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A business owner's guide to modern maintenance software

Managing a business of any scale is a difficult task. Managing operations, costs, sales, distribution, and people is a time-consuming endeavor. Due to the busy day-to-day operations of a business, we often tend to forget the maintenance of equipment and devices used in business. This usually happens as maintenance is not an immediate requirement and can move up or down a bit.

But this general tardiness can compound the prevalence of lax maintenance practices in your business. This can lead to machine failure and accidents which could destroy property and even injure and hurt your employees. Every business owner must be vigilant in following the maintenance schedule religiously. Modern maintenance software can be a great help in that regard.

Benefits of Modern Maintenance Software

Business owners can use and implement modern maintenance software to manage all maintenance activities concerning their business. This offers many advantages to business operations and alleviates tasks for the business owner. Some of the benefits business owners can expect from the use of modern maintenance software are listed below.

Automated maintenance

Modern maintenance software helps to automate all maintenance tasks for the business. It also assists in creating maintenance schedules with ease. Business owners can completely rely on CMMS to handle all maintenance-related tasks they require.

Work order management

Implementing maintenance software eliminates the need for pen and paper methods of creating, recording, and executing work orders. Now everything can be done with maintenance software and eliminates the tedious paperwork, sorting, and file system management.

Real-time monitoring

Business owners can access the real-time information of all business assets. As all equipment and machinery is part of CMMS systems the information is updated regularly. All modern maintenance software has cloud support enabling access to the information round the clock from anywhere.

SOP and checklists

All processes of your business have standard operating procedures (SOP). This can be converted to checklists that can be consulted and maintained when the processes are executed. Maintenance software can handle SOPs and checklists and they can be accessed by employees on any device.

Preventive and predictive maintenance

With artificial intelligence technology, predictions can be made of potential machine breakdown. This is possible as the maintenance software is collecting real-time data continuously. The predictions about machine failure can be used to take intervening maintenance procedures to avoid such eventualities.

Tracking KPI

Tracking key performance indicators is an important part of enterprise asset management (EAM). Modern maintenance software can be used to track the relevant KPIs in real-time. This helps the business owner to be on top of the operational efficiency of his business.

Hallmarks of Good Maintenance Software

When selecting a maintenance software, business owners have to consider many factors. These depend upon the needs of the business, cost concerns, and availability. Some of the key factors to be considered before choosing maintenance software are discussed in the following sections.

These depend upon the needs of the business, cost concerns, and availability.

Cloud technology

The maintenance software should have cloud support. This helps to have access to the data from the software from anywhere in the world. Cloud technology comes with many advantages that are simply not possible with the on-site implementation of the software. As things stand, maintenance software hosted on the cloud will be cheaper than other alternatives. It is best to opt for maintenance software that supports cloud technology.

Cross-platform support

The software should be accessible from any device. This includes all operating systems and form factors. It is best if the application can also be accessed from any device. With this business owners can implement bring your own device (BYOD) policies in the workspace.

Portability

The business owner should be able to move from one maintenance software to the other. In most instances, vendors design their products in such a manner that the data cannot be ported to another software solution. This vendor lock-in is not desirable for business owners. With users locked to their software, the vendors have the ability to increase prices indiscriminately. Make sure the maintenance software you go with has an open architecture, standards, and protocols.

Cost

Cost is always a concern for a business owner while purchasing a product or service. The maintenance software with the lowest cost is most desirable. But keep in mind that sacrificing necessary features and functionalities is not the best idea in the long run. Shortlist all the available software that has the features that your business requires and go with the most cost-efficient out of them.

Implementing Maintenance Software

Introducing a new piece of management software is bound to bring disruptions in the regular operations. The implementation of maintenance software has to be considering multiple aspects and stakeholders of your business.

The existing systems need not be overhauled overnight. Implement maintenance software for one machine or a department. This is relatively easier to implement and will cause minimal disruptions. Monitor the progress of the implementation in the small section. Gather feedback from the various stakeholders on the implementation. This gives a glimpse of the challenges in implementation.

Use the lessons gained from the initial rollout to change the tactics in implementing maintenance software. After the initial rollout for one department, the software can be scaled up to manage the maintenance of a complete building. The implementation needs to be evaluated once again after each subsequent rollout. A step-by-step approach has to be adopted to implement maintenance software on an enterprise scale.

Final thoughts

Managing maintenance activities of businesses has undergone a great change with the introduction of maintenance software. This outsources a significant chunk of responsibility of the business owners and managers. The automated and intelligent maintenance software brings many benefits for business operations. Care has to be taken in selecting the right maintenance software and the proper implementation. Once that is accomplished, the maintenance software will provide peace of mind for business owners.

Bryan Christiansen is the founder and CEO of Limble CMMS. Limble is a modern, easy-to-use mobile CMMS software that takes the stress and chaos out of maintenance by helping managers organize, automate, and streamline their maintenance operations.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Limble CMMS .