Honest Brightly Asset Essentials Review: Is It a Good CMMS?

Brightly Asset Essentials is a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) that has been around for years. But is it the right platform to manage assets and maintenance tasks for your business? In this Brightly Asset Essentials review, we evaluate critical aspects of the software to help you decide.

Why Trust Coast?

At Coast, we take our software reviews seriously. Our review methodology evaluates software across seven critical categories that help differentiate the solutions from one another. Each category receives a score from one to five, with five being the highest, and a maximum possible score of 35 points.

In compliance with our software review methodology, we tried to access Brightly Asset Solutions but couldn’t because the sign-up process is heavily gated. There’s no free plan or a trial either. Fortunately, Brightly Asset Essentials has tons of resources on its website to illustrate processes through images and videos. We used those resources as well as researched customer reviews to understand the platform’s feature set, view the user interface and assess capabilities.

Brightly Ease of Use

The first-time login and setup are quick and easy. After you sign up, head over to your company-specific login URL and enter your credentials to log in. Once you’re logged in, you’ll see the dashboard.

The dashboard summarizes your asset data, but the layout is easily customizable. You can even add a nifty “Quick Links” section to quickly switch between sections as you get used to the platform — which is not easy to learn.

Despite the platform’s higher learning curve, most features are easily discoverable. For example, there are “Work Orders” and “Assets” sections with submenus to create work orders, track requests, view budgets, add assets and more. The interface’s design falls short of modern standards, but it’s highly functional and easy to navigate once you get the hang of it.

Brightly Mobile Experience

Brightly Asset Essentials has a mobile app for Android and iOS users. The mobile experience was satisfactory but not impressive. Once you’ve downloaded the app and logged in, you can access company data. Like the desktop interface, the mobile interface stacks all sections in a left sidebar.

We like that the app interface is lean. There’s limited detail on your small screen, making it less overwhelming than the desktop version. For example, here’s what the work order creation screen looks like:

Brightly Core Features & Functionality

Let’s break down Brightly’s features and functionality into two core areas: work order management and asset management.

Work Order Management

Work orders start as a maintenance request or a new work order created by an authorized team member.

If a request is made, a team member fills out the request form with details like location, work category and details of work to be performed, along with documents if necessary.

You can also create a work order from the “Assets” section:

Once the maintenance manager approves the request, they’ll set a deadline and priority level and assign it to a technician. Then, the technician performs the work order, logs labor hours and adds other details before marking it as complete.

The work order management module is excellent and easy to use but lacks bells and whistles. For example, it lacks advanced automation and built-in chat.

However, Brightly does let you schedule preventive maintenance (PM) tasks that trigger automatically based on your chosen frequency or meter reading. PMs are easy to create — just head over to “Work Orders” > “PM/PdM” to create a new PM. 

We also like Brightly’s ability to batch update PMs. All you have to do is go to the PMs list, check the PMs you want to update and select “More” > “Update” to see editable fields. Make the change you want and save the changes — and voilà, you’re done.

We also liked “Stacking Groups.” This feature groups multiple work orders with the same generation date into one work order.Asset Management

The asset management workflow starts when you create an asset from the Assets section. The asset creation form is extensive. It lets you enter current asset conditions, criticality and details required to create a depreciation schedule.

Brightly gives you several printing options for labeling assets. You can print asset barcodes, asset details (with or without custom fields), asset labels and trend analysis. Here’s an example of the trend analysis printout:

There’s a handy map view you can use to see the location of your assets in relation to each other. You can also generate a map to give someone directions from any given starting point.

Brightly Asset Essentials also has the ability to monitor asset condition through data received from IoT sensors, but it’s only available as an add-on called “Smart Assets.” Whenever the reading from your IoT sensor breaches the defined threshold, Smart Assets creates an alert that triggers a new work order for the asset in Asset Essentials.

Reporting & Analytics

Brightly Asset Essentials offers a comprehensive analytics function. The dashboard you see after logging into your account is a summary dashboard. It aggregates all your data to generate insights.

However, you can dissect this data based on what you’re looking for. You can also create new filters in the process and save them for the future. And you can even filter dashboard data by category.

The software has even more analytics features to offer in the KPIs section. This section aggregates data from all clients to give you benchmarks. The KPIs section helps you compare your performance with that of peer companies. This is an excellent feature — most platforms typically just help you view your own data.

Additionally, there’s a “Maintenance Forecast” section where you can view top assets or sites where most hours or money were spent, the number of work orders that may be generated over the next 12 months based on historical data, a comparison of estimated versus actual work order hours and more.

Brightly Adaptability & Customization

Brightly Asset Essentials offers customization in a few specific areas. The most customizable part of the platform is the dashboards. You can filter out data, change the layout and add quick links to your dashboards for real-time analysis and quick navigation.

Each critical section on the platform — work orders, parts and PM procedures — has a summary view. Brightly lets you customize your summary view by moving, adding or removing columns and adding filters to screen your data.

If you purchase the Enterprise edition, you also get access to a Report Designer. This tool allows you to customize reports and forms generated by Asset Essentials. However, this tool is a separate desktop app, not a built-in feature.

Brightly Customer Support

Brightly offers support via several channels:

• Support tickets: A quick form lets you create a support ticket to get in touch with the support team.
• Live chat: Live chat is available once you log into your account.
• Email and phone: There are separate emails and phone numbers for customers, depending on which region of the world they’re located. Phone support is available only during specified business hours within the specified region.

Other than support channels, Brightly offers various educational resources to help users. There’s a community where you can ask questions about the platform or seek insights from other users. Other educational content includes an extensive Learning Center, webinars, product tours and a blog.

Support quality is decent, report users on G2. One user said that Brightly’s “customer support is top-notch for navigating issues.” Even on-field teams seem to appreciate Brightly’s support. A user said, “The customer support is amazing. To be able to chat, call or email is an incredible support for those in the field.”

Brightly Pricing

Pricing for Brightly Asset Essentials is only available on request. However, G2’s “Perceived Cost” rating is 4/5, so it’s safe to assume the price is closer to the upper end of the market range.

Price is a critical factor in assessing value. But, in general, we believe there are better options than Brightly Asset Essentials, especially since it doesn’t offer built-in chat and doesn’t exactly have the most attractive interface.

Coast: The Better Brightly Alternative

Brightly Asset Essentials is a great asset management platform, but it’s overkill for most and doesn’t offer an essential feature like built-in chat. If you’re a small or medium-sized business, consider a simpler, more configurable CMMS like Coast.

With Coast, you spend less time training and get a more intuitive user interface. Here’s an overview of how Coast compares to Brightly Asset Essentials in key areas:

Ease of Use	Outdated design but functional interface that’s easy to navigate	Uncluttered interface with a modern design that prioritizes simplicity
Mobile Experience	Lean interface with similarities to the web version	The mobile app is similar to the web interface and focuses on simplicity and ease of use
Core Features & Functionality	Extensive feature set, but often remains untapped because the platform is complex to learn	Features like built-in chat and customizable forms make for great additions to an already extensive feature set
Adaptability & Customization	Has areas that are customizable, but comparatively less customizable than Coast	Highly customizable workflows for managing assets and maintenance tasks
Customer Support	Support team is easily accessible and responds quickly	Support team is easy to reach and offers assistance during and after implementation
Pricing	Pricing is only available on request, so there’s no way to know if it’s within your budget except by speaking to the sales team	Offers excellent value given its extensive feature set, hard-to-beat pricing and a free plan
Customer Reviews	Most users feel positive about Brightly Asset Essentials except for minor issues	Users rave about Coast's customer support and ease of use