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What is Maintenance Management Software?
Maintenance management software, also known as maintenance software programs, offers businesses efficiency and accuracy unlike ever before. In recent years, clipboards and spreadsheets have given way to computerized maintenance management software, or CMMS, making effective management easier than ever. Maintenance software eliminates the uncertainties that can hold organizations back from reaching their business goals by enabling better-informed decisions. Maintenance management software continuously tracks the main components of the company, like key performance indicators (KPIs), and organizes that data on one interface. As a result, maintenance software can help companies succeed.
Impacts of Implementing Maintenance Software
Maintenance management software lets users see their business climate in real-time, so organizations can prioritize the things that matter most.
With maintenance management software, the business represented in this graphic lowered costs between 12% and 18% by making decisions based on KPIs.
Common Maintenance Management Software
The Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS)
Elite maintenance software gives flexibility to users by streamlining inefficient processes such as inventory management, recordkeeping, and regulatory compliance. A CMMS serves as an online central location for data related to assets and maintenance activities.
To learn more about a CMMS, head to our What is a CMMS? explanation page.
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
EAM encompasses everything that CMMS does and more. It is a maintenance management software program that tracks data and shows users if their assets are safe, healthy, and functioning.
EAM is different than CMMS. Instead of strictly focusing on the operational components of an asset’s lifespan, EAM manages an asset’s full lifecycle. That includes design, installation, maintenance, and decommissioning.
To learn more about an EAM, head to our What is EAM? explanation page.
Which Industries Use Maintenance Management Software?
All organizations and businesses with physical assets can realize the benefits of CMMS. Here at eMaint, we have clients in a wide range of industries, some being:
- Manufacturing
- Facilities
- Transportation and fleet
- Oil and gas
- Warehousing and distribution
- Food and beverage
- Government
- Education
- Healthcare
Who Uses Maintenance Management Software within Organizations?
Maintenance management software provides benefits to maintenance teams within an organization or business. By tracking and trending asset performance data over time, your team can spot issues, perform inspections, and conduct root cause analysis. Root cause analysis is a broad term encompassing the techniques used to identify what is behind problems. Maintenance software organizes data to determine what contributes to a failure and helps prevent it from happening again. A CMMS increases efficiency while improving communication through its elite level of tracking and organizing data essential to that business.
Maintenance software is also often efficiently managed through mobile apps, which let technicians access and record data wherever they are Centralizing, tracking, and analyzing maintenance tasks allows teams to gain insights over time and standardize and optimize processes. Managing businesses through paper or spreadsheets is outdated. Maintenance management software helps businesses maximize what they do to get where they want to be with intention.
Users often include:
Executives
- See up to date KPIs and reports
- Have a view into overall asset health
- Integrate maintenance software with other business tools
- Monitor spending and production
Managers
- Prioritize and schedule maintenance activities
- Assign work orders
- Streamline audit and reporting processes
- Identify staffing or supply issues
Technicians
- Complete work orders
- Record notes and images of asset condition
- Review asset history
- Reduce time spent on data entry
As shown above, many users benefit from the visibility that maintenance software provides. Departments within an organization also benefit from maintenance management software, for example:
Supply chain/inventory management creates a centralized database of inventory, even across multiple locations. Maintenance management software can automate orders for parts and supplies, ensuring that teams have what they need to do their jobs. They can also create reports detailing spending and identify possible savings. Integration options can simplify the process of working with vendors and reduce time spent entering data.
Finance/accounting can create better, more accurate budgets when armed with more data and insights. They can create and share reports on production, materials costs, labor spending, and more. Capital expenditure decisions involve large amounts of money or time, and these complex decisions are based on a multitude of factors. With more and better information available to them, organizations can make better decisions in the long run.
Human resources can ensure proper staffing levels, centralize and share training materials, and utilize productivity and communication tools. Tracking work hours and employee credential and qualification details are additional benefits to HR teams.
The Advantages of Maintenance Management Programs
Maintenance software programs both help automate and optimize maintenance operations, scheduling, costs, and much more.
Maintenance management programs are used with mobile devices, so users can easily view asset repair history and work order requests from almost anywhere. That helps make maintenance faster and better.
Some of the key benefits of maintenance management software include:
- Improving maintenance efficiency and effectiveness
- Increasing asset uptime and availability
- Reducing downtime and costs
- Streamlining and standardizing processes
- Tracking, trending, and sharing detailed data and insights
Maintenance software programs help your team move toward preventive maintenance, which is simply regularly-performed maintenance that reduces the chances of asset failure. It is performed while the asset is operational. This maintenance strategy is a step up from reactive maintenance, which is essentially performing maintenance in fire-fighting mode. With a preventive maintenance strategy, your team can plan, prioritize, and schedule maintenance activities and use your resources more effectively.
Automated alerts and alarms can help your team reduce their response times. This way, recurring problems can be spotted earlier and repaired quickly. Automated reports and notifications, such as those based on usage, help your maintenance team save time and improve asset health.
Analyzing raw data to glean insights is a powerful strategy. Maintenance management software can provide your team with insights and recommendations you can use and report out.
Choosing a Maintenance Management Program
With the many types of maintenance management programs that are available, how do you determine the best fit for your organization?
Here are few key things to keep in mind:
Maintenance goals and requirements
What does your team hope to achieve with a maintenance software program? What outcomes are necessary for success? What features does each option have, and how can they be tailored to your specific organization?
CMMS training and onboarding
No matter what software you choose, you will only be successful if you have buy-in from your team. Get input from a range of users to be sure everyone’s voices will be heard. Even the most easy-to-use tools can have a learning curve, so find out what CMMS software training is offered. You will want to ensure training is available on a start-up and an ongoing or as-needed basis.
Sign up for a free trial and start experiencing eMaint’s CMMS solution for yourself.
How to Calculate ROI for Maintenance Management Software
Maintenance management software is the key to reducing maintenance costs and improving asset lifespan.
Maintenance management software can help teams shift from a reactive to a proactive maintenance strategy by giving maintenance managers full visibility of their organizations’ assets.
But investing in maintenance management software is not a one-and-done purchase. The total cost of ownership involves both initial and ongoing costs, which makes calculating the return on investment (ROI) an important step of planning.
