Changing Customer & Stakeholder Expectations

This system can also be used to generate a clear sensitivity analyses by the simple act of placing weightings on these individual assessments so that organizations can assess the relative merits of the application or vary same to meet future customer or stakeholder expectations.

It must be remembered that these types of asset information systems (applications) take considerable time to be developed and to be populated with data of an appropriate quality level. It is not easy to alter these systems to accommodate new requirements or new customer expectations. To improve the longevity of this type of process and the associated information systems that are required, simple weighting factors should be included in the calculations of the consequence of the failure to make these investments. This can then be done while keeping the technical scoring basis and resulting algorithms of the consequence of failure cost constant, so that there is longevity in the part of the process and the information system application.

By including this feature organizations will be able to:

• Complete appropriate sensitivity analysis on the overall project validation using weighting factors against the key organization value chain drivers
• Run global variations on some of these organization drivers or benefits based on changing customer expectations or the additional requirements of concerns that may be expressed through directors and other key stakeholders.

For example - we can be easily aware of the rising expectations of the community in regards to the environment and directors or key stakeholders may believe that our current assessments underestimate this benefit.

A global correction could be made to all the capital expenditure applications held in the organization's asset management information system by just altering the weighting on that individual element and rerunning the assessment program.

In this instance, we could increase the benefits being derived through the environmental assessments by 20% i.e. a multiplier of 1.2.

Aternatively- the organization may believe that we have exaggerated the benefit of a higher level of service to customers and as such these elements in the validation could be degraded by 10% by re-rating these as .9 factors.

In many cases this sensitivity reassessment may rearrange the capital works program, but in general, it will have no significant effect on the total figure.

It can give significant confidence to key stakeholders (and financial investors) if they can be involved in the validation/prioritization process. This function or facility makes it very easy for them to be involved and incurs very little effort by the organization in completing the work.