In the vast majority of situations most organisations do not lose control of their maintenance in one day. It happens slowly: spreadsheets grow, work orders accumulate in inboxes, they're losing some critical piece of equipment without warning, and they discover they are reacting rather than planning.
Manual processes (paper job cards, Excel spreadsheets, verbal exchanges) are sources of invisible operational risk. When you overlook preventive maintenance, you have unplanned downtime. Described scattered asset records make audits challenging. Late work orders result in increased repair expenses. But, if data is not centrally located, no manager can have a clear view of what is happening with the operations in real time.
These challenges can be addressed with maintenance management software, which brings together all maintenance activities, including work orders, preventive maintenance schedules, asset documentation, inventory management, vendor management, and reporting, under one roof. It is commonly known as a CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management System), which replaces uncoordinated manual tasks with data driven, tracked and structured maintenance.
Whether you're trying to understand how it works, what features to look out for, how it compares to Excel and CMMS, what the cost is, how AI has revolutionised the landscape and how to choose the right maintenance management software for your organisation, this guide has got you covered.
What Is Maintenance Management Software?
Maintenance management software is a digital solution that enables organisations to manage all maintenance activities, from work orders to preventive maintenance, asset records, spare parts and vendor contracts, through one system.
It is utilized by maintenance managers, facility managers, asset managers, operation teams, engineering teams and field technicians in manufacturing, healthcare, education, hospitality, retail, warehousing and corporate facilities.
In the software industry, maintenance management software and CMMS software (Computerized Maintenance Management System) are used interchangeably. The two are in reference to systems that convert maintenance operations into digital data. Advanced platforms can then move into Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) for the entire asset lifecycle from procurement to retirement.
In essence, maintenance management software is used to manage:
- Work orders — creation, assignment, tracking, and closure
- Preventive maintenance schedules — recurring tasks planned before breakdowns occur
- Asset and equipment records — full maintenance history and lifecycle data
- Maintenance requests — incoming issues from users or departments
- Spare parts and inventory — parts consumed per job, stock levels
- Vendor and contract management — AMC/CMC contracts, service vendor SLAs
- Maintenance reports and dashboards — performance metrics and data for decision-making
How Does Maintenance Management Software Work?
From the point the issue is raised to the completed maintenance record is stored, maintenance management software digitizes the entire process.
Maintenance Request Creation
The first step is the creation of a maintenance request. Any authorized person can make a request using a mobile application, web portal, through a QR code displayed on the machine or IVR (interactive voice response) for field workers without a smartphone. Every request collects the problem, location, asset and priority and automatically sends it to the appropriate maintenance team.
Work Order Creation and Assignment
After a request is reviewed or a preventive schedule activates a work order is created. Work orders include the task, the asset, the technician assigned to the job, the priority of the work order, the expected completion date and the associated spare parts or checklists. Managers can stay up to date with the status of work orders without having to "chase" them.
Preventive Maintenance Scheduling
Preventive maintenance is set in a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual) for each asset or location. The system automatically creates and assigns a work order to a specific technician when the schedule goes off. This removes the biggest failure point in maintenance management, which is to forget to run planned maintenance until something breaks.
Asset and Equipment Records
Each asset in the system has a digital record; make, model, serial number, location, purchase date, warranty expiration, AMC/CMC contracts, maintenance history and service record. This record follows the asset throughout its life cycle, and provides a complete history and audit trail for any asset.
Maintenance Completion and Reporting
Once the work order is finished, a technician will fill it out with details about the job, parts used, time spent, and include photos as needed. The information is automatically updated to maintenance history, inventory and SLA tracking. No manual consolidation of completion reports, closure confirmations or performance dashboards is required for managers.
Maintenance Workflow at a Glance:
Key Features of Maintenance Management Software
Don't look at work orders exclusively when considering a maintenance management platform — consider the entire maintenance lifecycle.
Work Order Management
The foundation of any CMMS. Make, assign, prioritise, monitor and close work orders electronically. Check for priority settings, escalations, notifications for technicians and tracking from open to closed.
Preventive Maintenance Scheduling
Set up maintenance to occur on a regular basis (calendar interval, runtime, and usage thresholds). Work orders should be automatically created and reminders should be sent prior to the time maintenance is needed — not when it breaks down.
Asset and Equipment Management
A single enterprise asset management module keeps all lifecycle information for each asset: location, ownership, purchase details, maintenance history, warranty details and linkages to AMC/CMC contracts. Supports QR-code and RFID tagging physical identification.
Maintenance Request Management
Multi-channel maintenance request structured intake (web, mobile, QR, IVR). Requests should be automatically categorised, prioritised and routed to the R.O. team.
Maintenance Checklists and Inspections
Technicians can ensure standard workflows through digital checklists linked to the corresponding assets or tasks. A photo evidence, signatures and completion timestamps provide a verifiable audit trail which is essential in regulated environments.
Maintenance History and Records
All finished work order, inspection, and parts replacement is held against the asset record. This history influences decisions: which assets are failing the most, which vendors under-perform, which maintenance schedule needs to be adjusted, etc.
Spare Parts and Inventory Management
Inventory and spares management connects parts usage with work orders, monitors inventory levels, establishes reorder points and avoids work order delays due to parts shortages. Essential in high asset volume applications.
Maintenance Alerts and Notifications
Alerts for overdue work orders, incoming preventive maintenance, low spare-parts count, expiring contracts or SLA breaches, to mention but a few, are automated. Automated notifications ensure the right people are notified without any follow-up work.
Mobile Maintenance Access
Field technicians require mobile access to work orders, task status, submit checklists, take photos of equipment, and scan asset QR codes. Search for mobile apps that work when there is no internet connection—data is synced back online when it becomes available.
Maintenance Reports and Dashboards
Performance dashboards—MTTR (Mean Time to Repair), MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures), work order completion rates, SLA compliance, asset downtime, and maintenance cost—all completely without manual data exports and for managers.
Technician and Team Management
Create work orders assigned to specific technicians or teams, view individual technician workloads, assess and monitor the rate at which tasks are completed and review performance metrics. A valuable tool for handling multi-site or large maintenance teams.
Vendor and Service Management
The vendor management module will be able to consolidate all information related to the contractor, AMC/CMC contracts, tracking POs and vendor performance scoring. Prevents service contracts from expiring without they being noticed.
SLA Management
There are commitments for response and resolution that are tracked for each type of work order in SLA management. Automated escalation in the event of SLAs breaching will guarantee that accountability is taken at both team and vendor levels.
Multi-Site Maintenance Management
The platform should offer both a view of the individual site (for local teams) and an overview dashboard (for corporate or group management) — but without the need for having separate systems at each site.
Integrations and APIs
Enterprise platforms must integrate with HR systems, ERP, IoT sensors, access control systems, metering systems, as well as financial software. Pre-built integrations and REST API support ease implementation.
User Roles and Permissions
Role-based access control eliminates risk of revealing sensitive data across levels while still providing a view of what technicians, supervisors and management need to see.
Benefits of Maintenance Management Software
An efficient transition from manual to digital maintenance management system brings measurable improvements in operations:
- Minimize the risk of equipment failures by anticipating problems in the course of routine maintenance.
- Gain visibility into all tasks due, in-progress, and upcoming, across all locations, to enhance maintenance planning.
- Clear work order assignment, visibility of work order's deadlines and escalation automaticity, faster work order resolution.
- Increase technician productivity and reduce time spent on follow up work orders, time spent on phone calls for work order updates, or manually looking for information on assets.
- Produce a consistent preventive maintenance, calibration, and early detection of reoccurring problems extending asset life.
- Record and store all maintenance history, checklists, photos, and costs on the asset — don't keep them in the individual's email inbox!
- Monitor cost of track maintenance per asset, per location or per work order category to pinpoint high cost failure areas
- Enhance accountability by recording completions at the time, technician signatures and photo evidence
- Improved audit readiness – Digital records are organised, searchable and exportable for audit purposes.
- Provide data-driven decision making support for MTTR, MTBF, SLA performance and trends in asset health
Maintenance Management Software vs CMMS Software
These two terms are widely used interchangeably in the software market, and in most buying contexts, they refer to the same category of solution.
| Factor | Maintenance Management Software | CMMS Software |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | Broad term for software managing maintenance operations | Computerised Maintenance Management System — the technical name for the same category |
| Primary Purpose | Organise, schedule, and track maintenance activities | Digitise maintenance operations and records |
| Work Orders | Yes | Yes |
| Preventive Maintenance | Yes | Yes |
| Asset Management | Yes — often extended to EAM in enterprise platforms | Yes — core capability |
| Maintenance Records | Yes | Yes |
| Inventory / Spares | Yes — in most platforms | Yes — standard feature |
| Reporting | Yes — dashboards and KPIs | Yes |
| Typical Users | Maintenance managers, facility managers, operations teams | Same — maintenance teams across industries |
| Market Usage | Preferred by buyers searching for software | Preferred by technical teams and enterprise procurement |
Key point: The difference is terminological, not functional. When evaluating software, focus on capabilities — not on whether the vendor labels their product as "maintenance management software" or "CMMS." Some platforms extend further into Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), covering procurement, depreciation, and full asset lifecycle management.
What Is Asset Maintenance Management Software?
A component of a maintenance management system that handles the maintenance history, schedule and cost of specific assets and equipment.
A complete picture of any asset, from every work order and maintenance schedule, to every checklist, spare part and cost record, asset maintenance management assigns each and every item to an asset instead of managing it in a generic way.
How Asset Maintenance Management Works
A digital profile is created for each asset showing its basic identity (make, model, serial number, location), details of purchase and warranty, as well as any related AMC/CMC contracts, maintenance history, and current condition. Each time maintenance is carried out, the record will be added automatically to the asset's profile, whether planned or reactive.
This will result in an asset lifecycle management record, rather than a snapshot of the present condition.
Why Asset Maintenance Data Matters
One of the least leveraged data sources for enterprise operations is aggregated maintenance history by asset. Organisations that have established asset maintenance records can
- Determine which assets are responsible for unusually high repair expenses
- Decide the optimum time for repair versus replacement investment
- Provide documentation and support for insurance claims, warranty issues and audits
- Do not make assumptions when planning capital expenditure
Maintenance Management System Software: What Should It Include?
Consider more than work orders when assessing a maintenance management system. A full system should include the following:
- A centralized database for maintenance use, which all authorized users can access in real time.
- Records of assets complete with lifecycle and maintenance history.
- Work order management: Work order creation, assignment, tracking, closure
- Automated and scheduled preventive maintenance.
- Multi channel intake (web, mobile, QR code, IVR): Maintenance requests
- Work orders are associated with inventory and spares management.Inventory and spares management are associated with work orders.
- Standardized task execution - evidence capture with digital checklists.
- Mobile access for field techs, preferably without the need for internet connectivity.
- No manual data compilation in maintenance reports and dashboards.
- Overdue task alerts and escalations, SLA violations, and contract expiration alerts.
- Seamless connections with IoT, HR, ERP and operational systems.
- Access to data and reporting functionality based on user roles and permissions depending on team size and complexity.
- Multi-site support for organisations with multiple sites.
Maintenance Management Software vs Excel
Organisations that do not have any dedicated maintenance software will need to use spreadsheets. If your operation is very small, including one or two sites, two or three assets, and two people, Excel might work for you. For any organisation larger than this, the constraints of spreadsheets become an exacerbating operational risk.
| Factor | Excel / Spreadsheets | Maintenance Management Software |
|---|---|---|
| Work Orders | Manual creation and tracking; no auto-assignment | Automated creation, assignment, escalation, and closure tracking |
| Preventive Maintenance | Calendar reminders or manual scheduling; easily missed | Auto-scheduled recurring tasks; system generates work orders automatically |
| Asset History | Fragmented across multiple files or tabs; manually updated | Centralised against each asset; auto-updated with every completed job |
| Maintenance Requests | Email, WhatsApp, or verbal intake; no structured tracking | Structured intake via app, web, QR, or IVR; tracked from receipt to closure |
| Notifications | Manual; depends on individual memory | Automated alerts for overdue tasks, SLA breaches, low stock |
| Inventory | Separate spreadsheet; easily out of sync | Linked to work orders; updates automatically when parts are consumed |
| Mobile Access | Limited; shared file editing creates conflicts | Dedicated mobile app; offline capability |
| Reporting | Manual compilation from multiple files | Real-time dashboards; MTTR, MTBF, SLA, and cost reports on demand |
| Multi-Site Management | Separate spreadsheets per site; manual consolidation | Single platform; site-level and consolidated views simultaneously |
| Data Centralisation | Files stored locally or on shared drives; no single source of truth | Single database; all stakeholders see the same real-time data |
| Automation | None | Work order creation, scheduling, escalation, notifications, reporting |
Where Excel is still suitable: When your business operates from a single site, involves less than 50 assets, has one or two maintenance staff and has limited compliance needs, it can work well on spreadsheets. Most of the time, the turning point is when there is no maintenance, data is fragmented, or a few people are working together, so that the implementation of a structured system becomes reasonable due to the additional operational cost.
Maintenance Management Software for Different Industries
Manufacturing
High value equipment is operated in manufacturing environments within short production schedules. Any downtime in equipment usage directly affects productivity. Production machinery maintenance software covers planned machine maintenance (PPM), spares usage, machine runtime hours and gives machine MTBF information to prioritize capital machine replacement decisions.
Healthcare
Biomedical equipment, HVAC systems, electrical systems and fire protection systems are all managed by hospitals and diagnostic centres. Maintenance software helps manage AMC/CMC contracts, equipment calibration schedules, biomedical asset histories, breakdown help desk tickets, and accreditation required audit trails throughout departments.
Education
Whether it's AV equipment, labs, HVAC, electrical systems, or physical plant, large campus schools, colleges, and universities manage assets. Maintenance software facilitates the scheduling of maintenance windows that take the academic calendar into account, the management of vendor contracts and the timely response to requests within agreed SLAs by the teams responsible for the facilities.
Facilities and Buildings
Multisite facility management companies should have a facility management system that provides them with consolidated reporting on internal business processes and visibility into what's happening at the location to comply with their client's SLAs. From a single software, support for soft-service checklists, hard-service work orders and multi-client dashboards.
Retail
Retail stores with several outlets that oversee the condition of refrigeration, HVAC, displays, and POS systems require single point of control into equipment status in each store and vendor service adherence. Multi-site maintenance software supplants regional spreadsheets with a single layer of management.
Hospitality
Hotels operate many different types of equipment, from kitchen equipment to HVAC systems, elevators, pool equipment, and guest room systems, and the quality of the service that is provided has a direct impact on the quality of the guest room service. Maintenance software provides assurance for preventive schedules, prompt response to break downs, and timely operation of the guest-facing SLA.
Warehouses and Logistics
Material handling equipment (MHE) – forklifts, conveyors, racking, dock equipment is the backbone of the warehousing operation. Reliability is lost during unplanned downtime. The maintenance software is programmed to schedule planned maintenance during the down time of equipment, monitors equipment uptime and provides information about spare parts usage and correlation with the equipment.
How Much Does Maintenance Management Software Cost?
Maintenance management software is usually sold on subscription (SaaS) basis, but enterprise software is often sold on custom pricing based on the scope of deployment. The total cost will take into account several factors:
What drives cost:
- Number of licensed users
- The number of assets under management for a fund.The total amount of money invested in a fund.
- The number of locations or sites.
- The modules that are selected are either work orders only or full asset + inventory + vendor + SLA management
- Mobile app access
- Incorporating IoT and hardware requirements
- How to implement and move the data.
- Training and onboarding
- Continuing support level (standard, priority, dedicated)
- If you need to tailor the development or workflow configuration, you can do so at this point.
Pricing models you'll encounter:
- Per user, per month — typical of platforms that cater to small and medium businesses.
- Per-asset pricing (for asset-intensive businesses)
- Tier based subscription – feature tiers with user limits
- Enterprise / custom — pre-scope pricing for large organisations, which may involve implementation.
Cost components beyond subscription:
- Requires one-time implementation and configuration of the application.
- Importing data from other systems or from spreadsheet files.
- Training (managers, supervisors, field technicians)
- Hardware costs (RFID tags, IoT sensors, mobile devices, if required)
- Development of integration (ERP, IoT, Financial systems)
- Continuous support and upgrades.
Where enterprises or organisations have multiple sites or complex requirements, TCO needs to be calculated over the next 3-5 years and not just the annual subscription price. The value of a platform that is more expensive, but integrates without hassle and manual reporting is likely greater than a less expensive platform with lots of manual workarounds.
How to Choose the Right Maintenance Management Software
Purchase of maintenance platforms involves an operational decision, not an IT decision. Engage maintenance managers, operations leaders and finance interested parties in the valuation.
Evaluation criteria:
- Establish maintenance needs (work orders/month, assets, sites, compliance needs, etc.)
- Review work order features; creation/assignment, escalation, closures, and history
- Review preventive maintenance – including flexibility of scheduling, automatic generation of work orders, reminder.
- Review asset management depth – does it have full asset history, AMC/CMC linkage and lifecycle data?
- Analyse inventory management: does the consumption of spare parts have a real-time relation with work orders?
- Mobile functionality — can it be used without an Internet connection? Does it work with a low-skilled field technician?
- Reporting and dashboards — do managers need to export MTTR, MTBF, SLA compliance and cost data manually?
- Integrations - available/buildable integrations (IoT, ERP, HR, financial)?
- Scalability — does the platform have room to scale with your 3 to 5 year plan for assets, users, and sites?
- Security and permissions — role based access control, data security certifications, cloud hosting standards
- Consolidated views for group management, as well as site-specific operations.
- Vendor support – local support, SLA on issue resolution, training material.
- What does the Vendor do and what does your team do?
- All costs: subscription, implementation, integration, training, and hardware costs
Buyer Checklist:
Reactive vs Preventive vs Predictive Maintenance
Familiarizing yourself with the three different kinds of maintenance enables you to determine the software features you really do need.
| Factor | Reactive Maintenance | Preventive Maintenance | Predictive Maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|
| When it happens | After failure or breakdown | On a fixed schedule, before failure | When condition data signals a developing issue |
| Planning | None — unscheduled | Pre-planned by calendar or usage interval | Data-driven; triggered by sensor readings or usage patterns |
| Downtime Risk | High — unplanned outages | Low — controlled downtime during scheduled windows | Very low — issues identified before failure |
| Data Required | Failure record only | Schedule, asset history | IoT sensors, runtime hours, usage patterns, historical failure data |
| Typical Use | Low-priority or non-critical assets | Most industrial, facility, and medical equipment | High-value assets where condition monitoring is cost-justified |
| Software Support | Work order management, breakdown logging | PM scheduling, auto-work-order generation | AI/IoT integration, anomaly detection, condition monitoring |
Most organisations have a combination of all three. Maintenance management software directly contributes to a transition from mainly reactive to mainly preventive operations. Predictive maintenance will need more investment in sensors and AI, but the core data platform (asset records, maintenance history) begins with the CMMS.
How AI Is Changing Maintenance Management Software
Maintenance platforms are being infused with AI at various stages of development. It is important to know the current available options of both commercially and aspirational to ensure that organisations can make informed purchasing decisions.
Predictive Maintenance
Patterns that can be observed before equipment failure with AI and IoT data (temperature, vibration, runtime hours, power consumption) can be captured. Traditional maintenance scheduling is based on the calendar alone, but AI powered platforms can recommend maintenance when condition data suggest that assets are nearing a failure point.
Maintenance Data Analysis
Historical maintenance data can be fed into AI algorithms to identify patterns; maintenance failure rates that are significantly higher than the average; maintenance schedules that are significantly longer or shorter than the average; and repeated failure modes within certain asset categories that would be hard to spot in large amounts of data.
Anomaly Detection
By connecting IoT sensors to a maintenance platform, you can achieve anomaly detection, which is the ability of the platform to automatically send a request for maintenance or an alert when the reading is outside the expected readings in the asset before it fails.
Automated Maintenance Insights
Natural-language querying is a new enterprise AI capability that lets managers ask an operation-related question in plain English ("Which assets have had the most breakdowns this month?," "Which locations have the highest overdue PM rate?") and get a direct response from the system, rather than having to manually navigate the dashboards.
AI-Assisted Workflows
AI can help with auto-prioritisation of incoming maintenance requests, routing maintenance work orders to available technicians based on skills and location, and determining which work orders may be in danger of exceeding their SLA prior to breach.
Maintenance Reporting
Automated maintenance summary reports: These are generated by AI and summarize asset health, SLA performance, and work order completion metrics, saving managers time from manual reporting.
There's a caveat on this, though: many platforms that claim to have "AI" capabilities don't yet have the technology fully developed for production use. Critically review AI claims — ask vendors what data is being used by the AI, how it learns, and what decisions are currently made with the AI and what are planned.
Common Challenges in Maintenance Management
The functions that maintenance software solves are the following operational issues:
- Manual data entry slows down operations and errors are introduced — asset records are incomplete, work orders are lost, and more.
- Could not perform preventive maintenance due to schedule not contained in a calendar or spreadsheet and not routinely tracked
- When assets fail, there is no record of what was done, when or by whom, due to poor asset records.
- Late work orders – orders come in on the phone or by email, but are not received in the inbox, or picked up over the telephone.
- Parts exhaustion that was only identified during the job, leading to more downtime and time to complete job.
- No maintenance visibility — managers have to call around to find out what the team is working on, what is in progress, and what is late.
- Information in various places in email conversations, WhatsApp messages, paper job cards, and separated files
- Lack of communication among maintenance, operations and management
- No structured way to assign tasks and track the performance of techs.
- Limited historical information for capital expenditure decisions, insurance claim or regulatory audits
- Distributed complexity — each site is independent with no single view to the organisation.
The reason for each of these problems is structural, meaning they exist because there is no single structured system with which all maintenance activity is recorded, assigned and tracked.
Maintenance Management Best Practices
These good practices can be realized through maintenance software, but must be taken up consciously:
- Get asset data right from the start and avoid incomplete asset data that negatively impacts all reporting downstream.
- Establish a standardized maintenance workflow, and stick to it — establish a “completed” work order and ensure it is followed.
- Plan and safeguard against possible disruptions to preventive maintenance — reactive pressures tend to put PPM in the background.
- Focus on work orders — not all tasks are critical; a plan to prioritize work tasks makes sure that critical tasks are not put on the back burner for lower-priority work orders.
- Keep a record of the maintenance history of the asset — this information is more useful as time goes on.
- Regularly review KPIs regarding monitor maintenance – not only available, but also MTTR, MTBF, SLA compliance or the completion of PMs.
- Maintain parts usage log — Any part usage should be logged to the work order, which should be kept current
- Adopt checklists for inspections – standardised checklists mean that inspections are carried out in the same way and provide an audit trail
- Examine frequent failures – when assets continually fail, it is a sign that they are either out of maintenance or life cycle.
- Train maintenance teams – adoption by field technicians determines whether data entering the system is reliable or not.
- Integrate maintenance and asset lifecycle management — maintenance history should guide capital planning decisions.
- Regularly review and take action on reports – dashboards that are not reviewed are not worth their operational value
Is Maintenance Management Software Right for Your Organization?
Organisations that are large enough to have:
- Hundreds or thousands of sites, one or more assets in each site.
- Multiple places where maintenance visibility is not complete
- Workflows where coordination and accountability are challenging due to large maintenance teams.
- Frequent maintenance requests which come via an informal channel at the time.
- Maintenance activities that are not carried out or inadequately documented as preventative maintenance duties.
- Documented Maintenance Records that are required for compliance or audit.
- Equipment downtime expenses where swift response or improved prevention would be quantifiable is high.
- Multi vendor, AMC/CMC contracts and dependency on spares in maintenance workflows.
- Massive amounts of maintenance data not yet captured or usable for analysis.
If the demands of compliance are not great, and if your organisation only has a handful of assets, one or two maintenance personnel and only one location, then it's easy to get by with spreadsheets and simple task management software. The turning point is generally when manual methods are posing a measurable cost to the operation, whether that's through missed maintenance, delayed response, lack of up to date asset information or the reporting burden.
Expert Insights
Correct data on assets prior to automation. Poor asset data at implementation is the most prevalent cause of software for maintenance to not deliver. A preventive maintenance schedule, work order, and report created on top of the asset record will be inaccurate if the asset record itself is incomplete or inaccurate, or based on an old register. Organisations need to carry out an asset audit and have a clean and verified baseline before investing in automation. The software magnifies the data quality provided.
There should be a linkage between preventive maintenance and asset records. The performance of a preventive maintenance without tying completed preventive maintenance activities back to the asset record also wastes a lot of analytical value. As PM tasks are recorded against the asset, maintenance history builds over time: What number of PM cycles have been done, if recurring faults occur despite regular maintenance, and how often maintenance is performed impacts failure rates. This data is the key to making it possible to move away from the calendar-based PM and into condition-based maintenance planning.
With a work order that is not complete, the data is not very useful. The more consistent the data entered by the field technicians, the more valuable the CMMS. Work orders that don't capture parts records, don't have closure dates, or don't have any notes by a technician can leave gaps in your maintenance history that makes it difficult to report on SLAs and analyze costs. The implementation should not only include software configuration, but also setup requirements for completion and technician training as well as workflows for supervisor review.
Conclusion
The maintenance management is a process of a business function which has a direct impact on availability, operational continuity and cost control of equipment. However, tracking it in spreadsheets, paper work orders and informal means makes the process of managing it difficult when organisations start to grow, add assets or expand to multiple locations.
Whether known as CMMS (computer-based maintenance management), IFMS (information-based maintenance software), or EAM (enterprise asset management), maintenance management software offers a structured operational base that is essential for making achievable, data-driven, and accountable maintenance at scale possible. These core capabilities should not be considered separately from one another, but together.These core capabilities must be looked at as a group rather than separately.
For organisations seeking a single, digital and connected platform to centralise their maintenance, asset management, work order, preventive maintenance and facility operations, consider OpsSuite or request a demo to learn more about their needs.
