What is Maintenance Management Software?

By Michael Mills, Technical Solutions Manager at Fluke Reliability
Updated: July 16, 2025 • Originally Posted: 2021 • 10 min read 

What is Maintenance Software?

Maintenance software, which often refers to Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) software, is used to track, organize, and report on maintenance activities. Maintenance management software helps with planning and organizing maintenance work and increasing efficiency, uptime, and asset lifespan.

How does it work? Maintenance software saves you time on manual paperwork. Your team is connected – on their desktops, or in the field with a mobile app. And this eagle-eye view of your maintenance operations gives you the power to defeat downtime: preventing failures before they happen. The best maintenance software ultimately boosts your key performance indicators (KPIs) like uptime, OEE, or MTBF, and reduces costs across your organization.

But really, what is maintenance software? CMMS software and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software are the most common types. You’ll find many teams using free tools, small systems, or even Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP) maintenance modules, but nothing compares to a CMMS or EAM.

Here’s an example of how maintenance management software works…

• Let’s say you’re a global manufacturer like SKF. You need one maintenance strategy to rule them all. But everyone is siloed – pen and paper, different systems, varied software. You need a solution…
• Enter maintenance software. SKF gains the ability to use a “Golden Master Template,” streamlining data consistency, tracking work in the field with a mobile app, and supercharging their global deployments of new maintenance programs.
• Results: SKF standardized maintenance and reduced downtime across 81 facilities and 76,000 assets with eMaint.

Read on to dive deeper: what are the key uses, types, advantages, and challenges that go along with maintenance systems?

And if you’re looking for a CMMS or EAM, what makes the best maintenance management software?

What is Maintenance Software Used For?

Boosting Uptime

How does maintenance software help? You can fire off a work order right away when critical assets go down, preventing downtime. Downtime is projected to cost manufacturers billions in costs in 2025. You can also plan ahead with preventive maintenance, find trends with reports, or use condition monitoring see failures coming.

Saving Time

How does maintenance software help? Your team doesn’t have to waste hundreds of hours a year going through paperwork. Work orders are automatically tracked, parts inventoried, asset history available in a few clicks. Everything you need is on a mobile CMMS or EAM app.

Cutting Costs

How does maintenance software help? Beyond reducing downtime costs, a maintenance scheduling software also simplifies inventory optimization: having critical spares on hand in emergencies, and reducing excess inventory. Take SCGC, for example, who saved $1 million with a CMMS. From vendor labor to regulatory fines, software is the key to controlling spend.

Connecting Teams & Processes

How does maintenance software help? Siloed teams slow things down. A software that gives you the power to snap a photo of a downed motor, fire off a work order, and share your experience with coworkers at seven other work sites, changes everything. Maintenance software also connects to your key systems: ERPs, Bis, SCADA, BMS, and more, giving you the full picture of asset health and costs.

Safety & Compliance

How does maintenance software help? Your maintenance management system is a hub for compliant workflows, security controls, and simplified audit prep. You can store SOPs and route work orders through calibration or quality for approvals. And come audit day, you can show off a dashboard or audit trail optimized for standards like FDA 21 CFR Part 11.

What are the Four Types of Maintenance Software?

1. Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS)

   • Summary: CMMS software is your classic, best-in-class maintenance management system, with work orders, inventory, asset management, reporting, condition monitoring, and helpful integrations.
   • Best for… Teams looking for maintenance-first, configurable systems built for them.

2. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

   • Summary: EAM software gives you most of what a CMMS does, with the addition of asset lifecycle management, from acquisition to asset health and end-of-life.
   • Best for… Enterprises who need global standardization and powerful asset orchestration.

Pro Tip: The best maintenance software does it all: it works as both a CMMS and EAM, combining the powers of specialized maintenance workflows with sophisticated asset management.

3. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

   • Summary: Your ERP is at the heart of your business activities, from purchasing to accounting and manufacturing processes.
   • Best for… Most big organizations need an ERP – but they aren’t always best for maintenance. An ERP lacks key maintenance functionality and so works best when integrated with a CMMS or EAM system.

4. Asset Performance Management (ERP)

   • Summary: APM software is focused on gathering real-time data to analyze asset performance and health.
   • Best for… Organizations who are laser-focused on asset performance and prioritize predictive maintenance capabilities.

Try Maintenance Software for Free

Ready to try out a maintenance system? Take a look at the following interactive walkthrough experiences for a free clickable tour.

• Mobile CMMS app tour
• Asset management tour
• Work order management tour
• Inventory management tour
• Global multi-site management tour

Who Uses Maintenance Tracking Software?

Maintenance Managers: “The Mastermind”

Managing work orders, creating processes, and reporting on KPIs. Maintenance managers do everything from overseeing technicians to building dashboards for metrics like mean time between failure (MTBF).

Operators: “The Client”

Production team members who are the first line of defense, firing off work requests when the equipment they’re operating goes down.

Maintenance Technicians: “The Do-er”

Making repairs, completing work orders, and keeping the world up and running.

Maintenance Schedulers: “The Planner”

Designing work schedules and planning out preventive maintenance – all optimized to reduce labor while maximizing impact.

Inventory: “The Armorer”

Equipping teams with the critical spare parts they need: always on hand, never out of budget.

Reliability Engineers: “The Investigator”

Going deep when it comes to asset health, criticality analysis assessments, maintenance metrics, and overall reliability.

Leadership: “The Visionary”

Senior managers, directors, and C-suite who have an eagle-eye view of maintenance KPIs and how they relate to global uptime, production efficiency, and costs.

Pro Tip: Your leadership team should be hands-on with your maintenance software. That way they see its value, see the great work you’re doing, and have a finger on the pulse of your uptime and reliability. Having a CMMS or EAM can also be the ultimate resume: great metrics can yield great rewards.

Advantages & Benefits of Maintenance Management Software

Why use maintenance software? Here are the benefits and advantages broken down by different CMMS/EAM toolsets.

Asset Management

• You get a detailed view of asset history with maintenance management software: a comprehensive asset hierarchy at your team’s fingerprints gives technicians the keys to success, from key notes to relevant parts and failure history.

Work Order Management

• A maintenance tracking software simplifies work orders, evolving you from stickies and spreadsheets to a centralized system. You can fire off work requests instantly, snap photos or fill out PM checklists in the field, and track work order completion with your mobile device.

Preventive Maintenance

• Maintenance scheduling software empowers you to plan out preventive maintenance (PM) work orders instead of firefighting downtime, freeing up time for the work that matters.

Inventory Management

• How can you manage hundreds or thousands of parts without a maintenance system? Parts inventory management makes purchasing, cycle counting, reordering, and much more a seamless process instead of a chore.

Reporting & Analytics

• A CMMS or EAM helps you go from guesswork to data-based decision making when it comes to managing global labor, inventory, and asset costs. Real-time dashboards can reveal your uptime, PM completion %, Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and much more. Maintenance reports can simplify audits and inspections.

Mobile

• Equip your team with a mobile maintenance management system software so they can work in the field and offline, improving work order completion and note quality across global teams.

Integrations

• Your maintenance software should unlock a connected reliability ecosystem, freeing you to connect maintenance data with your ERP, BI, or SCADA system.

Condition Monitoring & Predictive Maintenance

• Tomorrow’s maintenance programs are here, and they are founded on CMMS and EAM software that gives you the power to see failures coming with vibration sensors and AI-powered analysis, guided by experts.

How much could a maintenance management system save you? Let’s find out.

Challenges of Maintenance Management Software

We find that maintenance teams face similar challenges across industries. Look out for…

1. Implementation: Global, multi-site implementations are where most maintenance software providers fail. Many even don’t follow through with basic implementations. We know that only about 25 – 40% of CMMS implementations are successful. Choose a provider like Fluke with decades of experience in digital transformation – sticking it through the tough work of planning, training, adoption, and support.
2. Support & Training: You’ll find that many EAM providers don’t offer dedicated, in-house support. They outsource to 3^rd party teams. They don’t have people on staff who have spent their whole lives in the maintenance industry, like Fluke and eMaint. But we know that world-class support is the key to long-term success.
3. Standardization: Maintenance standardization is challenging even in the smallest and most organized teams – and when it comes to global, multilingual teams, standardizing work order procedures, failure codes, and much more can seem impossible. Make sure your provider has the vision necessary not just to get your maintenance software going, but also to get your teams working on harmony to impact standard KPIs.
4. Technology, Integration, Security: How well will your EAM or CMMS fit into your tech stack? You’re going to find out eventually – and it’s better to know now whether your software integrates with key systems like your ERP or BMS. Your IT team will also need to be confident that they’re working with top-notch security from a provider like Fluke.

Pro Tip: Your technology provider should have a technology trust center that demonstrates security, privacy and compliance. Are they compliant with standards like ISO 27001:2013, ISO 27001:2022, GDPR, or NIST 800-171? Do they provide resources, list subprocessors, and give updates?