Business automation is everywhere! With most businesses migrating from traditional spreadsheets to automated software, maintenance businesses are no exception. And by maintenance businesses I mean, facility and operations management businesses, or rather preventative maintenance businesses; with an objective of upkeeping client’s property, assets, stock, inventory, etc.; to ensure optimal efficiency and functionality.

At one-point maintenance businesses were fairly simple, using more reactive than preventive strategy, a line of work ensuring all assets and equipment were functional, and that’s about it.

However, with technological advancements and increase in competition, maintenance management is as much about efficiency as functionality; resulting in work orders to track, reports to generate and tabs to maintain (of multiple varied clients); a maintenance business has become more high maintenance than low maintenance in itself.

Which is why most maintenance businesses are opting for automation in the form of CMMS.

CMMS – Computerized Maintenance Management System, is a highly sophisticated software designed to help you organize, plan, track and simplify your business’s maintenance operations.

An ideal software for maintenance businesses; as it not helps you organize and plan maintenance operations, it also helps you track and simplify your maintenance efforts by facilitating the tracking of work orders and asset history, managing inventories, and generating reports.

(Source: A.T. Kearney’s and Industry Week’s survey of 558 companies)

In A.T. Kearney’s and Industry Week’s survey of 558 companies, 28.3% businesses reported increase in maintenance productivity, 20.1% reported reduction in equipment downtime, 19.4% reported savings in material costs and almost 17.8% reported reduction in maintenance inventory.

Clearly, automating with CMMS can boost your business’s productivity, reduce downtime and save money.

The following are eight ways that CMMS helps save time and cost for maintenance businesses:

Simplification and Organization

CMMS software are designed to automate business operations by having all maintenance data and information available on system dashboard.

A big relief for maintenance businesses considering piles of data and massive amount of information involved in carrying maintenance operations of multiple businesses.

So, no more looking through stacks of documents and files to dig through information. With CMMS you can access relevant data with a click of a mouse. Clearly, it helps maintenance businesses save time and energy.

A CMMS like Limble can help your company stay organized while cutting down on those 2 days of manual work time required to file and keep records.

Data Management

CMMS software has the capacity to manage large amounts of data, sorting it and managing it, making it easily accessible.

It can import manuals, pictures, maps and drawings to make fleet management more accurate; and it is also capable of building custom screens for management of your business.

It gives access to integrative floor plans and lets you view interactive order summaries, organizing and managing data for your business.

Mobile Access

Most modern CMMS are not only accessible through web but come with Android and IOS mobile apps.

This most definitely helps in better organization, communication, accountability and productivity throughout your maintenance team.

One can do so much from just a handheld device. This helps in reduction of downtime drastically, as one can immediately attend to a problem from anywhere via mobile. This can result in huge amount of savings in down time costs.

As 98% of businesses report that an hour of downtime costs more than $1,00,000; 81% say downtime costs their company over $3,00,000 per hour; 33% say downtime costs more than $1 million per hour.

Access to Real Time Data

We all often hear that time is money, this holds especially true in case of maintenance management businesses as a default or downtime of even one equipment can cause delay in the whole process and functioning of the facility.

However, this can be managed with CMMS as it allows access to real time data from anywhere at any time. Which means, you will not have to spend time in making phone calls, coordinating and assigning tasks to designated personnel.

Work orders can be submitted as soon as an issue is discovered, making it easy to dispatch and assign in one easy step.

Superb Analytical Capabilities

Now, most traditional spreadsheets have the ability to store and organize data, they most certainly lack analytical capabilities.

With CMMS, you have superb analytical capabilities at hand. It allows you to schedule preventative maintenance by generating instant work and labor utilization reports.

Most CMMS can produce real time metrics such as MTBR (mean time between repairs), MTBF (mean time between failures), MTTR (mean time to repair).

Easy Integration with other Software

A CMMS can save huge amount of money in errors, time and labor; by being in sync with your essential business utilities like email, barcodes and cameras.

It helps in specification, identification and coordination of even the minutest of defaults by thorough investigation made possible by being in sync with other software.

Preventative Maintenance Schedule

As already stated, a CMMS is all about Preventative maintenance rather than reactive maintenance. It helps in running a facility to its full potential by maintaining equipment and assets.

Prevention is the best strategy to minimize unforeseen break downs and failures of equipment. The strategy is to take care, to prevent an unanticipated break down.

And CMMS makes this happen, especially for maintenance businesses as it involves taking care of multiple assets and equipment of different businesses.

With CMS you can schedule routine tasks, sending reminders and generating reports for the same. It allows maintenance businesses to conduct regular preventative care, saving huge amount of money in repairs and replacements.

Business Projections

For any business to succeed, one has to think of future. And a futuristic approach is only possible if you can make some realistic business projections.

Well, this is where CMMS can help you. Along with all the above-mentioned benefits, a CMMS software allows maintenance businesses to make projections on the basis of actual data.

By reviewing operations and maintenance data, CMMS makes it possible for maintenance businesses to determine costs involved and assess risk of client businesses on the basis of projections.

Clearly, with the help of CMMS, maintenance businesses can make sustainable long-term decisions, generating revenues and maximizing profits.

All in all, CMMS has become an inevitable part of maintenance industry across the world, offering unmatchable benefits to maintenance businesses providing professional maintenance/ facility management services.

• Technology