A Review of 2025 and a Glimpse Ahead
Each year, the OperationsHERO team hosts a mid-year review and a special year-end wrap session, focusing on what’s been delivered, what’s in progress, and what’s under consideration for the coming year. For new clients, these sessions offer an invaluable orientation; for long-time users, they’re a chance to see what practical improvements are coming to life—many inspired directly by user requests.
General Improvements: Streamlining, Speed, and New Integrations
Performance
One of the most significant undertakings this year was system performance. With clients managing thousands of events or work orders monthly, performance optimizations on the backend have made the platforms faster and more responsive.
Authentication & Security
The integration of new authentication providers, such as Clever and ClassLink, expands options for logging into the system. This addition joins Google and Microsoft as supported login methods, and users can now select their preferred provider in their account settings.
Calendar and Visibility
The ever-evolving calendar view continues to improve, allowing users to see all events within a tailored “week view,” and integrating added functionality for location and category visibility. Customizing what staff and requesters see is now easier than ever.
HeroHQ – Work Orders and Workflow Automation Gets Smarter
First-Half Highlights
In the first part of 2025, we made enhancements in QR code scanning, workflow viewing, color-coding, requester surveys, and linking sub-assets (parent-child relationships). Key workflow improvements allowed admins to tune which categories requesters can access, making systems cleaner and more user-friendly.
Email-Integrated Workflow
Reply-to-comment features mean that updates on work orders, whether via job or event, can now be appended simply by replying to system emails. Archive workflows help manage historical data, and new permissions allow specific groups more control over assets and reminders.
Financial Tracking: Cost Center Management
A standout new module, Cost Center Management, enables detailed financial approvals, debits, and credits in work orders. Built for higher education but useful across sectors, it supports mapping assets, users, and locations to cost centers for project charging and chargeback reporting. Users can split charges and the system offers optional financial admin roles for these advanced needs.
User-Driven Enhancements
Users’ feedback also led to improvements like survey logic adjustments (preventing self-rating), asset bulk editing (update conditions, photos, and more across hundreds of assets in a click), and asset-to-PM scheduling—making preventive maintenance easier to manage.
AI Integration: Welcome to the Future
AI-driven features are rapidly taking root within OperationsHERO:
- Asset Creation: Users can leverage OperationsHERO AI to bulk-create multiple assets by simply chatting or scanning documentation.
- Work Order Intelligence: AI can predict trades or assign categories based on natural language descriptions.
- HEROAssist: This AI tool helps diagnose technical issues for technicians by analyzing error codes and images.
- AI Connector: Connects with tools like ChatGPT and Claude, aiming to allow users to ask questions about their operational data from within their favorite AI chat tool.
HeroHQ – Work Orders and Workflow Automation Gets Smarter
Redesigned Experience
A revamped inventory form provides a more logical data entry process, and features for managing backorders, reordering, and non-stock purchasing streamline warehouse operations. Markups on supplies, labor, and expenses help districts with overhead and budgeting.
Attachments, Restock, and Audits
Support for multiple attachments per inventory item (think SDS sheets, images), on-order item tracking, and a powerful blind audit mode mean that warehouse managers are better equipped than ever to manage inventory lifecycles.
Upcoming Enhancements
Bulk item issuance (for fulfilling multiple work order requests at once), restocking vehicles directly from warehouse stock, and a formal check-in/check-out process for items like keys are all in the works. The OperationsHERO team also continues to build out customized reporting on price adjustments and inventory activity.
EnergyHQ: Empowered Bill Management and Forecasting
Recent improvements focus on the following areas.
Bill Automation
A streamlined workflow for uploading, processing, and checking energy bills that ensures accuracy and timeliness.
Cost Decomposition
Transparent explanations for bill fluctuations with clear breakdowns by underlying cause.
Forecasting
Budget forecasts can be generated at any organizational level, from individual meters to full campus portfolios, supporting more strategic planning.
Upcoming, the AI assistant will begin handling energy-related questions and delivering cross-platform dashboards that synthesize data from work orders, inventory, and energy usage into executive-level views.
PlanningHQ: Capital Planning Reinvented
The next major leap is in multi-scenario capital planning. Users will soon be able to import and model planning scenarios across assets, projects, or locations. Teams will be able to track rolling multi-year plans, including three, five, and ten-year horizons, with support for custom forecasting, inflation rates, and scenario reviews. The platform will also allow users to score and rank project needs, compare renewal versus replacement, manage funding sources, and create rich visual dashboards for board and executive presentations.
A dedicated webinar is coming February 4th to launch and walk through these enhancements in detail.
InspectionHQ: Custom and State Mandated Inspections
Born from the needs of California school districts and now rapidly expanding, InspectionHQ supports custom walkthroughs, grading, and the creation of work orders from identified deficiencies. Plans are underway to extend these tools to custodial, safety, and other compliance-related inspections
This is one of the most heavily enhanced modules of 2025.
Speed improvements now allow faster management of thousands of events with optimized conflict checking.
New integrations include Arbiter and Schedule Star athletic platforms, along with insurance integration.
Manual routing, group approvals, and electronic signatures provide greater control for complex event workflows.
The redesigned invoicing and payments experience supports ACH and credit card payments through Stripe, with automatic linking to campus accounts at industry-leading rates.
User management has been improved to allow quick assignment of internal or external contacts to event groups.
Future roadmap items include pre- and post-billing workflows, improved rate sheet management, and expanded online payment options.
Looking Ahead to 2026
The OperationsHERO 2025 wrap session delivered a clear message. The product is growing quickly, shaped by direct user input, and continuing to innovate across AI, financial workflows, planning, and day-to-day campus operations management.
For facilities managers, IT teams, event coordinators, and finance leaders, there has never been a better time to get involved, share feedback, and take advantage of ongoing support and product updates.
If you missed anything or want to participate in the next round of improvements, we encourage you to reach out. Your feedback is shaping the tools of tomorrow.
Interested in a deeper dive? Book a demo for a deeper dive
Here’s to another year of operational excellence powered by innovation and community.
