What Is Maintenance Management Software?
Maintenance management software helps organizations maximize operational efficiency by centralizing, managing, and optimizing all asset and facility maintenance activities in one platform. Specifically, it can streamline maintenance processes, such as repairs, so maintenance technicians are more productive. It also dramatically improves asset performance and ensures safety and compliance while decreasing unplanned downtime and costs.
Today, there are many types of facility management software and asset tracking software to choose from depending on your business needs:
- A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). This type of software focuses on asset and facility maintenance throughout the operations phase of the asset lifecycle.
- An enterprise asset management (EAM) system. This solution facilitates asset management throughout the entire lifecycle, e.g., from commission and procurement to operations, maintenance, disposal, and replacement.
- An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. An ERP manages day-to-day activities and data flow between departments such as accounting and manufacturing.
- New and emerging technologies. This is software that uses sensors, 3D printing, or the industrial IoT for remote monitoring.
Many modern and full-featured maintenance software programs today contain functionalities of all these facility and asset management tools.
How Can CMMS Maintenance Management Software Benefit Your Business?
Pen and paper, Excel files, disconnected legacy systems. They are still widely used today and are causing recurring problems in maintenance management efforts.
- Reactive maintenance care 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 management software and tracking program can help your organization overcome these pain points by effectively managing work orders, automating scheduling processes, conducting maintenance tasks on mobile devices, and developing effective preventive maintenance strategies. Here is more on the benefits you can expect from using comprehensive maintenance management software:
Reduce Downtime
Stepping away from reactive maintenance work 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 standard operating procedures (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, work order, purchase order management, and preventive maintenance strategies. It can also cut day-to-day expenses, such as labor, inventory, 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, a 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 routine maintenance
- 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 longevity 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 fewer 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 management software can take time and dedication. Still, 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 Lists
- Work Order Management Tool
- Mobile Device Capabilities
- MRO Inventory and Spare Parts Management
- Maintenance Reporting and Dashboards
- Comprehensive Integrations
- Enterprise Asset Management
- Full-Featured Security
- Detailed Asset Repair History
- Maintenance Scheduling
Asset Tracking List
Maintenance Connection’s asset tracking system allows you to view all relevant asset details in 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 essential information – like past work orders, related images or documents, 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 –asset performance, labor productivity, maintenance activities, and inventory costs – can help you identify weaknesses, improve your processes and ultimately create effective preventive maintenance 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.
Detailed Asset Repair History
Comprehensive insight into the repair history of each asset can help you understand asset costs, predict when an asset will need maintenance, and make informed decisions about an asset’s value.
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 is a complete solution that helps industrial teams and plant technicians manage their plant’s health to decrease equipment downtime and effectively manage physical assets across devices and locations. This can ultimately reduce equipment failures, diminish maintenance costs, and more.
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Hospitality
An excellent guest experience in resorts and hotels requires that everything runs 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.
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Healthcare
Asset maintenance in the healthcare industry isn’t just about increasing effectiveness and lowering costs — it’s about patient safety. The best maintenance management software can help healthcare professionals reduce downtime on critical assets, minimize inventory stock out and overages, improve efficiency and ultimately facilitate patient care.
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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.
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Government
Government operations face many ongoing maintenance pain points, including disparate records, high downtime, out-of-control budgets, and poor asset management. Maintenance management tools and reports can help resolve these concerns by automating maintenance requests, generating data-driven reports, and more.
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Retail
A maintenance management system can help retail outlets and chains develop preventive maintenance schedules for all 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.
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