Earlier this year, Planon held its 2024 North America User Conference at the NetApp headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The event brought together a diverse group of Planon customers, partners, and industry leaders to share best practices and showcase the innovative ways they have applied Planon solutions to achieve operational efficiencies at their organizations.

One highlight of the conference was the "Most Innovative Customer" session, during which customers presented their unique applications of Planon’s solutions. This session provided a platform for customers to share success stories, ideas for product enhancements, and their specific use cases for Planon’s highly flexible and powerful platform.

After presentations by several Planon customers, all attendees had the opportunity to vote for who they felt had the most innovative Planon applications, and Brown University was awarded the trophy.

Brown University’s winning presentation highlighted the following uses of Planon:

  • Mobile functionality for 400+ technicians: Brown University emphasized the importance of mobile functionality for more than four hundred technicians, highlighting their smooth onboarding process using color-coded floorplans in a CAD integrator and providing translations for their multilingual workforce. They also extended the Planon Mobile Field Services (PMFS) app functionality to their external vendors, such as elevator technicians and pest control, ensuring seamless maintenance operations.

  • QR codes and PMFS app for auto-replenishment: By integrating QR codes and the Planon Mobile Field Services (PMFS) app, Brown University streamlined their inventory management, allowing for daily auto-replenishment of stock, specifically for plumbing, electrical, and HVAC equipment. This has significantly reduced downtime and improved efficiency.

  • Survey functionality for dorm inspections: Brown University leveraged Planon’s survey functionality to conduct dorm inspections more easily, allowing them to identify repair opportunities during the summer months and ensure that all issues are addressed before students return to campus. Most recently, this functionality allowed them to identify and create more than 1,500 maintenance work orders during the student move-out process.

  • Planon Connect for Analytics reports: Utilizing Planon Connect for Analytics, Brown University created valuable reports, including:

    • Space type by building heatmap
    • Ratio of corrective, preventative, and reactive maintenance
    • Projected costs vs. billed costs (with data generated from Planon’s Work Order Cost Recovery solution).

      These reports have provided invaluable insights for Brown University’s facility maintenance team, enabling better decision-making and resource allocation.

  • Work order tracker: Brown University implemented a tracker to monitor the progress of work orders through the overall process, enhancing process transparency. This real-time tracking notification provides end users with valuable information about the status of their work order and improved communications between facilities and their customers.

  • Training and change management: Much of the success of Brown University’s innovative use cases can be attributed to having a dedicated resource for training and change management on the use of Planon, ensuring smooth transitions and high user adoption.

Brown University’s creative and innovative use of Planon’s Campus Management Solution and the Planon Mobile Field Services app has set a high benchmark and has inspired other customers to further optimize their use of Planon.

"Thank you to Brown University and all our customers who shared their creative use cases and success stories at this year's User Conference," said Darlene Pope, President of Planon North America. "We are grateful to have such involved customers who partner with us to develop applications that best meet their business needs and to shape our product roadmap.”

Share this article