Companies dealing with physical machines and assets can often benefit from Computerized Maintenance Management Systems or CMMS software products. There are a number of high-profile companies offering client businesses the opportunity to manage and monitor vehicles, pieces of equipment, manufacturing infrastructures and other physical assets with this type of software service.

Compare Bigfoot, eMaint and Hippo CMMS Against Your Needs

CMMS helps enterprise clients accomplish a variety of objectives. It helps them keep track of the money invested in equipment and machinery. It helps companies predict maintenance needs and respond to both planned and unplanned maintenance needs more rapidly. Other features of CMMS systems help with inventory and different kinds of documentation requirements.

Here are some notes on three of the biggest CMMS systems that companies use to streamline maintenance and make it more efficient, with visibility into cost, priorities, and more.

Bigfoot

Bigfoot CMMS (now known as Asset Essentials) is geared largely towards the manufacturing and distribution industries, with a focus also in energy & utilities, data centers, mining, and hospitality. As an industry-specific system, Bigfoot CMMS is centered around asset management – meaning all corrective and preventive work orders, inventory, purchasing, safety/EHS, predictive maintenance, project management, budgeting, reporting, and more are developed with the intention of prolonging the life of assets, enabling intelligent decision-making, and driving greater maintenance efficiency and effectiveness.

The power of each Bigfoot function is simplified through its modern user interface. Designed to be easily accessible for personnel with varying degrees of comfort with technology, Bigfoot CMMS offers fluid vertical-scrolling, drag-and-drop capabilities, configurability, and a consistent, icon-driven layout to make the user experience intuitive and “Quick to Learn for Quick Results™.” The solution recently earned a Gold “Product of the Year” award from Plant Engineering as a result of its innovative design and substantial functionality.

Bigfoot CMMS offers a mobile app that brings its core functionality to any iOS or Android device, including the ability to capture instant labor data through labor timers, edit offline work orders, tie camera functionality with your Bigfoot media library, and other mobile-specific functions. The app, as well as a full suite of add-ons, accredited Professional Services, and Preferred Partner Network, round out the Bigfoot Ecosystem to deliver scalable solutions based on the needs of each user organization regardless of their size or staff count.

eMaint

The eMaint CMMS system provides all of the top-level components already mentioned in Bigfoot’s software suite. eMaint’s Work Order Management component offers a highly complex set of fields for identifying each asset and looking at maintenance needs. One useful feature is a signature signoff, right on the same screen, where the company promotes its product as a great way to cut down on paper clutter and support regulatory compliance.

With asset management, eMaint offers the use of “asset hierarchies” and insight into total cost of ownership, as well as tools that help planners handle shutdowns and other limitations. There is also an “asset criticality ranking” that can help show when larger maintenance items may be necessary. eMaint also offers preventative maintenance and predictive maintenance modeling, with condition monitoring and other features. Another unique and valuable feature is eMaint’s Interactive Plans tool, which empowers users to visualize their CMMS data on a floor plan, schematic, site map, or any other image.

Hippo CMMS

Hippo’s CMMS is a cloud-based delivery service, also accessible by mobile device, that features the above categories of reporting for company purposes, as well as a specific module for fleet management. Hippo promotes its CMMS suite as tailored for a number of key industries.

In addition, Hippo also promotes its service model, where the company claims an excellent track record of supporting its CMMS products in the field. A satisfaction guarantee on the web site presents specific value propositions around Hippo CMMS service — these include 99.7% uptime for systems, and same-day responses to client requests. Other attributes of this type of service model are based on the initial adoption of services. For example, Hippo promises to provide login credentials within 24 hours of demand, and free annual updates for software. As far as training, there’s also the promise of free training for six months after adoption.

All three of these tools offer similar insights into critical areas of maintenance management. The interfaces are different, and some of the features and tool sets are different. Companies should look at purchasing in a detailed way — considering the number of assets on hand, what maintenance leaders would be most comfortable with, and the importance of quick and supportive service. All of these resources offer the type of comprehensive maintenance management assistance that help companies upgrade and modernize maintenance processes.