Comparesoft Podcast

Marianne Martin, PPM and Statutory Compliance Manager at First Rail London, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to unpack what it really takes to build and manage a planned preventive maintenance (PPM) schedule across mission-critical sites.

With over a decade in facilities management across demanding environments, including Wembley Stadium and rail depots, Marianne is currently responsible for PPM and statutory compliance across more than 80 London Overground stations, sidings and depots. She is the central knowledge hub for PPM information in her team, and in this episode, she shares the practical details behind keeping a complex, multi-site schedule compliant and on track.

Marianne talks about:

• Why an accurate asset register is the most important element of any PPM schedule
• How to keep a planner trustworthy, and why a separate RAG register helps
• Matching maintenance frequency to how hard an asset actually works
• Building the case to replace ageing assets instead of repeatedly repairing them
• Managing split maintenance responsibilities across Network Rail and TfL
• The CAFM capabilities that matter most for running PPM at scale

Can you run facilities management for a major retail head office without a CAFM system? Lisa Assiotes does. She's built an FM function from scratch four times, and in this episode she explains how a lean team, an integrated provider and a disciplined RAG report keep a single site compliant. Plus, the exact point where software starts to pay for itself.

In this episode, Lisa talks about:

• The first-90-days gap analysis
• Integrated vs multiple vendors
• The single-site vs multi-site CAFM decision
• The "15 days of AI" and where AI helps
• Managing reactive vs planned maintenance costs
• Dogs in the office and 100% standing desks

🔗 Listen and watch: https://comparesoft.com/facilities-management-software/podcasts/ocado-retail-fm/

Guest: Lisa Assiotes, Facilities Manager at Ocado Retail (formerly NSPCC, Paddy Power Betfair, Hotel Chocolat).

Host: Ryan Condon, Head of Content at Comparesoft.

-------

00:00 A typical day in retail head-office FM

02:20 Building an FM function from scratch: the first 90 days

07:20 Standing desks, dogs in the office & desk booking

12:15 Why an integrated service provider works

15:40 When a CAFM system is (and isn't) worth it

17:45 Where AI fits: the "15 days of AI"

21:45 Managing FM budgets & getting value from suppliers

25:40 Proving the value FM brings

30:15 Advice for new FMs: be curious

Ibnu Pookkayil, Engineering Supervisor at Gosh! Food, a B Corp-certified food manufacturer in Milton Keynes, joins the Comparesoft CMMS Podcast to explain what running maintenance in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturing really involves.

Drawing on more than a decade of food-industry engineering, from a large plant in Saudi Arabia to a lean one-engineer-per-shift operation in the UK, Ibnu shares the disciplines that keep perishable products moving through tight delivery windows, and what an engineering team needs from a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS).

In this episode, Ibnu talks about:

• What running maintenance at an FMCG manufacturer involves day to day
• How to prioritise when two production lines break down at once
• Why perishable products and tight delivery windows raise the cost of downtime
• The Friday planning meeting that brought maintenance under control
• Cutting reactive work from around 35 per cent to below 20 per cent
• How to approach preventive maintenance across older and newer lines
• The CMMS capabilities a small or mid-sized manufacturer actually needs
• Using fishbone (Ishikawa) analysis to break the firefighting cycle

Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/cmms-software/manufacturing/fmcg/

Ashley Birrell-Riley, a change management lead with over a decade of experience on large-scale ERP transformations, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explore the single factor that most often decides whether an ERP implementation succeeds or fails: change management.

88% of programmes with excellent change management meet or exceed their objectives, against just 13% of those with poor change management. Ashley explains what sits behind that gap, drawing on programmes across local government, construction, and transport, including an award-winning ERP implementation at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

In this episode, Ashley talks about:

• What change management actually means inside an ERP programme, beyond communications and training
• How to measure adoption with stage gates and readiness surveys, before and after go-live
• The difference between a skill gap and a will gap, and how to handle workarounds
• How to build a change strategy from scratch after system selection
• Why change champions carry the load when supporting 30,000 employees with a team of four
• How to make the business case for change management investment to a CFO

🔗 Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/erp-software/implementation/change-management/

Josh Clarke, Senior Maintenance and Engineering Manager at Arla Foods, joins the Comparesoft CMMS Podcast to share what good maintenance really looks like in food and beverage manufacturing.

Josh runs maintenance at Arla's Aylesbury site, one of the world's biggest dairy factories, where his team handles 500 to 700 work orders a week across processing, production, and a purpose-built energy centre that generates the plant's own electricity, steam, and refrigeration.

He has spent his career building maintenance programmes across dairy, bakery, and meat processing, including a 90% downtime reduction during his time as Engineering Manager at Délifrance.

In this episode, Josh talks about:

• What a day looks like running maintenance at a 24/7, 365 dairy site
• How his team prioritises and moves 500 to 700 work orders a week
• How food and beverage sites maintain uptime without a shutdown window
• How he tripled preventative maintenance output by doing one job a day
• Why plants revert to spreadsheets even when they have a CMMS in place
• How he cut downtime by 90% at Délifrance, starting from a stabilise-first mindset
• The three things that separate well-run food and beverage sites from the rest

🔗 Listen and read more: Comparesoft: 👉 https://comparesoft.com/cmms-software/manufacturing/food-beverage/

Laura Pointer, Founder of Pivotal Project Management, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explain how she has built a 100% go-live success rate across ERP implementations in oil and gas, engineering, manufacturing and facilities management.

In this episode, Laura unpacks what ERP go-live actually means, why most buyers mistake it for the end of the project, and the methodology that has kept her record intact. She walks through the checklist non-negotiables, the most common causes of delay, and what it takes to sustain a go-live once the consultants have demobilised.

Laura talks about:

• What ERP go-live really means, and how to define a successful one beyond "the system is on"
• The honesty-first methodology behind her 100% success rate, including why RAG greenwashing kills programmes faster than any technical issue
• The go-live checklist non-negotiables, from people-first sequencing to multi-date sign-off on customisations
• What go-live day actually looks like, including the field-rename incident that almost broke a fully integrated solution
• Why change management is the single biggest cause of go-live failure, and how to spot the quiet resistors
• How big bang and phased rollouts compare, and where peer cascade pays off
• What it takes to sustain a go-live in the first six months, including hypercare, top-down messaging, and letting it settle

🔗 Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/erp-software/implementation/go-live/

Andy Mellor, Founder of Pragmatic Maintenance & Reliability, joins the Comparesoft Maintenance Podcast to break down what a successful condition monitoring strategy actually looks like, and why so many programmes fail to deliver, even when the right tools and data are in place.

Drawing on over 20 years of hands-on experience across heavy industry, including eight years at British Steel and contract work at sites such as Anglesey Aluminium, Andy explains why culture, communication, and trust matter more than technology when it comes to turning predictive data into maintenance action.

In this episode, Andy talks about:

• The real reasons condition monitoring programmes fail to deliver ROI
• What a successful condition monitoring strategy looks like and how to measure it
• How to present vibration, thermography, and oil analysis findings to plant managers
• Why proving business consequences matters more than proving faults
• Simple, low-cost wins most maintenance teams overlook
• What to look for in condition monitoring hardware and software
• How to balance AI and remote sensors with the judgement of trained technicians
• The four principles that prevent machinery from needing emergency troubleshooting

🔗 Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/cmms-software/condition-based-maintenance/monitoring-strategy/

Yuriy Zaletskyy, CTO and Co-Founder of Acupower, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to pull back the curtain on ERP delivery: What actually happens once a business has signed the contract and the ERP delivery partner gets involved?

Drawing on over thirteen years of implementation experience, including hands-on development and architecture work across cloud ERP platforms, Yuriy explains:

• What happens in the first two weeks after a buyer signs with an ERP delivery partner
• The gap between polished ERP sales demos and day-one implementation reality
• Why the 70% ERP failure statistic deserves more scrutiny than it gets
• Why customisation is treated as the "root of all evil" in ERP, and when it is actually the right choice
• How his team built a custom integration from scratch to solve an international payroll gap
• The questions buyers should be asking their ERP delivery partner before they sign

🔗 Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/erp-software/implementation/delivery-partner/

Christopher Lloyd, Facilities Manager at EssilorLuxottica UK, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to discuss the reality of maintaining over 700 high-street retail stores across fashion and optical healthcare brands.

Drawing on over 12 years in retail and wholesale facilities management, Chris explains how FM teams protect the customer experience at scale, why communication and transparency matter more than perfection, and what he has learned from rolling out a new self-managed CAFM system across his entire estate.

In this episode, Chris talks about:

• How FM teams prioritise thousands of incoming work requests across 700+ stores
• Why health and safety, operational disruption, and customer experience form the priority structure for triaging reactive maintenance
• How fashion brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley raise the bar for store presentation and preventive maintenance
• The differences between managing optical healthcare environments and traditional fashion retail
• What a self-managed CAFM system delivers compared to a vendor-led platform, including price intelligence and contractor assignment
• The importance of first-time fix rates and why reducing revisits matters more than headline SLAs
• Practical advice for anyone stepping into a multi-site retail FM role for the first time

🔗 Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/facilities-management-software/facilities-manager/retail/

Adileh Mountain, Founder at Strat Scale Advisory, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explore what causes ERP programmes to go off the rails, what a real recovery plan looks like in practice, and why field adoption is the make-or-break factor in construction ERP.

Drawing on 15 years in construction and EPC operations and her experience leading ERP transformation and recovery work at Deloitte, Adileh explains how she diagnoses failing programmes, what construction firms actually need from ERP, and what leaders must get right to make transformation stick beyond go-live.

In this episode, Adileh talks about:

• What triggers the call for help, and who makes it (CFOs, COOs, and project directors)
• The 10 dimensions of implementation health she uses to diagnose a failing programme
• Why leadership absence and incomplete requirements are the most common root causes of failure
• A real recovery case: $4M in avoided costs and 85% field adoption on a programme six months behind schedule
• What construction firms actually need from ERP, and why field data capture is consistently underweighted
• Why field adoption is the single most important success factor in construction ERP
• What CFOs and COOs should do in the next 30 days if their programme is drifting