Maintaining databases of maintenance operations is a colossal necessity of any organization that performs repair and maintenance of equipment, assets, and property. For long companies have relied on manual methods of tracking and record-keeping. But needless to say that these methods require devoting immense effort and time, yet lead to discrepancies quite often. Real-time access to data, auto-syncing of data, multi-departmental collaboration upon the data, information security, transparency are hard to achieve through manual data-keeping. Recognizing this, organizations are switching to CMMS, also referred to as computerized maintenance management software. Manufacturing units, facilities, hospitals, fleets, HVAC, or any other equipment and assets maintenance service providers can use these software suites, not just to maintain a computer database about their maintenance operations, but also to efficiently utilize that data for making timely and informed decisions.

What is the advantage of having CMMS software?

The foremost benefit of a CMMS suite is that it incorporates data-driven culture into the maintenance operations of an organization enabling the management to make informed decisions such as:

• Calculating the repair costs of a machine breakdown
• Estimating the schedules for preventive maintenance
• Better allocation of the resources
• Track the assigned and complete tasks in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Not just that, many modules and features of these software suites can be made available to the on-field maintenance workers through their mobile devices and help them do their jobs more effectively. Using the software, the field workers can better utilize the organizational data to perform their maintenance roles more efficiently. For instance, they can determine which equipment requires maintenance or in which storeroom they can get the spare parts needed for a particular maintenance operation.

What are the core components or functionalities of a CMMS maintenance software?

Apart from supporting high-end equipment data management, a CMMS suite offers multiple functionalities to improve maintenance management operations. For instance, the software helps with preventive and predictive maintenance, work order system, scheduling/planning of maintenance jobs, vendor management, inventory control, budgeting, status reports and documentation, asset tracking, data analysis. the more sophisticated the software, the more extensive and smart are its analytical capacities.

How a CMMS suite function?

Organizations need to assess their maintenance management needs and accordingly identify a CMMS suite that has the appropriate functionalities. As most of the CMMS software developers take up product-customization, so if required, organizations can always ask for need-specific customization in a CMMS suite to enhance its capacities. Once the right CMMS suite has been finalized, organizations can choose to host it either in a cloud-based server or in their on-premise server.

After implementing the CMMS maintenance software into the maintenance process, it functions as an all-in-one platform that captures the maintenance service requests and regulates the entire service cycle. The manager can check the requests, use the CMMS database to analyze the availability of the field workers, track their location proximity to the job site, check their time slots, and accordingly approve and allocate the service requests to them. The CMMS facilitated data-driven decisions, enable the manager to ensure that the job is assigned to the nearest available technician so that he can deliver the service at the earliest, and also that there are no scheduling conflicts. The CMMS continue recording data throughout the service cycle at different touchpoints, and thus build an informative history of the service or the equipment. Management can use this information to improve their services, like predicting the next service schedule for particular equipment, or meeting the specific service expectations of the clients, etc.

Conclusion The CMMS software does way the manual methods, thus reduces risks and bring-in more accuracy and transparency in the system. Also, banking on computerized maintenance management databases, communication can be automated, wherein automated reminders, notifications or updates can be sent to field workers, customers, and other stakeholders.