By Berend Booms, Associate Editor | Future of Assets

Last week, my family and I moved into our new house. If you have ever moved house, you will probably recognize this strange mixture of excitement and apprehension that accompanies the weeks leading up to the big day. The excitement comes from being on the cusp of starting a new chapter. Your mind starts wandering, you imagine what your furniture is going to look like in its new place, picture your children playing in the garden, and wonder what those first few weeks are going to feel like as your family settles into a completely new environment. On the other hand, there is the growing realization that everything you own somehow needs to make the journey with you, your children are about to leave behind the only home they have ever known, and you realize how important it will be to help them settle into their new surroundings, and that the responsibility for making that happen rests almost entirely on your own shoulders. 

We had been preparing for this move for months, or even years if you consider that we signed for the house almost two years ago. In that time cupboards had been emptied, boxes had been packed, addresses had been changed, utility companies contacted, furniture ordered, and what felt like hundreds of small jobs had been crossed off increasingly long to-do lists. Patience has never been one of my stronger qualities, so much to my frustration, every time I thought we had reached the end, another task seemed to appear. Still, by the time moving day arrived, I had actually convinced myself we were ready and as prepared as we could ever be. Looking back now, I realize how wonderfully optimistic that assumption was. 

What Lies Beneath the Surface 

Moving into a new house has a funny way of exposing everything you did not know. You suddenly discover how little you really understand about the building that is about to become your home. Where exactly does this cable disappear to? How does my new hob work? Has that mark always been there, or did I just damage the wall?  

I am a very rational person, so I want to understand how things work, and then if at all possible, use this newfound understanding to attempt to fix any issues myself. At the same time, there comes a moment during almost every renovation or move where you realize that experience matters, much more than having a basic understanding. There are people who have seen these situations hundreds of times before, who immediately recognize what you are looking at, who understand which problems require immediate attention and know without hesitation what needs to happen in order to turn panic into peace. 

Somewhere during those first few days, I found myself thinking about how remarkably familiar the entire experience felt. The more I reflected on it, the more it reminded me of implementing a new CMMS or Enterprise Asset Management system. Over the past decade, I have spoken with many organizations preparing for that journey. While every implementation is different, the emotional journey organizations go through often follows a surprisingly familiar pattern. 

It begins with preparation. Long before anyone logs into the new system, an enormous amount of work takes place behind the scenes. Asset structures are reviewed, preventive maintenance plans are evaluated, bills of materials are cleaned up, naming conventions are discussed, data is validated, challenged, corrected, and prepared for migration. Much like packing a house, the majority of the work happens before the move itself. 

It is often during the ‘packing’ stage that foundations start revealing themselves. One of the things I have learned over the years is that very few organizations know their data quite as well as they think they do. That observation is not intended as criticism; it is simply the reality of environments that have often evolved over decades. Different people have maintained different parts of the system, assets have been added over time, processes have changed, naming conventions have drifted, and information that made perfect sense to someone fifteen years ago no longer makes quite as much sense today. 

The same thing happens when moving into a new house. I must have packed, unpacked, and handled almost every possession I own several times over, and that’s when you inevitably uncover things you were never expecting to find. It’s a constant cycle of: do I really need this? Will I ever need this? What if I end up needing this? Eventually, there comes a point where preparation gives way to commitment. 

The Point of No Return 

For me, that moment arrived when the moving trucks pulled into the driveway. Months of preparation had led to that single morning. Watching everything our family owns disappear into the back of those trucks was a strangely unsettling experience. As you do, I started to wonder whether we had forgotten something important, whether we had planned well enough, and whether moving had actually been such a good idea after all.  

I have heard remarkably similar conversations take place during CMMS go-live weekends. Have we tested everything? Did we migrate all the data? What happens if something goes wrong on Monday morning? Can’t we just go back to the way things were? 

Questions like these are perfectly natural because go-live represents far more than a software deployment. It represents change, and change is notoriously difficult to deal with. People are stepping away from familiar routines that may have served them for years, sometimes decades. Even when the new environment is objectively better, familiarity remains a remarkably powerful thing to leave behind. 

And then, almost without realizing it, the move is over. Your belongings have been moved into the house; your data has been moved into a new system. In a technical sense, everything has ended up exactly where it is supposed to be; practically, this often feels very different. 

Learning Your Way Around 

I spent an embarrassing amount of time last week opening boxes looking for that one particular kitchen utensil, searching for a specific pair of shoes, or wondering where we packed the toilet paper. I know those things exist because we packed them ourselves; I simply have not yet learned where they ‘live’ in our new home. 

I think many maintenance teams experience something very similar after a successful implementation. The work order is there, the asset history is there, the preventive maintenance plan is there, the bill of materials is there. What is not there just yet is the familiarity that allows these teams to find everything instinctively. The only way to become familiar with a new environment is by spending time in it. 

That is the biggest lesson moving house has reminded me of. We often judge change far too quickly. We expect ourselves to feel comfortable in new environments almost immediately, whether those environments are homes, workplaces, or enterprise software platforms. In reality, every meaningful transition comes with a period of adjustment. New routines have to be developed, new habits have to form. Confidence grows through repetition rather than through configuration. 

Settling In 

As I sit here writing this article, surrounded by boxes that still need unpacking, I find comfort in the realization that this is simply part of the process.. Our house already feels a little more like home than it did a week ago. Next week, it will feel more familiar still. Before long, I won’t second guess myself, and everything will fall into a natural pace and flow. 

I imagine many organizations experience exactly the same thing after implementing a new CMMS or EAM system. The uncertainty gradually gives way to confidence, as the unfamiliar slowly becomes routine. Teams begin building new ways of working that would have felt awkward only weeks before. 

Whether you are moving house or implementing a new enterprise system, neither experience is defined by the move itself. What matters most is what happens afterward, when you gradually stop thinking about the transition and simply start getting on with living and working in your new environment. Perhaps that is what settling in really means: not reaching the point where everything is perfect, but reaching the point where the unfamiliar quietly starts feeling like home.