Cody Gray is Director of Product and Design at Manager Plus near Salt Lake City, Utah where he serves as the Head of Product for the iOFFICE Asset Division. Mike Petrusky gets to know his new colleague and asks Cody to explain the challenges and opportunities in the marketplace for this expanding side of the business for iOFFICE. A good asset management strategy can become a competitive advantage for organizations as they seek to improve safety and quality while keeping the supply chain moving. Understanding the latest trends and technology tools that are helping professionals across many industries is essential to drive asset performance success, so Mike and Cody discuss these things while also seeking to inspire the audience with music, quotes, and Star Wars references!

Connect with Cody on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gray-cody/

Learn more about ManagerPlus: https://www.managerplus.com/

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepetrusky/

Learn more about the iOFFICE Asset Division and explore more interviews at: https://www.assetchampion.com/

Share your thoughts with Mike via email: podcast@iOFFICECORP.com

Read the full transcript:

Cody Gray: But it’s very exciting because this changes the game in that never before in the world have we had this much information to act upon. We can know almost the future, so we now are becoming safer, more efficient in ways that we’ve never have before. All of this is due to a connected world.

 

Mike Petrusky:

[00:00:30]

This is the Asset Champion Podcast, where we talk with facilities maintenance and asset management leaders about the industry trends and technologies impacting your organization. This show is powered by the iOFFICE Asset Division, delivering easy to use maintenance management software tools to help you drive powerful asset performance.

 

 

[00:01:00]

Hey, everyone. Thanks for stopping by for episode four of the Asset Champion Podcast. My name is Mike Petrusky and I am your host and your tour guide for this journey into the world of asset management. That’s right, it’s a journey. We are just at the start of what I like to call my brand new podcasting adventure, where I am on a mission to understand more about this industry, and even more so, I want to get to know all the people who keep our businesses moving along through the essential discipline of asset management.

 

 

[00:01:30]

On this episode, I talk with Cody Gray, the director of product and design at ManagerPlus in Salt Lake City, where he serves as the head of product for the iOFFICE Asset Division. Since I have so many questions about this unfamiliar side of our business, I just knew that I had to get to know Cody. Now you will get to know him too. Check this out.

 

  Joining us today on the Asset Champion Podcast, I am pleased to welcome Cody Gray to the show. Hi, Cody.

 

Cody Gray: Hi, how are you doing?

 

Mike Petrusky: Doing great. We are new colleagues, new coworkers, new teammates.

 

Cody Gray: We are.

 

[00:02:00]

Mike Petrusky:

 

What do you want to call ourselves?

 

Cody Gray: Yeah, new teammates is great.

 

Mike Petrusky: We’re wearing the same jersey now, right?

 

Cody Gray: Mm-hmm (affirmative), that’s right.

 

Mike Petrusky: Cody, you are product manager at ManagerPlus, based in Utah, right?

 

Cody Gray: That’s correct.

 

Mike Petrusky: Been there a long time?

 

Cody Gray: Yep, I’ve worked for manager plus about nine years, I want to say.

 

Mike Petrusky: Awesome.

 

Cody Gray: It’s been a great journey.

 

Mike Petrusky: Excellent. How did you get into the world of software and asset management technology?

 

Cody Gray: Well, I never chose asset management deliberately.

 

[00:02:30]

Mike Petrusky:

 

It chose you? It chose you?

 

Cody Gray:

[00:03:00]

It chose me, that’s right. I got my degree in business information systems, and early in my career I was trying to look at different software … I was looking for software application management as my career. I was really looking at education applications, that was where I was wanting to edge towards. Then I got a job offer from ManagerPlus. They had a pretty good environment, I really liked their application, and so I just decided to go with them just because it intrigued me.

 

  But what’s funny about asset management is that it’s kind of this sub theme that not a lot of people understand or know about. When people ask me, “Cody, what do you do for a living?” and I explain to them, “Oh, we do asset management software.” They’re like, “What’s that?” and so I kind of explain to them how equipment needs to be managed and maintained and how important that is. They look at me like they don’t understand that and they say, “Do you like that?”

 

[00:03:30] It’s very interesting. It’s something that not a lot of people understand, but if you’re in the industry, you realize how critical it is.

 

Mike Petrusky: Well, that’s great. I’m glad you have experience fielding questions like that because I’m in a similar position that I have launched this new podcast for the asset management community, yet I am not as familiar as I’d like to be about the industry. So I look forward to asking you a lot of questions and learning myself more about what you do and how you do it.

 

[00:04:00] But before we go too far, I always like to get a little bit of the background story of my guests, get to know them on the personal side. My favorite way to do that is to ask about music, Cody. What type of music do you like to listen to? What gets you inspired?

 

Cody Gray: Well, I like the electronic genre, usually things that have little or no words and just kind of have a-

 

Mike Petrusky: EDM?

 

Cody Gray: Yep, yep.

 

Mike Petrusky: All right, all right.

 

Cody Gray: That or of the trance variety. I just find that when you’re thinking, that steady beat with the variations just helps me concentrate.

 

[00:04:30]

Mike Petrusky:

 

Yeah, you’ve got a steady beat always keeping you going.

 

Cody Gray: Yep.

 

Mike Petrusky: Awesome.

 

Cody Gray: I really like that. In this genre, there’s a lot of music variety there.

 

Mike Petrusky: But I can’t sing. Normally, at this moment, Cody, I like to break into something called podcast karaoke, but we’ll have to reserve that for another day, unless I just want to do like a …

 

Cody Gray: That’s right, that’s right. Boots and pants, and boots and pants.

 

Mike Petrusky: Yeah, there you go.

 

Cody Gray: Yep.

 

Mike Petrusky: Do you have a favorite genre of movies?

 

Cody Gray: I do. I really like sci-fi. I also like sci-fi horror.

 

[00:05:00]

Mike Petrusky:

 

Ooh, okay.

 

Cody Gray: I know, I know.

 

Mike Petrusky: Horror?

 

Cody Gray: Yeah, so things like The Expanse.

 

Mike Petrusky: Interesting. Okay.

 

Cody Gray: That’s kind of my favorite genre, but a big Trekkie, like Star Trek.

 

Mike Petrusky: So you’re more of an analytical thinker. You’re a deep esoteric kind of guy, it sounds like.

 

Cody Gray: Yeah, it’s funny because Star Trek has a lot of philosophical and humanistic themes, ethical themes.

 

Mike Petrusky: Oh, sure. Well, listen. I’m a Star Wars fan, so I like the more simplistic sci-fi space opera.

 

Cody Gray: Oh, I love the space opera too.

 

[00:05:30]

Mike Petrusky:

 

But they are slightly different, for sure.

 

Cody Gray: They are.

 

Mike Petrusky: You know, there’s a character in Star Wars named Cody that had a big role in Episode Three. Do you remember this?

 

Cody Gray: I do. There’s like a thousand of them.

 

Mike Petrusky: Yes.

 

Cody Gray: They’re all named Cody.

 

Mike Petrusky: Because he’s one of the clones, he’s one of the clones. The voice of the head clone is Cody and Obi-Wan has a lot of interactions with him where he says, “Cody, Cody.” So every time I hear your name, I think Star Wars. That’s a great connection there.

 

Cody Gray: At least he was a good character and it wasn’t like a Jar Jar Binks.

 

[00:06:00]

Mike Petrusky:

 

Until Order 66 from Emperor Palpatine and he turned bad and he tried to kill Obi-Wan, but that’s a whole another podcast for another day.

 

Cody Gray: That’s right, the Cody becoming bad analysis.

 

Mike Petrusky: That’s right, that’s right.

 

  Well, how about this? We like to offer some inspiration to the audience. Do you have a favorite motivational quote you could share?

 

Cody Gray:

[00:06:30]

I do. We’re in the business of an operational management system, which we get a lot of data in and we have to make decisions up for that data. One quote that I’ve always loved, and this has personal ramifications and it has business applications, but it’s T.S Eliot’s, “Where is the wisdom we’ve lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we’ve lost in information?”

 

Mike Petrusky: Wow.

 

Cody Gray:

[00:07:00]

[00:07:30]

This really goes into the whole as we begin the IoT information era with all sorts of connected devices, we get so much data. That data then, by machines and by systems, needs to be translated into some sort of actionable knowledge or information that we can consume and act upon. But the challenge that I think we have in our space, and it’s not a challenge, it’s also an opportunity, is never in the history of the world have we had so much information and be able to act on that. To sift through that and to make what’s relevant important and come to the surface, that is really the opportunity we have to be able to create new solutions, to be able to have competitive advantages, to be able to act on the data we’re getting. To sort through all that, that’s important. So where is the wisdom we’ve lost in knowledge and where is the knowledge we’ve lost in information is just kind of a guiding statement to just don’t get lost in the data and always keep in mind that you still have to make actionable decisions off of this stuff.

 

Mike Petrusky: I like that, yeah. I’m relieved because I was worried you were heading down this very esoteric deep thought road that I couldn’t follow, but you brought it back to a real practical application. I appreciate that, very good.

 

[00:08:00]

Cody Gray:

 

Well, I think it has personal ramifications too. As you work through your own life and you’re connected to your phone all the time, where’s the wisdom that you’ve lost in all of this information, right? I think that it has a personal ramification as well.

 

Mike Petrusky: Absolutely, good points. Good stuff all around, Cody. You’re off to a great start here. I appreciate it.

 

 

[00:08:30]

You’re in the world of asset management now. you’ve been in this industry for a while and I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of changes, a lot of advancement in technology, but what gets you most excited? What are you most passionate about when it comes to working with our customers and making the most of the opportunities out there?

 

Cody Gray:

[00:09:00]

Well, there’s two things that I absolutely love. Number one, asset management has a lot of variety. I do not feel like I lack for variety in my job. Sometimes we’re talking about fleet management and the challenges we have there, another time we’re on a manufacturing floor, trying to figure out challenges there. I’ve been to all kinds of really interesting places, anything from factories that make bottle caps or caps that go on top of your shampoo, and it’s humongous by the way.

 

Mike Petrusky: Wow.

 

Cody Gray: All the way to power plants, to school districts and large fleets, to mines, very diverse places, landfills, all kinds of things. The central focal point for ManagerPlus is the fact that equipment that is used in all of these industries, equipment you’ll see at a landfill is the same equipment you might see at a mine, as dozers move material around, right?

 

[00:09:30]

Mike Petrusky:

 

Sure.

 

Cody Gray: There’s a little bit of differences. Everybody has different challenges, but a lot of the principles of asset management are still consistent and transcend these industries. This is what’s allowed me to experience all of these different industries, all in the realm of asset management. So number one, I love the variety that we have in our space.

 

 

[00:10:00]

[00:10:30]

Number two is we’re in an industry that is growing and becoming more expansive and it also creates a huge impact on organizations. I love to see transformational impacts that we do to companies. It’s common that a owner of the asset management project that we undertake, so the owner of the asset management project at the business side, at our client’s side, it’s great to see them get promoted after a successful implementation of ManagerPlus or to see them get the email that says, “We saved X dollars and the only thing we’ve done is implement ManagerPlus, and this has been so great,” or we saved a contract or all sorts of different aspects that you hear about on the successes of ManagerPlus.

 

  Our application is a very positively impacting one, it’s not terribly negative. To just be in that space and working in a very positive environment has been rewarding as well.

 

Mike Petrusky:

[00:11:00]

Yeah, it’s exciting to hear you talk about this because it’s new to me. I’m new to this side of the industry and I’m still learning a lot. Maybe take a step back for me and just give me your broad definition of asset management, can you put it in a nutshell for me?

 

Cody Gray: I would say that asset management is the discipline of ensuring safe and efficient operations of assets and equipment. That would be the definition.

 

Mike Petrusky: Okay.

 

Cody Gray:

[00:11:30]

But to expound on that a little bit, when we talk about assets and asset intensive industries, these would be organizations that rely on space, equipment or things that we would determine assets to be able to provide the services that they render. For a mining organization, this would be the equipment that digs up material and that then processes the material. That would be all of their assets. You’re talking about the plant and all of the equipment inside the plant that processes the material and segregates it all out. When you talk about a manufacturing plant, these are the machinery that create or manufacture goods. This also would go to the packaging equipment and the warehousing equipment that would move this around.

 

[00:12:00] You then move further down the supply chain and then you talk about the equipment that the transportation industry uses to transport around equipment. This would be the fleet of vehicles, this would be the warehousing and forklift operations, the dock doors. All of this stuff in that industry, when you talk about facilities, these are HVAC equipment, chillers. Even space is important because you can dispatch a technician to space.

 

Mike Petrusky: Sure.

 

Cody Gray:

[00:12:30]

[00:13:00]

When we get down to it, the fact is, is that underneath all of this is a vast profession of equipment managers that make sure that the supply chain is running. During the COVID-19 pandemic, you hear a lot about the first responders, the essential businesses that are kind of keeping the world going, but I think that we sometimes forget that all of this is made possible by efficiently running equipment, right? If your asset management professionals are not able to keep that equipment going, well, then the trucking industry can’t move material, the plants can’t manufacture the goods.

 

  I think about the scene in Iron Man, Iron Man I, when the mad money guy is on the street-

 

Mike Petrusky: Oh, Jim Cramer. Yeah, yeah.

 

Cody Gray: Jim Cramer, Jim Cramer is on the screen.

 

Mike Petrusky: Right, right.

 

Cody Gray: Tony Stark has just decided they’re not going to make weapons anymore, he’s gone pacifist. Jim Cramer holds this cup up and he takes a bat and he goes, “This is a weapons company,” and then he smashes the cup with a bat, “That doesn’t make weapons.”

 

[00:13:30] This is, essentially, if you don’t have a good asset management strategy and you make widgets and your equipment is not able to efficiently or rapidly turn these widgets out, well, then you’re the proverbial cup of the widget company that isn’t making widgets.

 

Mike Petrusky: Wow, yeah.

 

Cody Gray:

[00:14:00]

[00:14:30]

You can see how critical asset management becomes in the whole supply chain. I always hear when we talk about asset management, the number one thing I hear is avoid costly repairs by making sure your equipment is well-maintained. That is a critical aspect to asset management, but it is not as important as making sure that your organization can make or provide the services that it needs to provide efficiently. If you have a really good asset management strategy, you can provide your services or make your goods more efficiently, or you can do it at a higher rate, or you can do it at a higher quality. A good asset management strategy therefore becomes a competitive advantage for your company and not just we’ve got to keep stuff from breaking down, right? That is an element of asset management, but really it’s to keep you at the top of your game, making sure you can produce items with high quality, you can move the supply chain systems efficiently, and pretty much keep the world moving.

 

Mike Petrusky: I love it. I love that perspective and certainly enjoy when you bring in a great movie reference with Iron Man. Fantastic, thanks so much. Well, what would you say some of the biggest trends are in the marketplace today related to asset management?

 

[00:15:00]

Cody Gray:

[00:15:30]

[00:16:00]

 

Well, the big trend today is making sure that all of this connected machinery can be consolidated and then acted upon. In today’s world, we see all kinds of connected equipment. All of the equipment and machinery that’s coming out today has the ability to report up diagnostic information, utilization information. So getting all of that information into your system, processing it, identifying potential failure points. All of that is where the world is going. More sensors, this is condition-based monitoring, asset monitoring, all of this is now becoming the next frontier and the next opportunity for us to really take that data and begin to analyze it and begin to make decision making information off of it. Then, obviously, to the organizations that use utilize this data and this equipment, the challenge to them is to make sure that they understand what this data is coming in means and how they should act on it. There’s a challenge and an opportunity for us to make sure that we can present that information and collect that information, and then the challenge to the business is making sure they know how to react to that information that they’re getting.

 

 

[00:16:30]

But it’s very exciting because this changes the game, in that never before in the world have we had this much information to act upon. We can know almost the future. Something could potentially fail, we know that things are getting out of hand and we can react and take care of that before it becomes costly or before it becomes expensive downtime or if before it becomes hazardous or dangerous to operators. We now are becoming safer, more efficient in ways that we’ve never have before, and all of this is due to a connected world.

 

Mike Petrusky: Interesting, yeah. I imagine technology plays a big role, obviously ManagerPlus is a software tool. Tell us a little bit more about what the software does and how, in a broader sense, technology is impacting the industry overall.

 

[00:17:00]

Cody Gray:

[00:17:30]

 

Sure, in a system like ManagerPlus, we’ve got all of your asset data information and characteristics, as well as its schedule, its preventive maintenance plans, its history. All of this information, if you cook that all into some analytic reporting data, this tells you things like what equipment is more efficient, what manufacturers are better. You also begin to get your inspection data and all of your logging data, pressures and temperatures, your inspections, this all comes in and turns into analyzing for potential failure points, is equipment getting to a point of a potential failure or not. You start to get all of that. All of that is managed in ManagerPlus. You have your technicians’ schedule and what they’re working on. You have a pulse of what equipment is down or what equipment is slated for preventive maintenance.

 

[00:18:00] When you’re talking about maybe a plant, you really get these dashboards that give you a sense or a pulse of your asset management organization and how healthy is it. It really helps you know what’s going on, or what’s going to happen even, and then be able to plan and react.

 

Mike Petrusky: Awesome. Well, this has been great to talk with you today, Cody. I’ve learned a lot. I appreciate your time and I look forward to continuing to work with you. Thanks so much for taking time to be on the Asset Champion Podcast.

 

Cody Gray: Yeah. Thank you, Mike.

 

[00:18:30]

Mike Petrusky:

 

There you have it, everybody. Cody Gray sharing just a little bit of what he has learned about the many facets of asset management and how his career is focused on helping professionals across many industries meet their goals by using the latest technology and strategies to drive asset performance success. I loved it, I really enjoyed that. Thank you again, Cody.

 

 

[00:19:00]

[00:19:30]

I want to thank you for taking time to listen today. I hope you found these first few episodes of the podcast series valuable. If you did, please share them with a friend and would you please leave us a rating and a review over on Apple podcasts? That is really the fastest way to spread the word about this new podcast, which I certainly do appreciate. I want to invite you to join me again next week as we continue on our journey together and we inspire each other to be an asset champion. Peace out.

 

  You’ve been listening to the Asset Champion Podcast. I hope you found this discussion beneficial as we work together to elevate asset management success by improving efficiency, reducing costs, and building best practices. For more information about how the iOFFICE Asset Division can boost the performance of your physical assets by providing comprehensive enterprise asset management software solutions, please visit assetchampion.com.