The Role of Digital Threads in Reshaping Modern Asset Lifecycle Management
As asset-driven organizations prepare for 2026 and beyond, the imperative to modernize how asset maintenance strategies are developed and implemented has accelerated.
In a recent webinar, “Preparing for 2026: Digital Threads, Integrated Data, and the Future Asset Management,” Brightly Software’s SVP & Head of Strategy, Brian Bell, outlined how digital threads — which create a connected asset lifecycle across maintenance, planning, and operations — are emerging as interwoven data streams that are making it easier for facility managers to leverage existing systems into more integrated and intelligent asset management ecosystems.
Below is a recap of the webinar and the role that unified, high-quality data plays in enabling everything from predictive maintenance and AI agents to capital planning, sustainability reporting, and digital twins — giving facility managers the foundation to implement dynamic digital transformation into their asset lifecycle management strategies.
Paving the way for scalable AI and automation
As the integration of AI rapidly evolves from assistant to autonomous action with the rise of agentic AI, expectations for how asset management systems operate have expanded. Bell highlighted a critical reality of this evolution: AI fails without clean, connected, contextual data. For example, if your asset IDs are inconsistent or your systems are siloed, autonomous actions become autonomous mistakes.
Digital threads unify historical, real-time, and operational asset data across systems, reducing the risk of errors when agentic AI acts on its own. By establishing a single, trusted source of truth, organizations create the conditions for AI to scale responsibly rather than unpredictably. In this way, digital threads are the safeguard that allows AI automation to deliver speed and efficiency underpinned by accuracy and trust.
Why asset integrations alone aren’t enough
Many organizations have already integrated key asset systems that connect their CMMS or EAM platforms to automated tools that support specific workflows, such as triggering work orders when anomalies in asset behavior are detected or proactively scheduling preventive maintenance cadences to keep assets healthy.
However, these tools often fall short because, as Bell emphasized, point-to-point integrations move data, but they don’t resolve asset-level inconsistences like mismatched IDs, conflicting hierarchies, or asset condition data that can’t be aligned across the management lifecycle.
For teams preparing for digital transformation, it has become critical to go beyond these integrations to not only deliver better data, but to also gain deeper operational context — the bedrock of successful AI integration and enterprise-wide decision-making. Digital threads bridge this gap by creating a consistent asset ecosystem across maintenance, planning, and operations that ensures data stays clean as it moves across the management lifecycle.
Making digital twins practical and achievable
Digitals twins are often perceived as complex, resource-intensive initiatives reserved for industrial environments. However, as Bell noted, the technology’s maturity means that it can deliver real value for facility managers looking to build on their existing asset data before tapping into the model’s real-time, predictive sophistication.
As digital threads connect new data sources over time, these models become more accurate, trustworthy, and useful for scenario planning, risk assessment, and long-term optimization.
Addressing workforce challenges with knowledge continuity
The asset management workforce is undergoing a profound transition. As the race to build data centers to support the breakneck development of AI pull skilled facility managers away and leadership retirements loom, organizations are experiencing the rapid loss of institutional knowledge.
Digital threads are instrumental in mitigating this brain drain by anchoring institutional expertise directly to assets to capture service history, manual and process documentation, and insights that would otherwise walk out the door. When paired with AI, this connected data allows facility teams to gain access to a shared, continuously updated record of how assets have been designed, operated, and maintained over time.
Embedding sustainability and compliance in daily operations
The international enforcement of sustainability reporting and regulatory compliance means “green initiatives” are no longer optional. Facility and asset teams are increasingly responsible for supplying auditable, asset-level data tied directly to operational decisions. Broken or disconnected systems make this task costly and error prone.
As Bell noted, “You can’t report what you can’t measure.” By connecting maintenance logs, energy consumption, and asset performance, organizations gain the visibility needed to understand the downstream impact of everyday decisions — giving facility teams the data necessary to deliver defensible compliance reporting, improve capital planning, and implement sustainable asset lifecycle strategies.
If you'd like to learn more about how to leverage digital threads as a strategic advantage, and how unifying your data can help you move from reactive justification to proactive maintenance and capital planning, watch our full webinar on-demand here: Preparing for 2026: Digital Threads, Integrated Data, and the Future Asset Management.
