Day in the Life: Product Manager at CentralSquare, Steve Schultz

It’s easy to view organizations like CentralSquare as a faceless entity, especially before you’ve had the pleasure of interacting with one of our employees. But unseen by customers and prospects, our people work hard to develop and curate solutions for the public sector.

Each staff member has a different background. Every employee has a unique reason for the passion that fuels their work. For some, it stems from past careers in public safety or administration. Others simply understand how their work positively impacts communities.

This is the sixth article in our “Day in the Life” blog series, where you get a glimpse behind the scenes. In each of these articles, we’ll highlight a single employee so you can learn more about the people and the passion that keep CentralSquare running.

Today, we’re excited to spotlight Steve Schultz, a Product Manager for our Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system. Keep reading to see our interview with Steve, and to learn about his dedication to product management and development.

Q: What’s your role at CentralSquare, and what brought you here?

“I’m the product manager for our Enterprise Asset Management system, which helps agencies maintain public infrastructure assets. I also lead the GovSquare Product Core Team, which comprises our industry-leading public administration products.

“My background is in civil engineering. After brief stints working in teaching, advertising, forensics, construction, manufacturing and research, I came back to the first work I did out of university: implementing software for public works.

“For 18 years, I served over 50 agencies implementing CentralSquare’s Enterprise Asset Management. Then in 2021, I took the Product Manager role with the main goal of boosting customer advocacy and outreach. I love the industry we serve…minding public infrastructure is a noble and necessary function that goes largely unsung and unnoticed – until something fails!”

Q: What does your typical day look like?

“No two days look alike, but each week I engage with a number of things. For starters, I work with the development team to plan and prioritize product roadmap and development efforts. In fact, I work with numerous groups across CentralSquare – sales, support, services, renewals and more – to discuss and address churn concerns and revenue blockers.

“Every week I plan and stage customer outreach efforts. These include routine webinars, training videos, open forum client meetings, the annual Engage conference, and occasional user groups. At these ‘regional user groups’ client volunteers host meetings for fellow clients in the region.

“Of course, I also prepare and present internal presentations to communicate EAM concerns and champion the product.

“On top of these responsibilities, there’s often some ‘special’ effort underway to better enable our teams with EAM. I’m currently mindful of the need to refresh and improve sales collateral to better enable those teams.”

Q: What are the top challenges local governments face with asset management?

“There are several challenges that have the greatest impact, but these represent just a handful of the many dynamics impacting this industry today:

• Aging Infrastructure: The average age of public assets is on the rise.
• Rising Costs & Limited Funding: Meanwhile, maintenance costs are increasing very quickly, and deferred maintenance means more expensive maintenance. This creates a cycle of financial strain that’s hard to overcome without a significant infusion of funds.
• Climate Change: Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity, beyond the design capacity of some traditional infrastructure assets.
• Industry Turnover: In addition to these dynamics, the public works workforce saw enormous turnover through the last decade, and the new generation of maintenance personnel coming in can no longer operate in the ‘old school’ way.

“All of these dynamics point to the need for better asset management. Public works must be equipped to do more with less, track assets and maintenance history, and leverage modern tools to achieve greater cost efficiencies.”

Q: What are the greatest opportunities for local government to improve how they manage infrastructure and public assets?

“Good asset management practices are well understood, but most agencies aren’t very intentional about adopting them. There’s a couple reasons for that: lack of funding and talent, and best practices are quite demanding. It’s a very long road to asset management excellence.

“Saying that, agencies need to start wherever they are on the continuum. Some need to get ahead of ‘putting out fires.’ They need to adopt an EAM to manage routine preventative maintenance, rather than reactive maintenance (i.e. responding to asset failures).

“Other agencies are already on top of this, but might save money and streamline operations by predicting asset requirements based on their condition. This is predictive maintenance as opposed to preventative maintenance.

“Still other agencies might go further, maximizing their infrastructure spending by modelling asset lifecycles and the application/costs of maintenance practices for these assets. That way, they optimize the work they can afford to do, ensuring every infrastructure maintenance dollar is spent to best effect.

“No matter how sophisticated an agency becomes, there’s always a next step they can take to better leverage their EAM and stretch their budget even further.”

Q: What emerging trends in asset management are you most excited about?

“It’s an exciting future for public works. The digital transformation is impacting our sector in numerous ways:

• IoT (Internet of Things) technologies can track assets in real-time.
• New, inexpensive technologies are replacing sophisticated and expensive traditional asset inspection options.
• Data-driven decision making is becoming the norm, especially with the help of AI.
• AI will be a game-changer, allowing agencies that struggle with poor and incomplete information to generate better information more cost-effectively.”

Take the Next Step

Stay tuned for more employee spotlights in our Day in the Life series. Until then, discover for yourself why employees like Steve have dedicated themselves to public admin technology, like asset management software.

With CentralSquare, your agency can select the perfect solution for its needs. Built with public administrators in mind, CentralSquare offers comprehensive ERP and EAM solutions, as well as one-off solutions for utility billing, community development, and more. Schedule a discovery call today to learn how CentralSquare can help your agency do more with less.

Look back at past Day in the Life articles to learn about other employees who keep CentralSquare running. Get to know the product managers for your product suites (and what makes them tick).

• Joshua Nilson: Product Manager of Vertex NG911, ProSuite and CryWolf
• Robert Holt: Sr Product Manager for Public Administration
• John Coltrain: Sr Product Manager for Public Safety and Justice
• Brett Auriemma: Product Manager for Public Administration
• Wes Pogorzelski: Sr Account Executive for Public Administration