Man doing metal working

CMMS for Maintenance Management

What is a CMMS?

A CMMS or computerised maintenance management system helps organisations track, schedule, and centralise their maintenance activities. Businesses use a CMMS to maximise equipment up-time, and avoid costly outages and breakdowns.

At its core, a CMMS features a robust database that organises information about essential assets, including equipment, materials, and resources. CMMS solutions provide a centralised platform for maintenance managers, technicians, and other stakeholders to plan, execute, and monitor maintenance tasks. CMMS supports various maintenance operations, such as reactive, planned preventive, and predictive maintenance.

What are the main features of a CMMS?

Due to the complexity of maintenance legislation, execution of maintenance work needs to be planned, monitored, and documented with great care. Computerised maintenance management systems support maintenance planners, engineers, and supervisors with tools and technology that ensure streamlined and compliant execution of work. Key CMMS functionalities include:

Key CMMS functionalities include:

Work order management

All generated maintenance work and job tickets should be stored in a central work order repository. This allows users to easily search for open, planned, or closed maintenance work by building, asset, engineer or any other relevant search criteria. For each individual work order, details such as status updates, time spent, materials used, documentation, follow-up actions, planned budget, and actual costs are registered and available for reporting.

The CMMS software allows engineers to easily access their individual work, update or close job tickets, or query relevant asset information or maintenance procedures and checklists.

Materials and inventory management

CMMS systems oversee the inventory, distribution, and restocking of equipment and materials across facilities. They facilitate supplier management, track inventory costs, and automate material resupply.

Scenario planning tools and graphical plan boards

CMMS systems include scenario planning tools and graphical plan boards. These help to visualise upcoming work and to optimise CMMS maintenance planning. Drag and drop functions allow you to move work, postpone activities, merge maintenance jobs or split them. The impact on workloads and budgets is recalculated and visualised immediately.

Resource planning and dispatch

CMMS software assigns maintenance teams or technicians to tasks based on people’s availability, workload, skills, and certifications. Once the work is planned and allocated, CMMS supports automatic dispatching to the applicable engineers by using workflow tools, automated job ticket creation, and mobile solutions. This increases the efficiency of planning and dispatch teams to ensure the right people are doing the right things when needed.

Health and safety workflows

Maintenance is essential to keep equipment, buildings, and the work environment safe and reliable. Inadequate maintenance can lead to dangerous situations, accidents, and health problems. Maintenance can be a high-risk activity that must be performed safely, with appropriate protection of maintenance workers.

Maintenance management software includes health and safety documentation, checklists, and workflows to comply with regulations and best practices that ensure maintenance teams follow approved processes. This ensures both a healthy workplace environment and the safe execution of maintenance work.

Mobile access to information from anywhere

A true mobile CMMS is designed to support mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, so maintenance personnel can access and update equipment and maintenance data while on the go. Access to CMMS applications for real-time information ensures your maintenance teams arrive on -time and fully prepared for the work ahead.

With mobile access, maintenance teams are able to manage work orders and material requests, view equipment performance histories, and follow workflow checklists to be sure that all work is completed according to expectations.


Real-time monitoring

Linking CMMS data with business intelligence-driven dashboards allow users to monitor and evaluate internal technician and service provider performance, ensuring they meet contracted service level agreements (SLAs), asset availability requirements, and service quality standards. CMMS dashboards give maintenance planners immediate insight into operations, potential risks, and deviations in work execution through:

  • Cost overviews that can be segmented by property, asset, contractor, order, or status
  • Maintenance performance overviews segmented according to SLAs and order criteria
  • Asset overviews segmented by type of asset, property, level of risk, number of faults, remaining warranty time
  • Stock overviews to understand what is on back order, what is available and where it is stored
  • Incident type overviews for insight into frequency of insight occurrences and opportunities for process improvement activities


IDC MarketScape recognises Planon as a world leader in CMMS software


IDC recommends Planon Asset & Maintenance Management to enterprise organisations that need a CMMS with an open platform strategy, extensive partner ecosystem, and strong facility management offerings. The IDC report highlights solution configurability, global reach, and customer service as differentiating strengths of Planon’s Asset & Maintenance Management solution.

Get the IDC MarketScape now!


What are the benefits of using CMMS systems?

CMMS software enables facility and maintenance teams to deliver the maintenance management strategy that is right for their organisation. Solutions are often configured to the needs of the organisation and provide benefits from digitising workflows to improving risk management and data analytics. Key benefits of modern CMMS solutions include:

Improved efficiency from centralised data storage

Everything can be stored in a central work order repository, which allows users to easily search for open, planned, or closed maintenance work tickets by building, asset, engineer, or any other relevant search criteria. For each individual work order, details such as status updates, time spent, materials used, documentation, follow-up actions, planned budget, and actual costs are registered and available for reporting.
Centrally stored job tickets cut down on administrative work required to collect information for invoicing, which reduces delays and improves cash management.

Increased access to information from anywhere

CMMS mobile apps allow engineers to easily access their assignments, update or close job tickets, capture relevant asset information or follow checklists, and record pertinent job data such as materials used or time spent working on a job ticket. A true mobile CMMS will have offline useability to enable technicians to access information when not connected to a mobile network or Wi-Fi.

Mobile maintance apps improve workflows and increase access to information, improving efficiency and first-time right fix rates.

Satisfaction from being able to measure what matters

CMMS software offers a broad range of maintenance dashboards and the ability to configure key performance indicators (KPIs) to analyse the effectiveness of maintenance programmes and investments. This ensures maintenance teams are able to align activities with strategic real estate goals such as reduction of energy consumption and carbon emission targets. This alignment increases the ability of the facilities and maintenance teams to show the value of their activities to the organisation.

Maintenance dashboards ensure your teams are meeting their KPIs, staying on budget, and getting the work done.

Increased cost savings from proactive maintenance activities

Reactive maintenance is costly due to its unplanned nature, often arising from unexpected asset failures. Time-based maintenance, planned around warranties and compliance requirements significantly reduce maintenance costs, but 40% of these activities are executed either too early or too late. A CMMS enables maintenance teams to use actual asset conditions and performance data to schedule tasks for when they are needed – just-in-time to prevent asset failure.

CMMS comparisons

CMMS solutions concentrate on maintenance tasks like scheduling, work order management, and tracking of maintenance equipment inventory. Here’s how they compare to other types of systems:

Trends in CMMS and AI integration

The integration of AI with CMMS is driving several key trends:

  • Predictive maintenance uses ML to forecast equipment failures, which in turn reduces downtime, emergency maintenance costs, and extends equipment lifespans.
  • Automated workflows streamline routine tasks such as inventory reordering, which increases efficiency and frees up human resources.
  • Prescriptive maintenance integrates generative AI into solutions to provide data-driven suggested actions derived from the analysis of maintenance data to improve inefficiencies.
  • AI-enhanced strategic asset management allows for better tracking and optimisation of complex asset ecosystems, improving overall asset performance, life-cycle management, and alignment with real estate objectives.


Getting started with CMMS

If you're ready to future-proof your operations with CMMS software, read our white paper to learn how a CMMS can help you make informed, rapid, and sustainable decisions. For guidance on getting the basics in place, book a personalised demo with Planon.

Getting a truly holistic view can help you avoid unnecessary maintenance and reduce associated costs. When combining your CMMS functionality within an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS), you can integrate your maintenance strategy with your real estate strategy, space occupancy initiatives, user behaviour analysis, and sustainability targets.

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