WE KNOW . . . BECAUSE WE DID IT
So you decided to get rid of the paper logsheets.
There are several ways to achieve your goals: use free online calendar software, use commercial facility management software, or hire an IT company to design your own.
They all have pros and cons.
Using an online calendar is easy but you may want to upgrade for features like instrument access control, billing, and statistical reports.
Hiring a consultant to build your own software gives you every feature you want. However it is time consuming and costly. More importantly you may have difficulty communicating with the software engineers, who usually don't have facility management experience.
Why not start with something that is 99% done and is customizable for you to achieve the last 1%?
FOM was designed, programmed, and user tested by real life facility managers. You will have no barrier talking to FOM developers to customize FOM for your needs.
GET THINGS ORGANIZED
It is tough to be an instrument manager.
You maintain the instrument; you do training; you oversee consumable inventory.
You do research; you wirte papers; you write proposals; you prepare reports.
You lead classes; you organize workshops; you guide tours; you design posters.
Your time is not well-organized. Most of your time has been wasted on trivial activities.
Your instrument is not well-utilized. Sometimes users double book instrument reservations, and other times the instrument is free but users don't know it.
FOM helps you organize your instrument, your users, and your time.
FOM helps you communicate with users, professors, vendors, and manufactures tech support.
FOM helps you keep track of instrument usage, repair history, and consumable inventory.
GET FINANCIAL REPORTS WITH SEVERAL MOUSE CLICKS
As a Business Manager, you need all kinds of reports.
How long did it take when you last compiled an annual report?
How many hours did you spend to get statistics on one instrument?
Are you tired of collecting paper logsheets at end of each month?
Stop wasting your precious time. Get it done with several mouse clicks.
With FOM you have all these funtions at your finger tips: billing information, auditing records, usage statistics, and much more.
Get reports by departments, by supervisors, by affiliations, by disciplines. You name it.
BETTER COMMUNICATIONS WITH PROFESSORS
Communication is the key. For best communication, you need solid data.
FOM provides you the most accurate data,
any time you want,
any format you desire.
Facility and instrument managers can easily distribute emails to supervisors and users on the most recent updates of instruments and any change in status.
Each supervisor has a secured link to access detailed reports instead of sending a request to facility managers and waiting for a reply.
NO MORE BOUNCE-BACKS OF INTERNAL VOUCHERS
In FOM, a system administrator may customize the most complicated rules to ensure internal users enter valid account numbers.
Facility managers may define unlimited discount structures for special groups of users.
For each instrument, a manager may configure reservation time increments. Instruments may be charged per reservation, per actual used time, or a combination of reserved and used time.
Users in FOM are divided into day-time users and 24-hour users on each instrument. Different charge rates may be applied for day time and night time use.
No-shows, forgot-logoffs, auto-logoffs, overlapping times, conflicting reservations... All these scenarios are best resolved in FOM scheduler.
CHECK INSTRUMENT SCHEDULE ANYWHERE, ANYTIME
Users may use any computer to check instrument schedules, anywhere, anytime.
Simple old HTML and Javascript, supported by every common browser, IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, whatever.
There is no client-side software install, no browser plug-in install.
In FOM managers can easily reserve instruments and do service experiments for external users. Managers may input, modify, or do batch import of service charges.
FOM creates pure Excel format invoices, based on a customizable template, with one mouse click.
