Simplify facility management, streamline asset tracking and maximize your return on investment with a robust, easy-to-use maintenance management software.
What is Maintenance Management Software?
Maintenance management software is a program intended to help organizations with asset maintenance and facilities maintenance by streamlining repairs, optimizing workflows, maximizing technician efficiency and lowering costs. This will ultimately improve asset performance, decrease unplanned downtime, increase return on investment (ROI) and maximize the efficiency of your maintenance operations.
Today, maintenance management efforts are effectively executed using a robust maintenance management and asset tracking software like:
- A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), or CMMS software, which can help with asset and facility maintenance throughout the operational part of the asset lifecylce.
- CMMS Software
- An enterprise asset management system (EAM), which can allow for effective asset and facility management throughout the liefecycle.
- An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which can manage day-to-day activities and data flow between departments like accounting and manufacturing.
- New and emerging technologies, including remote monitoring through embeddeed sensors, 3D printing and incorporation of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
Many modern and full-featured maintenance software programs today contain functionalities of all three facility and asset management tools.
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Explore a customizable demo video playlist.How Can CMMS Maintenance Management Software Help Your Business?
Pen and paper, Excel files, disconnected legacy systems – they’re all still widely in use today, and they’re crippling many maintenance management endeavors by causing recurring pain points like:
- Reactive maintenance practices
- Costly delays in production
- Safety and compliance concerns
- Difficulty managing people and processes
- High equipment downtime
- Difficulty meeting KPIs and metrics
The right maintenance tracking program can help your organization overcome these pain points by developing effective preventive maintenance strategies. Using a CMMS service and repair management software, you can effectively manage work orders, automate scheduling processes, conduct maintenance management tasks on mobile devices and follow other best practices.
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How Can Maintenance Management Software Benefit Your Business?
Reduce Downtime
Stepping away from reactive maintenance practices and moving toward regularly scheduled preventive maintenance can:
- Increase equipment availability
- Eliminate waste and rework
- Extend asset life
- Slash unplanned downtime and save time
- Optimize production
Maximize Compliance and Audit Readiness
The right CMMS software can help maintenance and facility management teams stay prepared for audits and changing compliance regulations. Use the software, specifically, to:
- Establish SOPs for health and safety
- Track employee training and compliance
- Keep an accurate record of compliance-related training and tasks
- Manage permits and important audit documents
Lower Costs Immediately and Over Time
A CMMS maintenance management software can cut costs by streamlining key processes, including inventory management, work order management, purchase order management and preventive maintenance strategies. It can also cut day-to-day expenses including labor expenses, inventory costs and warranty costs.
Improve Team Management and Technician Productivity
Many maintenance management software solutions offer features that simplify team management, including key and lock management, mobile access, device-agnostic user interface, technology ticketing, API access and more.
Execute Effective Preventive Maintenance Strategies
A CMMS can help standardize preventive tasks and manage the information needed to execute forward-thinking preventive maintenance strategies. This can be done by:
- Creating triggers that automate maintenance tasks
- Using remote monitoring and IoT sensors to allow for a more predictive maintenance approach
- Standardizing preventive tasks to avoid unplanned downtime
Truly Understand Equipment Life Expectancy
Effectively predicting asset performance – and pre-empting asset failure – can increase facility uptime, maximize asset life and save your organization thousands of dollars over time. These cost savings not only come from decreased downtime, but also due to more effective inventory management (with less emergency part orders) and, more broadly, accurate evaluation of spending practices.
Inform Your Capital Planning Efforts
Unexpected downtime or equipment replacements can throw a wrench into capital planning efforts. With the best maintenance management software, you can reduce these concerns and execute more effective forecasting and budgeting. This, in turn, can help you streamline your spending budget and reduce overall asset management costs.
What are Must-Have Features of Top Maintenance Management Software?
Finding the right maintenance software can take time and dedication, but most facility and asset managers look for these features when choosing between the many software options for maintenance management that are available on the market:
Asset Tracking List
Maintenance Connection’s asset tracking system allows you to view all relevant asset details on one centralized location, including asset make, model, serial number, purchase date and related documentation like maintenance history and warranty information.
Work Order Management Tool
Providing a tool that helps you manage work orders will allow your team to proactively create, check, track, prioritize and assign work requests across locations and devices. Your maintenance teams can also see key information – like past work orders, related images or documens, warranty information, and maintenance history – directly within the work order. This can ultimately improve maintenance tracking processes and increase employee efficiency.
Mobile Device Capabilities
Allowing operators and technicians to input information and view critical documentation on-site using the MC Express mobile app can increase efficiency, streamline processes, decrease delays and help ensure that documents are up-to-date and always complete.
MRO Inventory and Spare Parts Management
Overstock, hard-to-find parts and missing inventory can skyrocket costs and negatively impact efficiency and the execution of work orders. Maintenance Connection can simplify inventory parts management by helping users track inventory parts, access supplier and vendor information and automate inventory ordering. This can ultimately save time, reduce inventory costs and avoid costly mistakes.
Maintenance Reporting and Dashboards
Actionable data and insights into key metrics – like asset performance, labor productivity, maintenance activities and inventory costs – can help you identify weaknesses, improve your processes and ultimately create effective preventivemaintenance schedules and plans.
Comprehensive Integrations
If your tools cannot effectively integrate with one another, your business will deal with incomplete information, missing information, delays and more. Maintenance Connection integrates with your mission-critical tools to sidestep these concerns, including electronic document management systems (EDMS), remote monitoring systems and your ERP.
Enterprise Asset Management
Maintenance Connection has robust enterprise asset management features so you can not only manage maintenance during the operational part of the asset lifecycle but also increase asset health throughout the asset lifecycle.
Full-Featured Security
Ensure compliance, protect yourself against cyber threats and manage your permissions effectively with Maintenance Connection’s fully customizable security features.
Maintenance Scheduling
The right maintenance scheduling software can help your organization automate and streamline your maintenance scheduling using calendars, usage-based triggers, mobile apps, notifications and streamlined workflows. This can not only maximize efficiency but also save time and improve your overall asset health.
Maintenance Management Software Industries
Maintenance management software can help organizations in many asset-heavy industries to streamline their asset management, maximize productivity and ultimately increase uptime and ROI.
Industrial & Manufacturing
Maintenance Connection CMMS can help industrial teams and plant technicians manage their plant’s health comprehensively in order to decrease equipment downtime and effectively manage assets across devices and locations. This can ultimately reduce equipment failures, diminish maintenance costs and more.
Hospitality
An excellent guest experience in resorts and hotels requires that everything is running smoothly behind the scenes. A robust maintenance management software can facilitate these efforts by helping users track and schedule service requests, reduce maintenance costs, keep important equipment (like swimming pools, fitness equipment, elevators and dining equipment) running and more.
Healthcare
Asset maintenance in the healthcare industry isn’t just about increasing effectiveness and lowering costs – it’s about patient safety. The right maintenance management software can help professionals in the healthcare industry to reduce downtime on critical assets, minimize inventory stockout and overages, improve efficiency and ultimately facilitate patient care.
Education
In higher education, facility and asset management involves preventive maintenance schedules and procedures for a facility and equipment like theaters, libraries, labs, classrooms, dorms, administrative offices and athletic facilities. A CMMS can facilitate this maintenance, helping to establish preventive maintenance schedules and ensuring that service requests are completed quickly and proactively.
Government
Government operations face many ongoing maintenance pain points, including disparate records, high downtime, out of control budgets and poor asset management. Maintenance management software and reports can help resolve these concerns by automating maintenance requests, generating data-driven reports and more.
Retail
A maintenance management system can help retail outlets and chains develop preventive maintenance schedules for all of their assets, including: POS systems, signs, pipes, ceiling fans, HVAC units, computers, lighting and more. This can ultimately help stores deliver a consistently excellent customer experience.
FAQ: Best Maintenance Management Software
What is CMMS maintenance software?
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is an enterprise business system that helps companies automate, digitize and optimize their maintenance operations. The right CMMS solution can help your business solve your most pressing pain points so you can effectively prioritize work orders, decrease equipment downtime, maximize employee efficiency and manage your budget – and from one comprehensive, centralized solution.
What is maintenance management?
Maintenance management is the process of maintaining an organization’s assets, facilities and resources. Effective maintenance management is generally achieved using a maintenance management software like a CMMS or an EAM, which can help:
- Standardize preventive and predictive maintenance practices
- Centralize important data and documentation
- Maximize transparency and collaboration
- Integrate key facility and asset management systems
- Maximize safety, compliance and employee productivity
What is the best CMMS software?
When finding the best CMMS software for your business, it’s important to keep in mind your business’ unique position and your needs. More specifically, consider your:
- Budget: How much money can you spend on a CMMS and how does it fit in to your 1, 3 and 5-year budget goals?
- Broader technological ecosystem: Does the CMMS you’re looking at integrate well with your existing practices and systems?
- IT capabilities: Does your IT team have the technical know-how to effectively operation your CMMS system? Would they benefit more from an on-premise system or cloud adoption?
- UX: If your technicians, operators and plant managers do not like the CMMS’ user interface, they will not use it – and low user adoption largely defeats the purpose of a CMMS. Keep this in mind when selecting a system and make sure that your team is on board.
What is Maintenance Management Information System?
The term computerized maintenance management information system (CMMIS) is simply another word for computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), an enterprise software solution designed to help organizations manage their assets and execute effective preventive maintenance strategies.
What are the 4 types of maintenance?
There are four general types of maintenance philosophies, though there is some flexibility when it comes to descriptions and naming conventions. These include:
- Corrective maintenance: This type of maintenance is carried out when an anomaly or flaw is detected. The goal of this maintenance practice is to fix the flaw and maintain uptime. Corrective maintenance tasks may be more cost-effective than preventive maintenance in the short-term, but its short-sighted nature makes it an ineffective long-term strategy.
- Preventive maintenance: Preventive maintenance strategy involves scheduled, forward-thinking maintenance based on key metrics and data points. An effective preventive maintenance strategy can ultimately increase asset life, maximize revenue and decrease equipment downtime.
- Condition-based maintenance: Condition-based maintenance aims to prevent failure through regular asset-check-ups and performance monitoring. In other words, equipment is constantly assessed and maintained, which requires significantly more coordination and manpower than other strategies.
- Predictive maintenance: Predictive maintenance, as the name suggests, aims to preemptively predict asset failures before they arise using data, sensors and IoT technology. Because it relies so intrinsically on data and technology, predictive maintenance comes with a higher up-front cost, and it is not yet feasible for many organizations.
What is the difference between a CMMS and an EAM system?
Both computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) and enterprise asset management (EAM) systems ultimately have the same purpose: to help organizations effectively manage their facilities and move from reactive to preventive maintenance strategies. That said, there are key differences between the tools. A CMMS, on one hand, works to streamline facilities management and asset maintenance during the operational part of an asset’s lifecycle. An EAM software, on the other hand, provides a broader range of capabilities that allow organizations to track, manage and analyze their asset performance throughout the entire asset lifecycle.
That said, many modern and robust CMMS solutions like Maintenance Connection have EAM functionalities – and the system can be upgraded or downgraded as needed over time.
What are the challenges that come with implementing a maintenance management software?
Many challenges come with implementing a maintenance management software and effectively anticipating and sidestepping these challenges is key to an effective long-term implementation. More specifically, you must consider challenges like:
- User adoption: Your team must know how to use the software and they must consistently incorporate it into their day-to-day
- Integrations: The maintenance management software you implement must integrate with your existing technological infrastructure – otherwise, you won’t get the comprehensive big-picture insights you need to maintain effective preventive maintenance strategies.
- Your budget: Look for hidden costs and make sure that you know how the CMMS will fit into your big-picture budget concerns.
- Vendor support: The right vendor will act as a partner, answering questions and helping with long-term training to maintain adoption and software efficacy over time.
Who can use a maintenance software?
In any maintenance operation, many team members can be in need of maintenance management software to replace legacy systems, increase efficiency, cut costs and reduce downtime. This includes:
- Maintenance managers: Maintenance managers can use a CMMS maintenance software to assign work orders, stay on top of preventive maintenance strategies, organize documentation and maintain regulatory compliance.
- Asset and facility technicians: Technicians can use a mobile-responsive, intuitive CMMS system to update work orders, check inventory, update asset condition information and access relevant asset documentation.
- C-suite executives and decision-makers: The data in a CMMS maintenance management software can be used to inform budgets, create actionable reports, stay up to date with maintenance activity and connect with other key departments and data sets.
- Plant managers: A maintenance manager can use a CMMS system to gain insight into big-picture maintenance metrics, to maximize productivity and to streamline audits.
- Inventory managers: MRO inventory is notoriously difficult to manage. A CMMS can simplify things by allowing inventory managers to get a transparent understanding of what inventory they have and where it is. They can also automate part orders and generate customizable reports on inventory usage, costs and other key metrics.
- Asset operators: Operators can relay up-to-the-minute asset information regarding work orders, asset status, breakdown status, cleaning schedules and more.
