blog_img-6-2023-04-27

Choosing the Right Operations CMMS | 5 Key Criteria

The Right Facility Operations Management System will Improve Director Level Visibility and Improve a Technicians Work Order Accuracy.

Implementing the right asset and maintenance management system will prove to be one of the best operational decisions you can make to improve your bottom line. Today roughly 50% businesses and local governments are currently using a maintenance management system to help streamline workflows.

Using a CMMS to track preventive maintenance alone can save 12-18% of the cost usually associated with repair costs and reactive maintenance.

- U.S. Department of Energy

Are you looking for a system to simply keep track of maintenance requests, or something more robust? An Enterprise Asset Management system can keep an inventory of all your equipment, assets, and spare parts and sends alerts out when preventive maintenance work orders need to be performed. Choosing the right system will improve team communication, reduce errors, and allow for visibility of work order status.

Let’s look at 5 key criteria to consider when choosing a CMMS for your company:

Ease of Use

Remember when your company invested in that new copier. You could do anything with that bad boy – large 12×18 prints, folding, stapling, 400 pages per minute… you name it. It had all the bells and whistles. But when it came to usability, people have a hard time figuring out how to use the darn thing.

Look for powerful simplicity when in your search for a CMMS system. Is the software interface intuitive and workflow natural? Can you turn off any extraneous information? The system of choice should be able to be adopted by all departments.  If technicians find the system difficult to learn, they will not adopt it. Directors and Managers should be able to manage maintenance budgets and organize depending on priority. Usability also applies to visibility. Directors who are responsible for multiple sites need to easily see and compare cost and productivity across the site portfolio. To that end, it is best practice to involve users at all levels in the process of choosing the right CMMS for your needs.

Mobility

If you are currently using a paper or spreadsheet system for reporting and tracking work orders, you are burning time, money and compromising safety and efficient operations of your facility. It’s time to unchain your team from their binders and loose papers by implementing a mobile maintenance management system.

Mobilization of key applications enables organizations to save or recover a daily average of 44 minutes per employee.

- Frank Rizzo, Sr. Director at Motorola

A mobile CMMS will allow a technician to complete maintenance tasks by giving him real-time equipment information, access to documents and maintenance history. Imagine the footsteps a technician will save by using a mobile system.  No more back and forth to get information. Now they will be able to check parts availability, initiate parts orders and update work order status on the go.

Scalability

Is the software solution scalable enough to grow with your company? The system with fits you now might not fit you five to ten years down the road. A CMMS is an investment. Make sure the system allows you to add additional features if they are needed. Maybe you want to roll out your CMMS at only one site, but you need the ability to add other sites in the future. Make sure this process is easy to make happen.

Reporting Flexibility

One of the most important functions of a CMMS is it’s reporting capabilities. Companies have a various reporting needs all levels of the organization. For instance, an Operations Executive responsible for multiple sites would want the ability to compare monthly maintenance spend of similar equipment at each site. Where as a supervisor would be interested in the average repair time of a particular asset. Look for flexible and configurable reporting capabilities when shopping maintenance systems.

Excellent Service and Support

A reputable CMMS software vendor will provide all the necessary service and support to make sure implementation is successful. You should expect thorough training, support and timeframes throughout the implementation process.

Training can take form as online video support, on-site training, and group classroom style sessions. The costs for these items should be clearly defined by the vendor. Once implementation has taken place, it is natural of people to have questions. Most vendors will have a 24 hour support department that can help to quickly resolve issues.

Improved Facility Performance begins with the right Operations Management Software. Get there with Transcendent.

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