How does a business choose its metrics and key performance indicators? Do the people at the highest levels of the C-suite know what matters most on the ground? Could employees working beneath them have a better idea of what should be tracked and reported?

As a matter of fact, they might, and code-free tools that allow them to track what they see fit can be extremely useful to businesses, according to Gurmeet Mangat (pictured), site manager, wind power generation, at GE Renewable Energy, a division of General Electric International Inc.

GE is giving technicians that maintain its wind turbines Smartsheet Inc. software to help prevent and solve technical snafus. With a mobile application, they can collect information easily on the fly. “What we’re creating with Smartsheet is we’re creating our own organic KPIs … so metrics that we’re creating ourselves to try to drive different behavior,” Mangat said.

Mangat spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Smartsheet Engage event in Bellevue, Washington. They discussed how GE has found problems and executed repairs with the help of its Smartsheet-using technicians. (* Disclosure below.)

Eyes and ears in the field save a bushel

GE has used Smartsheet over the past year for increased visibility into a greater number of factors that those who don’t work in the field are unable to measure. “That visibility drives a different discussion now,” Mangat stated. “Now we can engage with engineers with different information, and they may be able to say, “You know what, you guys got some good data here. We think you’re right, and we should execute this repair.'”

Using Smartsheet has allowed GE to close data-quality issues, rule out and cancel human error, and preempt turbine malfunctions. “We’re able to predict turbine behavior based on this information a little bit faster than some of the tools that GE provides today,” Mangat said.

About a month ago, Mangat and his team determined that a turbine needed a quarter-of-a-million-dollar repair. As expensive as that sounds, it was less than the repair may have cost without the aid of early detection.

“It’s a proactive repair versus reactive, so now we’re not facing long lead time, finding a crane, bringing a crane on sight, getting the paperwork in place to get the job done,” Mangat concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Smartsheet Engage event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Smartsheet Engage. Neither Smartsheet Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE