With each passing day, more and more organizations are relying on computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) to identify assets at the highest risk of failure, project maintenance costs accurately and prioritize maintenance tasks accordingly. Computerized maintenance management systems were mainly popular in the manufacturing sector almost two decades ago, but at present, they are becoming common in almost every sector such as hospitality, healthcare, food and beverages, retailers, and education because they can significantly improve work efficiency and reduce overall costs.
Let us look at some essential features of CMMS.
5 Must-Have CMMS Features
If you are planning to implement facility maintenance software in your facility, make sure that these five CMMS Features are present in it.
- Maintenance Request Portal
If the process of submitting maintenance requests is inconvenient, it will discourage employees from submitting the requests altogether. If you don’t have a maintenance request portal in place to gather and respond to maintenance requests, you may end up overlooking urgent requests and these unresolved issues can turn into massive problems if they go unnoticed for too long.
Having a simple maintenance request portal in EAM can save you time and allow your employees to effortlessly submit requests as and when necessary. It will also ensure that the requests are not missed and accelerate the time it takes to complete them.
- Preventive Maintenance
When you have preventive maintenance in place, you can get a bird’s-eye-view of all the facilities and locations to make sure that effective preventative care is scheduled in accordance with all standard operating procedures. When you don’t track and maintain your equipment carefully, you will run the risk of having a number of production errors, asset damage or work injuries.
When you have preventative maintenance tools such as automatic triggers, email integration, reminders, equipment information, and auto-assigned tasks, you can significantly streamline the organizational process. Having preventive maintenance software in place will be less expensive as compared to paying for damaged equipment repair or replacement.
- Asset Management
An efficient and successful business relies on two things —organizational equipment and assets. Not only do they help in producing products but they also serve customers and deliver value. Any kind of equipment failure will have the capability to affect your business. Losing the asset, misplacing them or asset theft are other factors that will greatly affect the performance and value of a company’s assets. Tracking these metrics will help you significantly. Some of the features that you can include in your equipment and asset management software are:
– Repair history
– Access to images, warranty info, meter readings
– Floor plan management
- Track Inventory
You can remain stocked with critical assets and items with the help of inventory management. Traditionally, companies would use Excel and various spreadsheet programs for tracking inventory and while they were effective in numerous ways, they lacked the necessary features to comprehensively manage and track inventory in real-time. Having a robust CMMS solution will help in tracking inventory, generating inventory reports and automating the purchase of parts and supplies.
Many CMMS solutions offer the ability to automatically send important alerts and updates to relevant personnel in your organization. This feature will ensure that you always have the required parts when necessary and that you won’t have to waste time waiting for parts to arrive that are needed to repair the equipment.
- Mobile CMMS
Mobile devices have become an indispensable part of every individual and business. If your CMMS solution does not offer full mobile compatibility as a competitive option for modern maintenance management, you will lose out on a lot. It is not uncommon to have facility maintenance and inventory maintenance issues occur in real-time, which makes it critical that you have access to your data from a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. This will make it possible to stay on top of issues at any time of day, regardless of your location. Ensure your vendor provides a responsive mobile web interface or a native mobile app.
NEXGEN CMMS implementation will help you shift focus from having expensive reactive maintenance to proactive maintenance that is quite affordable. Take your operations to the next level by investing in a maintenance management software solution that is perfect for your business requirements.