah. I think I think that's a really great approach, and probably a lot of people joining us today are are thinking through that. Right? Like, what are the steps that we need to prioritize initially?

How do we how do we roll that out? We'll talk a little bit more about that too as as we go in. But, Josh, I I specifically wanna hear from you too because, you know, moving from one system to another is maybe a little bit less of a lift, but going from paper to mobile phones is, is a bit of a bigger jump. How how did you work through that?

Yeah. So, you know, as as Deebo mentioned, he he's got the five generations of Steelers fans and whatnot and and the old guys that have been in maintenance for a long time. We had the exact opposite where, you know, the target market where we were at as a company at the time, we weren't we didn't have people that were experienced and and knew all the problems. They haven't been here long.

So and also them people the people that were employing, they weren't gonna be around at our facility for long. So trying to get them to buy into something that can help people in, you know, twelve months, two years, five years, ten years, that that was a that was a struggle.

Getting them to buy in and understand that the one work order you might do tomorrow night at, you know, two in the morning is gonna help someone in nine months' time. Trying to get them on board was tough.

It was good in a sense that we had younger guys, and they were all happy more than happy to use the phone in their app.

So so that was definitely a a benefit.

But, yeah, though those were the big challenges with with the people side. But as you touched on, you know, going from everything bit on paper and kind of I knew where the part was, but no one else did know where the part was. Getting getting that into the Limble, you know, it was a big setup going from no CMMS to a to a CMMS.

It does take time. There's no there's no quick way of doing it. I guess AI now can help create what PMs and stuff like that.

But but we weren't there kinda six years ago. We everything had to go in manual.

So it took some time, but it was worth every second and every minute that we put in. And, also, the support that we had from the Limble team in setting up in the background was just invaluable. It was like having another resource on-site for us. So that that was also a great benefit.

You know, we've got some forty thousand pieces of inventory in Limble now, which at first, you know, we didn't put in forty thousand on day one. It was the critical parts as Debo said. Like, start slow, build your way up. So that's that's kind of what we the challenges we faced and and how we went about it.

Yeah. I think that's that's a really important point, Josh, in terms of starting slow, reinforcing it. Was there anything, that you did to kind of reinforce those new ways of working with your team or or communications?

You know, some some of our time some of our customers kind of incentivize their text to add, you know, to add, their hours in appropriately because to your point, it makes a big difference later on. Right? So I think you did a program similar to that. How how did you manage through that?

Yeah. So, initially, we would all we were interested in really was was the work order, the, you know, the the main meat and vegetables of a work order. So what what are you gonna title that work order? You know, fixed it.

That's not gonna cut it. You know? There was this problem or the or an error code is a great work order, something to call it a work order as part of an asset. So that's what we focused on was was the main the heart of the work order.

And then we started looking towards, okay. We now we wanna see log time. You know? CMMS is only as good as what you put into it, and that's the same for any system out there.

The data's coming from the technicians on the floor. And to believe that information, We set, like, ninety percent, ninety five percent as a goal of trying to get text to log their time. And at first, it was a struggle, so we very quickly decided to incentivize that. So we were giving gift cards to the guys that were reaching those targets probably for six, nine months.

And then and then that's when the guys really started seeing the information that they were putting in. That was giving them all of us great data to go at when we reviewed a month's data.

So once they've seen it, they'd already bought in, and it I didn't have to give out gift cards anymore because it it just becomes second nature. But that's how we incentivize them.

No. That's really good. Building the habit. Right? I mean, I think yeah. That's that's important. And and to your point, it is super important to to get the data in, and have have really actionable information for future as well.

So that's a that's a great way to go about it. How I I think, the other thing in addition to the text, we we hear a lot from from new customers, like, how do we get buy in across different levels of the organization? So, like, how do you get your leadership to support this?

Maybe, Deba, we'll kick it over to you first. Josh will get your turn in just a second, so think through it. But, you know, you already had a system in place. So how do you kinda bring people along for that change, especially you know, it's a lot of it's a lot of work to go from, you know, one system to another, a lot of process change and everything along with it.

Yeah. So I kinda phrased it to the leadership that I really felt that we just it's it's our backbone. Like, we use it all the time. So I kinda use this analogy of, like, hey.

A bed and a toilet, those are two really big purchases, but you don't think you don't get excited about those purchases. Right? But if you get a good bed and a toilet, you're gonna spend a lot of time there guaranteed on both those places, and you want those to be good and great. And if that's a good experience, that can change your whole day.

So I said, I I know that background software doesn't sound, you know, that sexy in our industry or anything, and we have buildings that feel like they're falling apart. But to me, the amount of time that we're spending in CMMS every day, if we were to upgrade this and and have a better one, it would just pay dividends every day. And so that's kinda how I went about kinda pursuing that. And so I had kind of free reign to just look at any system.

The one we had was great. It was really cheap, so they like that. You know? Cheap is good.

So moving to Limble was a little more expensive, but, it was pretty easy to show off return on investment and just be able to see how much time we were gonna save. And, honestly, we got to the point where we were able to not we had somebody who was literally their only job was just issuing work orders from coming into the system to the person who should have it. And when we automated that, that person retired and we were like, we don't need to rehire them. Boom.

There it is. Pays for itself. So I think the return on investment was big for leadership and just knowing that, wow, this really does change how we communicate, and that has a huge impact on how our department functions. So that's how I got the buy in.

Yeah. That's great. And and Josh, how about you? Similar I mean, I would think you'd have to make kind of a similar case. Yeah?

Yeah. So, actually, you know, when I come in and we were dealing with all this paperwork, we'd we'd had a the audit was successful, but it was a struggle. And and I went and asked a question, like, hey. Look.

You know? Looking I need some money here to to have a CMMS. And, originally, the answer was no. So, you know, a couple months later, we, one of our piece of equipment had gone down, and we didn't have a part.

The sis the the somewhat of a system that we had said we did, but we didn't. And this was a critical part and a part that took seven days to get to us, had to be made and sent. So that meant that our whole packaging line was down seven days.

So at that point, I went and asked the question the next day, like, hey. You know, give me give me the money for a system. So that so then boom.

Okay. You know, it cost us a a lot a lot of dollars to be down for seven days.

So that was that was great. We got the system.

And then once we had the system, you know, the people above me and management, they wanted to make sure that we were still getting stuff out of the system. So we knew that there was a piece of equipment specifically that was what I would refer to as a money pit, with labor that we put to it, parts, everything, always breaking down. No one wanted to replace a piece of equipment. So after we had Limble up and running for twelve months, we took a year's worth of data to management and said, hey.

Look. Like, Here it is in black and white. Without labor cost, just with parts putting on the piece of equipment, we could have bought a piece of equipment with that alone. So them seeing that data and being able to believe it, yeah, you get the I really do get the buy in now.

Yeah. Well and I think it all builds off of your initial, setup. Right? Like, you wouldn't have had the data if the team hadn't been hadn't come along with the change.

You hadn't incented them to to get their hours in and make sure that the data was accurate. Right? Like, it all kind of builds up to that. And I think yeah.

And I and I think, you know, a lot of the a lot of our customers find that the reporting, especially in Limble, helps to make that k make that continued case to leadership, through, you know, really, it's very clear that the savings, the change in your business, especially becoming much more proactive. Right?

Yeah. Absolutely. And and that's why I think it's so important. You know, limp you do need to drive Limble.

Okay? Like, Limble Limble is a great system, but you do need to drive it. It doesn't do everything for you. You've got to feed it good information.

And and kinda going back to what we said before, it's walk before you run, get the good information in, and that's when you don't want someone saying no when you take them data. You don't want them to pick holes in your data. Like, look. You're only doing fifty percent tech time.

Are you only putting in work orders that you want me to see? No. We're putting in everything, and that's when they can't argue. And not everyone's gonna always get what they want, but you're probably gonna go get a hell of a lot more than what you you would have got without a system.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Well and and so just curious to kind of build on that a little bit. You you guys both talked about, you know, kind of starting small, getting your steps, in getting people comfortable and kind of building out Limble.

How how did your Limble implementation impact other departments along the way? So once you kind of got your initial team, you know, kind of maintenance group going, how how have you potentially used it with with other groups?

Yeah. So for us, look at our old system, the steps that were involved, and then the new system. The biggest way I think it impacted other departments was just the direct communication and streamlining. There was so many less steps.

So before, students literally had to go to an RA, let them know my light bulbs burned out. Then the RA tells the RD. The RD has an account that they can submit. They submit it.

It goes to, you know, into the inbox for somebody to move into the electrician's name. Then the electrician gets it. He has to go to the room and check out what kind of light bulb it is. That was like the process before.

Then he goes back to the shop and grabs it and goes back up eventually and gets it all done. I mean, that is a really complicated process. And the student may tell the RA and the RA forgets to tell the RD. The RD is on vacation, doesn't submit it.

You know? There's all these breakdowns. And so when we look at our turnaround time, it was like a month or more, and now we're turning it into two weeks or less. So there was a major difference.

And And so I think the big impact we had was students are like, oh, I scanned a QR code. I submitted a picture of it, and the electrician saw the picture, got it right away, grabbed the bulb, ran up to the room, and did it in a day or two. Now that totally changes their perception of maintenance.

And if they're like, oh, we have to order bulbs. Well, now they put in our comment, and they say bulbs on order, be here in a couple days. That comment goes to the student because they'd submitted it. Now we're not lost in translation.

And so other departments have just been like, wow. Look at maintenance. They are responsive. They are on top of things.

That's been huge for us. And then there's a trust factor. And so we always joke too. It's like, anytime somebody tells me something, especially in passing, they're like, oh, hey, Debo.

Can you you know, what do you think about this? I'm like, put a work order in. Put a work order in. Put a work order in.

Like Josh said, everything being a work order is the way to go. So whether that you know? And we can deny them. If a student says, I want a hot tub in my room.

Okay. No. We're not doing that. But they can at least attempt to do it through Limble, and everything is tracked and organized that way.

So I think the big thing is that it really opened up our access to people and people's access to us. And so all departments feel that they can more easily communicate with a variety of questions and requests all through Limble. Whereas before, it was the secret order that you had to penetrate to get to the point where you could ask for certain things, and you had to know who to ask. Now it's just, yeah, everything's a QR code or on the website.

I love I love the creativity of your students asking for for hot tubs in their room. Yeah.

Yeah. Things they ask for. Gosh. I we just got a request that was like, there's a hole in the wall the size of my roommate's head.

I don't know how it got there. So I ended up on that one. So they're we love it. We're starting to pin them on the wall when they have a really funny work request.

I wanna make a little, like, wall of fame of funny requests because they're they can be creative.

I love it. Those of you in the comments, put go ahead and put in anything that that that your funniest work request that you've gotten from your organization. We'll see who wins. Yes.

That would be awesome.

Yeah. That would be good. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No. That's great. Well and and Josh, I mean, how about you? I think, you mentioned your audits earlier. I think, you know, that and and around the equipment engineering team, like, how how have you seen it impact others around the organization?

Yeah. First, you know, we were very protective of our over our system in the maintenance department. We didn't want anyone to touch it or have we didn't want anyone to get their fingers in. We put a lot of time and effort in, to to get it to where we wanted it to be.

And and we knew once it was in a good place, other people were were seeing that and realizing it. We, you know, we'd had a few audits and quality team have started saying like, hey. Like, they've got their stuff together. They they know what they're doing now.

And then we we branched out. We give access to the engineering team. The engineering team pull different data than what the maintenance department are pulling, and they're making informed decisions, data driven decisions on on capital investment and process improvements, which is really good. And also the quality department are also using it now.

They they use it for instrumentation, calibrations, all all that type of thing. So now we've got three different departments using Limble, which which is fantastic. Right? It's all it's one place.

So the audit has now seen it in three different rooms and not just seeing it in one. So they're really believing in the system.

And we also use Limble validated system. So we we do use the the CFR two eleven portion, of Limble, which orders it's the next step, and and orders love that even more. So, yeah, it it's so good how it branched out. It would like I say, I was protective, but we did branch it out and give people the opportunity to enjoy the system as well.

Yeah. Well, and I think to your point, like, you wanna get it set up in a way that works for your team as a priority. Right? And and have that kind of working and everyone feeling comfortable with it. But being able to consolidate information from multiple sources altogether, right, helps increase that visibility across the organization. And everyone is working together already, so having the data in one place can be really meaningful.

Yeah. Absolutely. And and as well, finance. Finance have started pulling pulling labor costs. So, you know, whether whether the maintenance team are working on a capital project, they can pull their hours and allocate that money somewhere else so they can see where we're where we are allocating labor. So, yeah, it's just more people are getting involved and getting more out of it. So yeah.

Yeah. That's great to hear. Well, we have gone through a lot of tips and tricks already, and and we really appreciate you sharing your experiences so far. But now I think we're gonna try to try to get some summaries here. So if you're giving advice to others, think about this. What is something you wish you'd known before starting your transformation with Limble?

I'll say, take it slow. We we mentioned this earlier, but, I mean, there's so many things you can do. It can be overwhelming. And a lot of projects that I took on, I did in phases.

So, like, one thing I did is I mapped every single room on campus. That's, like, two thousand things I needed to drop a pin on, and that was just overwhelming. I like the idea of doing it, but it just stressed me out at first. And then I realized, you know what?

Like, a half hour to start my day or end my day each day, I'll just drop some pins, and I'll focus on doing one floor of a building or one building for the day. And after a couple weeks, the whole thing was done. And so I look back, and I'm like, man, that is such a time saver. Because when you're a brand new tech and you don't know where to go, now every work order has a pin drop on the campus that shows you where it is.

So you don't have to know the name of every building or how to navigate. So that was something I did, but at first, it was overwhelming. And so I think you could look at somebody, maybe like Josh or I, who we've had it for a few years and we're using it. We're really excited about it.

And you're like, oh, we're trying to do all your inventory and trying to do all that. That. Well, I didn't start with all my inventory. I started with just the light bulbs and just started with one shelf.

And I did that, and I just told my guys, hey. If there's a QR code, scan it and add it to the work order. If there's not, don't worry about it. We're not there yet.

So I think phasing things in is a really big concept of, like, how modern software operates. Like, when you implement something, it's gonna happen in phases. So just slow yourself down, kinda be patient, and then just I also I'd say, like, miss Frizzle and the magic magic school bus just, like, make mistakes.

That's okay. Like, you know, get messy. Try it out. Try something and be like, you know what?

I tried it this way, and I think that maybe it would be better to try it this way. We changed our asset hierarchy a couple times just because we thought we wanted it one way, and then we found it best the other way. And so that was okay. It took a little extra manpower to change it around, but once we got it all set up, it's been fantastic.

So try things out, experiment with the system, see what you can do. It's not a finished product at any point. You're always gonna wanna reassess and look through how you can improve things on a regular basis.

Yeah. I think that's that's a really great point, Debo, because it's I think sometimes people are are afraid that they need to have the whole thing built out exactly perfectly before they can start. Right? And, you know, to to our earlier conversation, the sooner you start to collect data, then the sooner you can start to make decisions and that you have that data to refer to.

Right? So even if it's just choosing, like, hey. This is the this is the equipment that breaks down the most or is the most costly to fix when it does. Right?

Like, finding those things early on and just doing it bit by bit and and knowing that you can change as you go. Because, also, your your business is gonna change. You're gonna add new buildings. You're going to get a new, you know, a new contract and and need to provide a new type of of product.

So you're always going to have to be in there tinkering, so don't be afraid to to have everything perfect to get started.

Yeah.

Yeah. Really great advice. How about you, Josh?

Yeah. So, you know, not don't wanna be on the same drum, but taking it slow. And but I don't I wouldn't want people to feel like, oh gosh. These guys keep saying, like, take it slow. It's gonna take forever. Especially if if they're in the paper stage like I was to where I am today, taking it slow, you can still get lots of information, lots of data very quickly.

But certainly for us, you know, we did take it slow. We we were probably, you know, four or five months of putting data in the system before we decided to, you know, switch it on and use it live.

But we were starting completely from scratch. We have a fairly big facility. You know, you've got to take those things into consideration.

But the data that we would get in you know, I said I went with twelve months a day. We did exactly what you just mentioned. We we said on a couple of assets, we're we're gonna be really particular. We want all the information on these assets because we know we can get good data that's gonna drive change.

So but the data we got after twelve months is not the same data that I'm getting now after six years. Like, the data I'm seeing now is is a lot more in-depth because we've had the system. Everyone's involved with the system now. Limble has changed over those years.

Limble gives better information now than what it was given or not better information, but more information. You know? And you you can go and look for different information that you couldn't before. So so there is that.

Like, yeah, I don't wanna put people off, obviously, but I really do would find value if I was to do it again. There's probably some things I would wanna do a little bit slower than than than how we did it.

But just getting everyone everyone on the same page, reading from the same hymn book, I think that's that's really important.

Gosh. To to piggyback off this, actually, the funny thing is when we implemented, we I was looking at it in October, and Limble like, oh, you could launch in January. And I'm like, no way. Middle of the school year, we're not gonna do that.

We'll wait till next August. I'm gonna need eight months. And so all this you're right. All this talk of me saying go slow or, like, just mentally take it slow.

In reality, the implementation, we actually went live in January. Like, by December, I was like, oh, would you look at that? I've imported everything. Everything's ready to go.

I I guess we should just go live like they said. Like, I I was gonna wait another semester, and everyone on board, but we were good. We just went with it. So there are times where, like, I went quicker on things, but as well also, like, I didn't add parts inventory right away.

So when I say go slow, you're right. Like, it was more modular wise. But as far as, like, implementation, that was actually way I was, like, a third of the time I thought it would take to implement. We got up and running.

But, again, we weren't coming from paper. We came from another system, so a little different. Yeah.

For sure. And one one thing I didn't mention was, you know, we're getting into this world now of of AI. I think I would abs we did take time on the on the you know, I spoke before about the meat of the work order, what we're calling a work order, and and the information that we're putting in. We all know that the AI is gonna come live here soon at some point on on Limble and being able to scrape the best data available is all from what what technicians are putting into work orders. So, you know, especially now more than, you know, five years ago, I wasn't thinking AI was was gonna be involved in in maintenance.

But now more than ever, like, really make sure that that the information in the work orders is super clear because that's what Limble and its AI is gonna scrape at some point here soon. So, yeah, that's a that's a good one for people to just keep an eye on.

Yeah. Well and I think that it it's a great point, Josh, because, you know, from from an emerging technology perspective, there is a transition that's going to happen. Right? Like, AI is not gonna be able to actually, you know, do the work of a of a maintenance tech.

But from a from an efficiency perspective, from a knowledge perspective, I mean, we're hearing I'm sure a lot of people joining us today are having the same challenge as you that there's high turnover. Right? People are retiring. You're not getting people staying enrolled as long as as in the past.

And so all of that knowledge goes along with it. Right? So so we here at Limble and and some of our other sessions today are kind of focused a little bit more on this, but we we are really focused on how can we be thoughtful about how we include AI within the the software to help either from an onboarding and implementation perspective in things like building assets and PMs schedules and things like that, to scanning back through prior work history to understand has this happened before and what did we do that actually resolved the issue. So, you know, to our earlier conversation, just putting fixed it in the in the work request, right, is not gonna be not gonna be helpful in in those situations.

Yeah. Definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so, are you guys let's let's actually talk about that real quick if you don't mind. You know, are you thinking about other, you know, either other uses of AI or other systems too. Like, you know, I know using like a SCADA system or a sensors to to integrate within Limble. I think we're we're constantly looking at how to pull more data together to help, you know, kind of cover more of the the entire asset life cycle and and that workflow. So how are you guys approaching that, thinking about that for future?

Go ahead, Josh.

Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, we we do have, two two, maybe three of the SCADA systems that we have on-site.

For us, you know, back when I started with Limble, we didn't look at integrating the IOTs and things like that into Limble.

We're we're looking to expand here at our site, over the next, you know, eighteen months or so. So that's something that I need to get together with Limble with and see if we can if we can now pull everything into this one base. It's it's really is Debo said it earlier, like, it's our backbone.

So to have everything in one place, it it would be just of such a benefit being able to send work orders from Limble because now my SCADA system will send an email and kinda where Deebo was at before. The email's got to go through a few channels before it goes into limble. So it's time consuming. It can possibly be missed. You know, if you get an email at one in the morning, it comes to my email address, I'm not waking up to an email, to send a work order. So, yeah, there there'd be so many benefits in having it all centralized, and that's absolutely the goal here of the of the next eighteen months or so to what can we, again, baby steps. Let's pull some things in, and then let's see if we can do, you know, a major overhaul and bring everything into one location.

Yeah. For for us, I think one of the things I've been working on is Power BI. So I've been integrating our data into different reporting structures that can kinda pull some different values out and show it off. I always say our board of trustees loves a colorful graph.

You know? You got nice different lines that show, oh, things were bad. Now they're good and things like that. It's always helpful.

So we're using a bit of Microsoft AI to kinda process some of those reports that show off what we can do.

So that's where we're using AI. We have looked at sensors.

We have some building automation systems that are already up and running, and so that's usually what we're looking at with them is the software company has some some stuff. We haven't integrated it into Limble yet. But, yeah, I I'm kinda I feel like we're on the cusp of AI having a bigger impact on maintenance, but it does you know, Josh and I have talked about this before of, like, you know, AI can't swing a hammer. So at some level, it feels like as an industry, maintenance feels a little safer from, like, sudden job loss. But at the same time, there are ways that it can help. Like, our housekeeping staff are always short. And so we we've talked about, you know, if we got a an automated robot that cleans the floors in the gymnasium, That's somebody's job that we don't have to hire for because we're always shorthanded.

So it also feels like let's use AI where we can slot in those missing pieces and where we can we make some more efficiencies so that we're not always so stressed out and our and our guys have a little more handle on their job. So, yeah, I'm hoping that AI can do a little more of the heavy lifting in the future as far as processing the information, And maybe it could even look at some of our work orders and be like, oh, that's marked as an unplanned work order, but that's really planned. We should switch that. That kind of thing, I could see in the future really having an impact.

So, you know, you're imagining a a nation can run wild with AI, but, like, practically, I think it's just baby steps. We're getting there. We're one step at a time. We're seeing the ways that it can really help us out in the future.

Yeah. Well and I think both of you with the you know, from a a SCADA perspective, bringing that data together with Limble or with Power BI, you know, you can pull a lot of different information together to visualize it in one place.

I think there's a lot of opportunity there, especially back to our earlier conversation around presenting this to leadership. Right? And and how are we continuing to to make improvements, in this area of the organization, and and how do we show that in a way that is meaningful, to make change and get resources that you need, to to keep making improvements. So that's great.

Yeah. We'll we'll all continue to work on this together. Right? We at Limble definitely want our customers' input as we're building out a lot of this stuff.

So you guys are on the list for, for for future conversations as we're thinking through it.

And we are coming coming up towards the end of our time. So I do wanna finish with, you know, one one last question to think through, you know, what is what is your proudest moment since implementing Limble or what you see as as your biggest sign of success? Anything stand out to you in particular over over the years of using Limble?

Sure. Yeah.

Well, the one I had one real critic. I mean, he was a HVAC tech who was just, I've done it thirty years this way. I don't wanna change it. And he grumbled a lot when we were implementing, and he complained.

And, you know, we get along. It it's just that he just was like, I'm not a fan of this depot. I don't like it. I don't like he grumbled the whole time.

And then we you know, a few months later, we're down down the road. We're interviewing, another HVAC tech to come on board. And so he was in the interview, and the candidate asked us the question, what CMMS do you use? Do you like it?

What do you think about it? And I'm looking into him Limble, I'm not saying anything about how I love it because I don't know what to do. Like, I I'll let him answer that one. And he looked at this guy, and he goes, let me tell you.

In all my time and I was like, oh, here we go.

In all my time and all the systems twenty second century. Devo's really helped us get on board. This Limble system, man, I'll tell you, you'd never used anything like it. It it's simple.

It's easy to use. It's got all my information. I've seen all my password. And he's just going on raving about it.

And I just was this this weird, like, you know, whiplash moment where I thought that he was just gonna, like, rail on it, and then I was gonna have to defend it and say, well, actually. And instead, he just was, like, a huge proponent of it, which was really cool. So that felt like the big win for me that it had been long enough where even the biggest critics were like, I'm on board. This is huge.

I really love how we use this.

So That's awesome. Well and and the benefit to his work life. Right? Like, to be able to to save time, to be more yeah. That's awesome to hear.

It felt like watching your kid eat broccoli and turn around and be like, wow. I feel like I'm healthier and stronger because of this. Thank you, dad. Like, it was just this weird, like, yeah. Well, okay. Yeah.

Oh, I love it. I love it. Josh, I don't know I don't know if you have any one person in particular, but happy to hear, you know, what what is your success that that you're most proud of with Limble.

Yeah. So the one that stands out for me, you know, me maintenance and quality, you know, we kinda there's a lot of normally, a lot of friction in manufacturing environments, and and definitely my my relationship with the quality manager was was like that.

And once once we got Limble going and we started using Limble in audits and and really presenting a, you know, a great a great picture of the department, I had I'd heard no recognition.

But we were sat in a meeting in front of other management, and the quality manager out of nowhere just came up and spoke up about how great this this new Limble system was and and how good it was doing for us as a department. So for someone who I thought kind of similar to Debo and the fact that you think that they don't like, you know, what you do and things like that, to turn around and go, hey. It it's really good. That that was a nice moment for us.

And also, I touch on no news is good news.

No one complains about Limble. I I don't hear anyone that submits work orders and, the technicians, my any department that's using it. Alright? There's four different departments getting the things in there. No one complains. So no news is good news, certainly from where I'm sitting anyway.

Hey. That's that's definitely a commonality between maintenance and customer service. Right? Like, we we wanna we want everything to be nice and smooth and calm. So I love to hear that that you're getting great feedback both from from people that you thought were maybe a little bit of detractors.

Yeah.

And and also that you've you've got, some good time back from people just being able to to use it without without any trouble. That's awesome to hear.

Very cool. Well, thank you both so much for joining today. I know I and the rest of the audience, I'm sure, is has found all of this super helpful. A lot of really great tips in how to get started, how to continue to improve in your usage and and adoption of Limble, and all the the creative ways that that you've all been using it. It's been really great to see. So thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate your partnership.

Yeah. Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

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