CMMS is an acronym for computerized maintenance management system. These systems aid in the tracking and maintenance of assets. Before utilizing CMMS features, work order management used to be exceedingly difficult and stressful because maintenance paperwork was done manually.

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CMMS software now offers automated functionality to assist you in extending asset life spans. However, before you make a decision on which platform is best for you, take a moment to consider the most important CMMS features and what you hope to achieve by using them in your company.

What This Article Covers:

• What Is CMMS?
• Primary Benefits
• Key Features
• Survey of Buyers
• Conclusion

What Is CMMS?

CMMS is a set of tools that allow companies to manage and maintain physical assets. CMMS software provides management support, data maintenance and tracking of such assets as a delivery fleet so you can always pinpoint each vehicle’s location.

The CMMS software market is projected to reach $1.7 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 8.41% from 2021 to 2028.

CMMS software also logs maintenance and repairs records, locates the parts or materials required, tracks associated costs, and manages related workflows. All these CMMS software features improve the overall productivity of your organization by reducing the downtime normally associated with equipment-related tasks.

Primary Benefits

UpKeep, in its State of Maintenance Report 2021, states that 66% of teams say they use a CMMS to track their maintenance program.

It all comes down to making your workday more predictable and stress-free. You gain greater control and experience fewer surprises. A modern maintenance management software solution comes with a broad list of special advantages.

Set Up, Schedule and Track Preventive Maintenance

A good CMMS aids in the planning of preventative maintenance inspections and duties, allowing you to spot minor faults before they become major, budget-busting concerns. It’s the same as remembering to check and change the oil in your automobile on a regular basis. You may avoid a pricey seized engine with a little preventive maintenance.

Stay on Top of Reactive Maintenance

CMMS software enables you to react more quickly in case something goes wrong. Rather than waiting for a problem to become so extensive that everyone is aware of it, the built-in open request portal allows anyone on-site to reach out and contact you as soon as they notice a developing problem.

Control Inventory and Cut Costs

After you’ve set up the CMMS to maintain MRO inventory, you won’t have to worry about running out of vital parts. Because you always know what you have on hand, you also know when to place the next order. You’ll also save money on expensive overnight shipping rates if you order ahead of time.

Leverage Data to Make Better Decisions

A good CMMS gives you control over the present while also assisting you in better planning for the future. You can now turn better, more reliable data into meaningful insights into your overall operations because you can now capture better, more reliable data. You can actively make your life easier since you can trust the data.

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Key Features

CMMS provides a number of functional features, making it an increasingly popular solution among businesses looking to get the most out of their maintenance management operations. It enables maintenance managers to access critical information from any device, allowing them to track and actively manage assets across numerous business locations.

But how does a CMMS assist in making the process more efficient? Here are a few major CMMS features that make this software a smart buy.

Reporting & Analysis

As soon as you enter data into your CMMS, it becomes available for any reports or analyses you request. Asset information becomes part of the database, and any potential problem it reveals automatically generates an alert to the maintenance department manager. The alert also offers recommendations for solutions.

After completing the job, the technician enters the information regarding the work itself, the time frame, any parts or materials involved in the repair and the labor data. The system draws on this information to support future maintenance and repair scheduling. The best CMMS platforms also facilitate customized analyses. You can specify parameters for your specific industry or your company’s unique requirements. Reporting and analysis usually involves:

• Report Creation
• Report Auditing
• KPI Creation
• Fault Site Reporting

Work Order Management

Another customizable function of computerized maintenance management software is oversight of work orders for the maintenance and/or repair of assets. The system automatically generates work orders according to a preset maintenance schedule and responds to repair requests entered by your authorized personnel.

You can configure your CMMS to request approval for the type of work order, or you can allow it to issue orders to your maintenance manager automatically. You can identify filters that route the request by user, contractor, urgency or priority. You can also put a customized workflow into place that standardizes all of your maintenance and repair request processes.

The system organizes work requests by codes and assigns each one a number so you and your maintenance crew can locate it quickly if needed. Then, CMMS tracks the progress of the work request, from issuance of the order through the planning, scheduling and completion phases, ensuring timely and effective follow-through. Some aspects of work order management are:

• Work Order Automation
• Inspection/Audits
• Notifications
• Blanket Orders

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Preventive Maintenance

When you have a robust preventive maintenance (PM) program in place, you can rest assured that you are doing all you can to prolong the life and effectiveness of your business assets. The most valuable benefits of this function are minimizing the expense of emergency repairs and preventing asset deterioration. Some of the CMMS platform features that support this important aspect of asset management include:

• Inspection Management
• Preventive Maintenance Checklist
• Maintenance Interval Setting
• Performance Maintenance
• Failure Detection

Asset Management

Cloud-based CMMS software helps you actively manage assets across a number of business locations in real time. You and your maintenance manager have access this information from any connected device, so you need never lose track of your valuable equipment.

The system curates such information as maintenance records and scheduling, service contracts, calibration points, safety certifications and procedures, meter readings, and inspection requirements. It also tracks the specific location of each asset, plus any equipment failures, error codes and downtime.

Your system uses asset management information to generate reports, make recommendations regarding repair and replacement, and create work orders for general maintenance or emergency repairs. It also bases scheduling on equipment locations, usage and condition.

• Asset Accounting
• Asset Tracking
• Asset Performance Management
• Asset Transactions
• Life Cycle Monitoring
• Contract Management

Facilities Management

Facilities management is a subcategory of CMMS that focuses on the repair and maintenance of an organization’s facilities and assets. The idea is to make it easier for you to manage your buildings, spaces and people.

You can keep abreast of problems as soon as they arise rather than waiting until they become serious by constantly monitoring rather than occasionally analyzing any structures you oversee. This saves you money in the long term and ensures that your facilities are in excellent shape.

The practice of automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic and status data from water or energy metering systems is known as automatic meter reading (AMR). The information is then sent to a central database and used for billing, troubleshooting and analysis. Facilities management capabilities typically include:

• Facility Utilization
• Facility Condition Monitoring
• Automated Meter Reading
• Reservation Summary
• Facility Availability

Inventory Management

An updated inventory of maintenance materials and repair parts keeps your service department apprised of supply shortages that affect daily scheduling. It tracks the physical location of these items, facilitating quick transfers between multiple business locations.

This CMMS functionality also gives authorized personnel instant access to determine availability and cost for any item. It can provide vendor information such as location and ordering terms. Also, top inventory management software can suggest alternative parts or materials when the items your maintenance department needs are unavailable.

As your employees use parts or materials, the CMMS inventory module adjusts its totals accordingly, and when the supply of any particular item runs low, the system alerts your purchasing department. This ensures that when a technician must make an emergency repair, the parts are available on the spur of the moment, and the equipment will be back in service without costly delays.

If your business has assets that need periodic maintenance and daily management, a CMMS system will be a valuable addition to your firm. It works behind the scenes to ensure that your equipment is trackable, in top condition and provides effective service longer. Essential inventory management capabilities include:

• Supplier Information Management
• Stock Level Metrics
• Inventory Allocation
• Bill of Materials (BOM)
• Cycle Counting

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Survey of Buyers

Have you ever wanted a robot butler to help you with your chores? A computerized maintenance management system is the software version of that idea. Users can utilize CMMS functions to streamline workflows, track work orders, schedule preventative and rreparative maintenance, and manage assets.

Over the last year, we asked 168 companies in the market for CMMS software what features they were looking for. Here’s what they had to say.

Key Insights

• Buyers want to know what’s coming through features that offer management and preventive and predictive maintenance.
• Buyers want control with management features and better security options.
• Most buyers want the basics and either don’t want or don’t understand some of the more advanced features.

Preparation

Buyers in the market for a CMMS system aren’t satisfied with fixing problems as they come up. They wouldn’t be looking for CMMS if they were. But their desire for preparation goes beyond the preventive maintenance feature that 71% of respondents asked for. Buyers want to be on top of everything: work orders (86%), inventory (71%), assets (69%), purchasing (23%), fleet (7%) and facilities (6%). Another 23% wanted predictive functionality that would forecast future maintenance needs and potential pain areas so they can anticipate issues before they arise.

CMMS expert Fred Schenkelberg isn’t surprised by this finding: “CMMS systems can be very simple work order planning, scheduling and tracking features, yet become valuable tools when used for preventative and predictive maintenance. It is good to see both preventative and predictive maintenance in the top ten list of request features.” Users not only utilize but expect and depend on the preparative, predictive and preventive CMMS systems features.

Control

CMMS buyers are searching for options that will give them more control of their operations in a variety of nuanced ways. As I mentioned, they want a more controlled process for work orders and asset management, along with specified management features for facilities, fleet and inventory.

But buyers also want control over the system itself: 13% preferred on-premise deployment solutions, citing security and customization needs. Since data is stored on-site with this form of deployment, there are fewer transferences of that data, and it is typically considered more secure. Because the user can build their own infrastructure, there are also more options for customization — if they don’t mind footing the bill.

The 13% of CMMS buyers who wanted on-premise solutions is much higher than what we saw previously in our HR survey and CRM survey. This is possibly, because CMMS software buyers may be buying their first software ever: 41% said they were purchasing their first CMMS system.

Storing data in the cloud can be a daunting prospect if users aren’t familiar with the industry. There could also be a demographic element to it. Many organizations that utilize CMMS software cater to and employ blue-collar labor forces and unions that have historically had a wary relationship with new technology. If you’re worried a computer will take your job, you’ll be less likely to trust a computer — much less this “cloud” thing — with your sensitive data.

Buyers aren’t willing to cede control over who has access to the system: 47% of buyers wanted role-based access that would allow all workers to open work orders and only admins to close them out. Buyers may want automation of some CMMS functions, but they aren’t willing to sacrifice any control to get it.

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Back to Basics

The only four CMMS software features requested over 50% of the time were the four basic tenets of CMMS: work order management, preventive maintenance, asset management and inventory management. This tells us something interesting about CMMS buyers. They don’t need flash and flare, and they aren’t looking for anything fancy. They want a system that will get the job done and not charge them an arm and a leg to do it — something software vendors should keep in mind when catering to this market.

That being said, it may also be true that buyers are under-informed about the more advanced options a CMMS application can offer them. Despite their aforementioned desire for control, only 10% asked for reporting capabilities. Business intelligence is an element of software that seems to be undervalued when it is a function of non-BI software. Everyone can benefit from BI features, but surveys like this suggest buyers aren’t totally aware of that fact yet.

Want to find out which platforms offer what features? Check out our comprehensive CMMS comparison chart.

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Top Features

The top three most-requested features were work order management (requested by 86%), preventive maintenance management (71%), and asset management (69%). Of the companies interviewed, 52% asked for inventory management, and 47% wanted role-based permissions. Predictive maintenance was requested by 23%, another 23% asked for purchasing functions and 15% wanted mobile access capabilities.

Other Requested Features

These features weren’t in the top eight, but they were popular enough that we thought they were worth mentioning.

A vast majority of buyers want the basic CMMS systems features that streamline their maintenance processes. But some stand-out requests give us a little more insight into their needs and goals.

Demographics

Here’s a breakdown of the companies we surveyed.

User Base

We asked the companies surveyed how many users would need access to the system. Here are their answers:

The number of users who will utilize the CMMS varies widely company-to-company, and the overall company size did not directly correlate to how many users would need access to the CMMS. These users were broken into admin and base users 23% of the time, further emphasizing the buyers’ desire for control via hierarchical access capabilities.

Status

Buyers were either purchasing their first CMMS, updating an existing CMMS, consolidating disparate CMMS or downsizing from a current CMMS. Here’s the breakdown:

The majority of buyers were updating a CMMS program they have been using to a newer or more robust model. Almost as many buyers were purchasing their very first CMMS and upgrading from Excel spreadsheets or pen and paper. The 3% downsizing and the 10% consolidating were trying to simplify, streamline and centralize their operations.

Deployment Preference

You can implement CMMSvia a web-based deployment or an on-premise deployment. This is what buyers asked for:

The majority of buyers were open to either deployment option and said they would choose whichever form of deployment best suited their needs. A close second was those who prefer cloud-based — this is becoming the norm for most software, so it’s really no surprise. As mentioned above, 13% of buyers wanted the control and security that comes with on-premise deployment.

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Conclusion

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that CMMS buyers are committed to being prepared and in control, but it’s good to know. Any CMMS package that doesn’t offer these features may want to reconsider its system to appeal to the largest pool of potential buyers, and buyers who haven’t considered every feature other buyers requested should do some research to make sure they get what they actually need.

The fact that buyers are more interested in basic CMMS functionality is important for vendors and third-party buyers to be aware of. This can ensure that they don’t offer CMMS systems bogged down with bells and whistles when that isn’t what customers are looking for. Conversely, if there is a more advanced CMMS feature that a user doesn’t understand, education about the importance of those features (like reporting) could potentially begin to shift this trend. Overall, this is a down-to-earth group of people who just want to make their maintenance management process easier, and they should be catered to with that in mind.

What do you think about these statistics? What do you need in a CMMS tool? Let us know in the comments!