Over the last several years, maintenance management and programs have been gradually taking the leap from paper-based systems to digital tools – from simple spreadsheets to CMMS solutions to distributed EAM deployments. As the maintenance labor market ages and as the skill gap continues to grow, the transition to digital is accelerating, and organizations are turning to technology to remain competitive and build the next generation of talent.
As part of this digital transformation, we are seeing several important trends empowering the most effective maintenance programs:
- Increased adoption of mobile technology
- Increased use of preventative maintenance over reactive maintenance
- Increased CMMS utilization and corresponding ROI
Accruent sent a CMMS Score Survey to facility and maintenance managers across all industries and garnered more than 1,200 responses. These responses were used to create the Maintenance Management Benchmarks and Best Practices Report. This report is intended to help maintenance professionals and stakeholders evaluate and improve the effectiveness of their maintenance management programs. In this report, you will gain insights needed to:
- Evaluate your maintenance management technology against current market trends and industry benchmarks.
- Realize the cost savings and ROI of modernizing your maintenance management programs with current technology.
- Implement best practices for improving maintenance management effectiveness.
But before diving into the maintenance management trends, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of maintenance management.
Download the Full PDF: Benchmarks & Best Practices for Maintenance Management
What is Maintenance Management?
Maintenance management refers to the process of managing the maintenance activities of an organization's assets and equipment to ensure they operate reliably and to maximize their useful life. This involves developing and implementing strategies and procedures to ensure that equipment and machinery are properly maintained, repaired, and replaced as needed.
Why Maintenance Management is Important
When implemented properly, a maintenance management strategy can have a number of benefits for an organization. By ensuring that your machinery is well maintained and running at optimal speeds, you can:
- Reduce downtime
- Improve safety
- Increase labor efficiency
- Extend equipment life
- Lower maintenance costs
This not only cuts the obvious costs of maintenance and buying new equipment unnecessarily, but it improves employee well-being, which can also significantly increase employee retention.
What is the Purpose of Maintenance Management?
Maintenance management ensures an organization's assets and equipment are properly maintained, repaired, and replaced as needed. This allows companies to achieve other objectives, including:
- Maximizing asset reliability: Equipment that is functioning and available maximizes reliability and minimizes the risk of unexpected breakdowns and downtime.
- Optimizing maintenance costs: Over time, maintenance management can minimize the need for costly equipment replacement and repairs.
- Ensuring safety: Properly maintained equipment and facilities are safer for employees and customers. And when employees feel safe, they’re more productive.
- Meeting regulatory requirements: Many industries are subject to regulations and standards that require regular maintenance and inspections of equipment. Maintenance management helps organizations meet these requirements and avoid fines.
- Improving sustainability: Proper maintenance management can help organizations reduce their environmental impact by optimizing energy and resource usage, minimizing waste, and extending the useful life of equipment.
In short, maintenance management ensures an organization can hit their goals with reliable and safe equipment.
Maintenance Management Trends and Survey Results
Maintenance management programs and technology have changed drastically in the last several years. Below are a few key trends and insights that emerged from our CMMS Score Survey, as well as the data that supports them.
In a Connected World, Mobility Rises
The need to remain connected to maintenance operations from anywhere has increased. Maintenance personnel are now seeing the value of having maintenance data at their fingertips via a tablet or smartphone. This “always on” capability empowers maintenance managers and staff to manage tasks more effectively and work more efficiently.
For the first time, we are seeing a greater percentage of organizations using a mobile maintenance management solution than those not using one. In our first CMMS Report published in 2016, just 24% of respondents were using a mobile CMMS. In 2021, more than 60% of organizations are now using a mobile solution.
Preventative Maintenance (PM), Overtakes Reactive Maintenance
In 2021, most organizations are now performing more preventative maintenance than reactive maintenance. This is an enormous increase from 7 years ago when the number was just 36%. The uptick is significant because organizations that perform more preventive maintenance also report greater cost savings on their maintenance technology investment.
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Increased CMMS utilization correlates to increased ROI
Over the last several years, we have seen an increase in organizations that are effectively utilizing maintenance management software to improve their operational processes.
This is an important upward trend as there is a strong correlation between an organization’s technology utilization and ROI. In fact, the top performing organizations report savings of up to millions of dollars when asked to quantify the value of their investment.
“Now we can confidently say we’ve attained over 70% proactive maintenance and are well on track to achieve our overall goal of 85%.” -Trinchero Family Estates
Trinchero Family Estates’ fragmented maintenance and inventory systems could not keep pace with growth in the industry and organization, or with its expanding maintenance teams. Decentralized, manual tools lacked cohesive processes for tracking assets across departments, led to work order inefficiencies and duplicate orders, and caused difficulties scheduling technicians and running meaningful reports.
“By providing us with the tools to optimize our facilities, fleet and bottling equipment, Accruent allows us to deliver the highest quality product to our customers and remain a leader in the industry.” - Chris Tremblay, Bottling Maintenance Manager
Benchmarks & ROI
Organizations that successfully implemented maintenance management technologies achieved the following benchmarks:
- 57% Improved system reliability and reduced downtime
- 53% Extended equipment lifespan
- 59% Improved customer satisfaction
- 60% Improved work scheduling and labor efficiency
- 41% Improved parts availability and time to fix
- 61% Improved visibility of maintenance and performance metrics
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Avoid Backlogged Work Orders with Improved Inventory Management
Inventory management is one of the most significant struggles for organizations participating in our survey. Roughly 61% are not adequately managing inventory and parts in their maintenance management solution.
This results in two common pain points: 1) backlogged work orders due to out-of-stock inventory and 2) inaccurate and disorganized databases of inventory.
These pains can be addressed by integrating inventory and parts management with a CMMS or other maintenance management solution. Our research reveals a strong correlation between the use of inventory management capabilities and improved parts availability and repair time.
Increase Labor Efficiency with Mobile Technology
What is also striking is the impact of mobile maintenance solutions on labor efficiency. 93% of organizations that have their entire staff using a mobile solution also realize strong-to-maximum improvements in labor efficiency. Plus, mobile maintenance solutions allow managers to get away from their desks to survey offices, contractors and building upkeep.
Increase Reliability with Improved Work Order Tracking
The success of a department’s operations is highly dependent on how well a team can track, distribute and analyze work orders.
Research indicates that using software to manage work orders and service requests improves visibility into maintenance information and performance metrics. These insights can then be leveraged to enable continuous improvement and greater reliability.
Simplify KPI Reporting
Maintenance and facility managers are often faced with the task of preparing quarterly reports for building owners, ERP managers, and other stakeholders. Surprisingly, 60% of organizations are not making significant use of the reporting capabilities in their maintenance management solutions.
This is a missed opportunity, as there is a clear correlation between the use of reporting capabilities and improved visibility into maintenance information and performance measurement.
Optimize Scheduling and Labor Assignments
Managing work orders in a CMMS also corresponds with improved work scheduling and labor efficiency. This makes it easier to effectively manage labor assignments, distribute work orders to contractors, and forecast time needed to fulfill work orders.
Increase Customer Satisfaction
When service requests are managed in a CMMS, there is a strong correlation with improved customer satisfaction. Not only does software support a better organized and smoother work order process, but it also supports effective decision making (e.g. correctly defining the hierarchy of work orders) that leads to a superior customer experience.
Improve Labor Efficiency with Training
Accruent Professional Services offers progressive training programs that promote success in
your organization by improving the effectiveness of your employees.
With every implementation, Accruent provides product and process training, covering key
application functions and usage guidelines for each application component, delivered by
resources familiar with your industry and business needs.
We understand that each customer’s training needs may vary, so our team is happy to work
with you to develop an individualized training plan to fit your business.
Accruent CMMS is used by more than 10k customers in 150 countries and is a leading provider across industries, helping maintenance organizations achieve their potential. With every implementation, Accruent provides product and process training, covering key application functions and usage guidelines for each application component, delivered by resources familiar with your industry and business needs.
We understand that each customer’s training needs may vary, so our team is happy to work with you to develop an individualized training plan to fit your business.
Request more info about our CMMS solution today.
