Organizations are adopting AI to improve their asset management practices and operations and reporting more success in predicting physical asset failures, according to a report by facilities management software company Brightly.
The report’s findings reinforce the idea that asset lifecycle management is no longer about managing costs in the short term but about focusing on long-term resilience and growth, Brightly says in its 2026 asset lifecycle report.
In a survey Brightly commissioned of 400 people involved in asset management software purchasing in manufacturing, government or healthcare spaces, it found a notable decline in reactive repair requests. Whereas 52% of respondents in 2024 said reactive repairs were more than 25% of total work orders, only 22% reported that was the case this year.
IoT and AI technology adoption has helped drive the change, says Brightly. This year, 68% of respondents said they use IoT and 56% said they use AI for asset management, compared with fewer than 20% reporting they use either technology last year.
AI is expected to grow in importance, with 73% of respondents saying they expect the technology to have a large impact on their asset management strategy and 68% saying AI is a requirement for the success of future initiatives.
“While full-scale adoption is still uneven across industries, the direction is clear,” Brightly says. “As data collection becomes more automated and insights more precise, AI and emerging technologies will not only inform better decisions, they are also establishing new standards of efficiency, reliability, and transparency in asset management.”
The technology is helping organizations improve their long-term capital planning strategies for maintenance, replacements and upgrades. Only 36% of respondents had a five-year or longer capital plan in place last year. That’s risen to 56%, showing a “clear movement away from short-term planning toward longer horizons that give organizations more stability, foresight and flexibility in how they manage their assets,” Brightly said.
Although survey respondents were mostly confident that they could avoid unplanned downtime — 77% said reactive work orders can be predicted or prevented with proper tools — there is still friction between intent and action, the report says. Just 32% said they use their asset lifecycle management system to conduct facilities condition assessments — a process that Brightly says is vital for maintaining reliable building data. That’s up from 27% last year.
