SEAMS
Enhancing Asset Investment Decisions

Many asset-rich organizations across the globe are impacted by the rapid aging of their infrastructure that is caused by extreme weather and increasing customer demand. On one hand, they have regulatory and budgetary constraints that stall them from revamping the infrastructure; on the other hand, they are constantly required to improve their service experiences. Therefore, it is clear that businesses have to think differently to get the best value out of their assets and projects. For the purpose of assisting companies to make informed and efficient decisions on their physical, human, and financial assets, SEAMS provides decision support software and analytics services. Founded in 2002, SEAMS emerged from the need for the UK water industry to be able to justify investment decisions to the government regulatory authority. The SEAMS solution was developed after years of research by the specialist departments at Sheffield University and Exeter University.

Over the years, SEAMS has developed and diversified its offerings to satisfy the planning needs of asset-centric companies across sectors including energy, transport, and public. “The drive for better corporate performance and returns sits at the heart of most businesses. Our approach is all about mining the plethora of data available to us and making the most effective use of it to inform the decision-making process,” states Mark Engelhardt, founder and managing director of SEAMS. “This approach to data means that SEAMS can work with clients from the very earliest stages of strategic planning, right through to operational delivery, helping them to draw valuable insights that ultimately help to drive the best performance of their assets,” he adds.

SEAMS helps clients build a proven decision framework to balance investments, risks, and resources through its Enterprise Decision Analytics (EDA) software. EDA combines the power of predictive and prescriptive analytics, modeling, and optimization. By using a single platform (EDA), organizations can manage the end-to-end asset investment planning process. Being a modular platform, the full suite of EDA modules provides the building blocks for asset, portfolio, delivery, and financial modeling.

Our approach is all about mining the plethora of data available to us and making the most effective use of it to inform the decision-making process

As the platform is highly flexible and configurable, each building block can be individually configured and integrated with other enterprise systems. Consequently, businesses can institutionalize best practices for their asset management and investment processes, to provide maximum value for all stakeholders.

SEAMS has worked with organizations in multiple industry sectors to provide proven results. In one instance, SEAMS helped Dunea, a Dutch private water company to maintain their leading position in terms of asset management decisions within the Netherlands’ water industry. The company wanted to leverage analytics to improve decision making and concluded that collaborating with SEAMS would be a perfect fit. Initially, SEAMS deployed a pilot project to derive a corporate investment strategy and tactical plan for a single operating region. The success of the pilot led Dunea to commission SEAMS and roll the methodology out to the entire company and across all regions. Through improved capital investment, Dunea realized cost savings of approximately $2.2 million on their annual budget. Presently, Dunea is at the forefront of Netherlands’ water sector on infrastructure asset management.

Whether it’s software or services, detailed asset modeling, sophisticated portfolio management, or an end-to-end asset investment process, SEAMS enables clients to make better decisions. And when it comes to optimization, the company has a range of approaches designed to meet the exact needs of clients. With a global client base, SEAMS continues to invest heavily in product development and maximizing customer engagement. The company continues to lead the market in innovation, products, and services focused on descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analysis.