Back to the articles

How can you make better decisions with a CMMS?

How can you make better decisions with a CMMS?

Monday 11 may 2020

The perfect knowledge of its market, the quality of its products and services, the satisfaction of its customers, the management and the well-being of its employees constitute the success of any entrepreneurial project. To achieve this, it is essential to equip oneself with perfectly adapted tools. And for companies in the maintenance sector, this is obviously a modern Computerized Maintenance Management System or CMMS solution. 

> Why a CMMS?

The new challenges for maintenance service companies

The ongoing digital revolution is creating new challenges for maintenance providers, or should we say new opportunities.

But then what are these new challenges for maintenance service providers?

When well mastered, new technologies provide productivity gains, improved customer service quality and competitive advantages. Let's take 4/5G wireless networks and Cloud computing as examples. These major technical evolutions offer maintenance teams that have to intervene in a diffuse territory the possibility of permanently bringing the men in the field closer to the management and dispatchers in the office. 

All staff can now access data, collect more data and share it in real time, obviously while on the move. This information is instantly recorded, stored and centralized effortlessly. 

Nowadays, the use of digitalization instead of paper is essential to optimize the company's activity. Equipping yourself with CMMS software that integrates these technologies makes it possible to improve internal and external communication, to ensure the planning and follow-up of interventions, and also to facilitate invoicing and the management of quotes. 

Responding to growing customer expectations

Another key point that maintenance companies must now meet is the ever-increasing demands of customers. This is due in particular to the previously unknown level of information now available to everyone on the Internet. Customers can consult reviews, opinions, ratings, use service and product comparisons, and even access competing offers. 

The article Responding to growing customer expectations will provide you with solid elements of an answer.

As customers' negotiating power is more important than ever before, it has become essential for a service provider to differentiate itself by equipping itself with an innovative tool that offers the opportunity to be more responsive and to provide a higher quality service, in line with market demand. 

A modern and mobile CMMS application offers the possibility through its numerous functionalities :

  • To keep the customer informed throughout the processing of the intervention by sending notifications and/or e-mails
  • To send quotes by email or to put them online in order to share the follow-up workflow with the customer
  • Send invoices by e-mail and/or make them available via the CMMS platform

Perfectly meeting these new expectations will be a decisive competitive advantage for companies in the sector.

CMMS, the lever of your growth

To increase their competitiveness and their activity, maintenance professionals must now have the keys to respond to issues related to mass information management and the management of teams in the field. A mobile CMMS tool will offer them the ability to centralize this information and thus have an overview of their activity. The planning of interventions will be facilitated and internal communication improved. Teams can collect and share information at any time from their mobile phones and therefore access the information they need. 

What are the benefits of a CMMS? More details in the article: CMMS, the lever of your growth 

Equipping yourself with a suitable tool is a real growth lever for your company's activity and the management of your teams: saving time, freeing up resources, harmonising processes, being able to manage a mass of information, respecting deadlines and regulations, are the advantages you get when you have a CMMS. 

KPIs to achieve organizational objectives

In addition to analysing the opportunities and threats in its market, it is essential to measure and compare the internal performance of its services in order to understand how they work and what can and should be improved. Companies use statistical data to evaluate the effectiveness of their actions and help them achieve their objectives, these are Key Performance Indicators: KPIs. They are specific to each sector of activity and for maintenance, read How to set up your maintenance KPIs? You will find details of the major indicators for the sector: 

  • Intervention lead times
  • Resolution times
  • Preventive maintenance coverage rate
  • Preventive/curative ratio
  • Time spent on the road
  • Real time spent in intervention

Their implementation, easily made possible thanks to CMMS, will very quickly bring tangible decision-making elements to management in order to maintain and strengthen the company's competitiveness.

CMMS: 10 KPI to increase maintenance performance

To go even further, we have selected in this article a series of 10 indicators focusing on curative maintenance interventions. These indicators make it possible to assess the effectiveness of a maintenance department, a technical team, a technician in terms of responsiveness in handling and resolving incidents that occur on installations. This analysis is essential to understand how the maintenance service works and to discover areas for improvement. 

You will find here the details and the list of the 10 KPIs of curative maintenance.

With a CMMS application, the company can now create, measure and monitor its KPIs directly from the data recorded in the application and therefore act directly on these indicators. The performance of the maintenance teams is improved. 

Successful maintenance: the preventive/curative ratio

The maintenance teams divide their time between preventive and curative interventions. The preventive/curative ratio is a key point not to be neglected, it is important to be aware of it if you want to succeed in your maintenance and avoid unnecessary loss of time. By reading Successful maintenance: the preventive/curative ratio, this indicator will no longer hold any secrets for you.

Favouring a preventive maintenance strategy limits unforeseen equipment shutdowns, a considerable advantage that increases customer or user satisfaction. But maintenance teams also reap significant benefits. The proper management of preventive interventions, planned in advance, will limit the stress related to breakdowns, will generate a reduction in labour and travel costs, by avoiding unnecessary travel due to the reduction in the number of equipment breakdowns and by geographically grouping the interventions to be carried out.

Owning a CMMS offers the possibility of structuring maintenance operations through ranges and maintenance plans and having access to all the essential data to analyze this preventive/curative ratio, in order to implement the most appropriate strategy for the activity that will ensure cost reduction and time savings. 

The Cloud at the service of employees

In recent years, CMMS software solutions have integrated the cloud into their operating mode. A technology that both centralizes and shares information at previously unknown levels. These latest-generation applications thus provide considerable assistance to managers in the management of their activity, while offering greater autonomy to technicians. Technicians have the information they need at their fingertips at all times and can collect and share new information in real time, on the move, from the field. 

Cloud at the service of employees? reminds us how, in the maintenance sector, empowerment and autonomy are essential to reinforce the motivation of an entire technical team. Easy access to information and rapid generation of new information is a challenge of transparency, traceability and responsibility that stimulates employees and which CMMS using the Cloud now make it possible to meet.

OUT OF ORDER! SHOULD IT BE REPAIRED OR REPLACED?

Out of order! Should it be repaired or replaced? This is a puzzle that all maintenance departments must answer. The decision must be made quickly and must take into account all the parameters: average downtime, replacement cost, downtime, depreciation of the technical asset, etc. Without a CMMS holding all of this information, capable of analysing it and instantaneously returning it to the decision-maker, there is no salvation. The article Breakdown! Should it be repaired or replaced? describes more. Enjoy reading!

 

By the way, our ambition is to offer an unparalleled user experience. Check it out right away: try CMMS for free. Within 2 minutes, the time it takes to create your account, you'll discover what's newest in this category of software.

You can also benefit from a demonstration led by one of our consultants: book a videoconference

Good discovery and see you soon!

 

📰 You will also be interested in reading:

    Why a CMMS for property maintenance?
    Why a CMMS for industrial maintenance?
    CMMS and regulatory controls in Europe
    Implementing your CMMS
    Digital technology at the service of maintenance

 

Back to the articles