Why a Custom CMMS Is a Game-Changer (by Industry)

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is software that centralizes all maintenance data within one simplified platform, allowing organizations to manage and oversee all of their assets across operations. A modern CMMS offers solutions for maintenance scheduling, 24/7 asset monitoring, inventory management, work order generation and comprehensive reporting.  

Using a CMMS allows your business to curate maintenance management to your liking, meet industry standards and regulations, and prevent consequential asset failures that can bring your operations to a halt. Regardless of your industry, a CMMS can maximize efficiency and reduce expenses. Businesses that leveraged a CMMS to implement a preventive maintenance strategy reported a reduction in machine downtime of 30 to 50 percent and extending machines’ lifespans by 20 to 30 percent, according to McKinsey.

But not all businesses have the same needs. That’s why a custom CMMS can be a game-changer in ensuring efficient operations, widespread team adoption and cost savings that all affect your bottom line. Here’s how.

How a Custom CMMS Works

Leveraging a custom CMMS provides maintenance teams with flexibility to tailor the system and their maintenance strategy around their unique workflows. Rather than forcing your team to adapt to rigid software, a customizable CMMS grants your team the ability to rename fields, adjust forms and build task workflows that mimic the way your team actually works and your industry requires. 

Whether you’re managing work orders across facilities, scheduling preventive maintenance or tracking asset performance, you can organize your dashboard, workspaces and reporting structure to fit your day-to-day needs. Adaptation of your software eliminates friction, simplifies adoption and creates transparency that holds your team accountable to ensure no critical tasks are missed. 

For example, a maintenance manager can create custom priority labels, set up unique approval chains and assign location-specific tasks without reliance on an IT team. And with a system’s intuitive nature that is built around your specific operations, your maintenance team won’t need extensive education to learn the software and can instead prioritize problem-solving and maintaining your assets.

In short, it’s all-in-one maintenance software that adapts to you, not the other way around.

Customizations by Industry

Your specific industry faces its own unique challenges, regulations and needs for your maintenance software solution. Fortunately, customization allows you to build your CMMS to suit your specific needs for your core assets. 

From the food service industry to the public sector, here are real-life use cases for integrating a CMMS into your day-to-day operations to maximize efficiency and save on expensive repair costs:

Manufacturing

Working in manufacturing comes with a large quantity of complex machinery, tight production deadlines, and significant national and local compliance requirements, making the need for software customization absolutely vital. Maintenance managers can leverage a custom CMMS software like Coast to tailor their workflows, fields and reporting structures to reflect the unique needs of their facility. They can automatically assign specific preventive maintenance tasks for specific machinery based on age, usage or level of importance, ensuring that issues are identified and addressed before breakdowns occur. 

Before using Coast, Canton, Ohio-based manufacturer Solmet Group treated all of its equipment equally, with a one-size-fits-all approach to maintenance. This approach meant that the leadership team had no clear picture of how each of their assets was performing. But now each asset has its own schedule, manuals, photos and QR codes for instant access via mobile devices. Their team went from vague, floating work orders to:

• Completing work orders five times faster, with one to two-day turnarounds. 
• Creating custom fields and search filters tailored to their operations that are actively evolving with their needs.
• Better prioritizing their most vital equipment, avoiding costly breakdowns that could drastically hurt their production schedule and bottom line. 

Lisa Bosworth, who leads quality and continuous improvement for the company, summed it up best: “We’ve been able to optimize our maintenance scheduling and decrease downtime with this more comprehensive preventive maintenance strategy.” 

Hospitality

Delivering a flawless guest experience is the most important thing hospitality businesses do, meaning they need to stay ahead of maintenance issues before they disrupt a guest’s stay. A custom CMMS gives hospitality teams the tools they need to design custom workflows around what matters most, from managing room inspections to tracking utilities across unique spaces. Whether you’re operating a boutique hotel or an off-grid glamping resort, a flexible platform helps streamline operations, cut through manual processes and hold your staff accountable.

At Open Sky Zion, a luxury glamping resort near Zion National Park, maintenance used to be tracked in spreadsheets that ballooned into thousands of lines of disorganized data. As the resort scaled from three to 13 luxury camps, plus a restaurant and lobby, the complexity became impossible to manage. “Our spreadsheets got really complex, and it became hard to read and report data,” said Guest Experience Manager Tomas Feichtinger. 

That changed with Coast. Open Sky customized Coast’s CMMS to fit how they actually operate, with changes that included:

• Establishing each campsite in the system as its own separate space instead of treating the whole property as one big area.
• Setting up QR codes for real-time work orders and inspections.
• Creating centralized SOPs that every department could access. 

The end result? Efficient reporting, better decision-making and improved guest experiences. As Feichtinger noted, “Consolidating information is huge for us, so anytime we can do that and have a user-friendly interface for that data is going to be a win in our book.”

Property Management

With dozens of properties to manage or more, property managers need customization to properly maintain the specific needs of each unique building. CMMS personalization gives property management teams the ability to tailor their workflows by property type, tenant needs and inspection protocols. 

For example, iTrip Annapolis operates 75 short-term rentals. Maintenance and inspection managers Greg Hudson and Jason Junge use Coast to manage all of their daily tasks, from cleaning checklists to regulatory inspections. Each property is set up with its own distinct profile, including photos, maintenance histories and even notes on mechanical systems, so the team can quickly locate and address issues.

Checklists are customized per unit, ensuring inspections meet the specific standards of each location. Jason notes that this consistency has helped cut down on guest complaints and improve service. Coast’s automated parts inventory tracking also alerts the team when guest supplies are running low to keep check-ins smooth. And because everything is accessible by mobile, work orders and inspections can be submitted, completed and reviewed in real time. “Everything’s instant. As soon as an inspection is done, I get notified so I can check if there’s an issue.” 

That level of visibility and customization is key for growing property portfolios without sacrificing quality.

Restaurants

Restaurants run on speed, consistency and reliability, which makes CMMS customization a game-changer for operators managing multiple locations, vendors and equipment types. With Coast, restaurant teams can build workflows that reflect the reality of their daily operations: tracking equipment issues in real time, storing repair instructions with photos and creating custom fields for common restaurant equipment like ovens, fryers and HVAC systems.

That’s exactly how The McCluskey Group, a multi-unit Tim Hortons franchisee, transformed its maintenance process. Before using Coast, the team had a lot of downtime as a result of tracking maintenance in spreadsheets, with no easy way to log or prioritize equipment failures. Coast’s adaptable software allowed them to set up live issue tracking, automated work orders and equipment-specific notes, cutting maintenance expenses by 50 percent in the first year.

Now, anyone from a team member to the company president can report an issue instantly. “Instead of being down for two days, we’re back up and running within a few hours,” Director of Operations Tara Lee-Hendrycks explains. “Less downtime means more opportunity for driving sales.”

Coast even helped them scale from 10 to 33 restaurants with ease. “It truly simplifies our lives,” Lee-Hendrycks adds. “And now that we’ve had it for so long, we take it for granted. We do everything in it.”

Government

Public works and city maintenance teams face the unique challenge of managing dozens of buildings, aging infrastructure and limited budgets, all while justifying their value to stakeholders. Personalization of their CMMS allows these teams to craft maintenance workflows by building, asset type or department to ensure that no request gets lost, every resource is accounted for and workers are held accountable to get critical projects completed.

Matt Butler, facility foreman for the facility division of the City of Dallas, Oregon, oversees 26 buildings across 1 million square feet. Before using Coast, there was no software or structure, just a file of deferred tasks and guesswork on what needed fixing. But with Coast, Butler customized the system to log, schedule and prioritize work orders like a doctor’s office. Tasks that used to take weeks are now handled in a day or two. “Now, I can triage work requests on a city-wide level,” he says. 

He also built checklist templates and added site-specific information to work orders, helping techs like Aristo complete jobs faster in the field. Coast’s reporting features allowed Butler to finally prove the team’s workload and secure budget increases for fleet vehicles and staff. “If it’s your first software, it’s really easy to dip into,” Butler says. “And Coast is willing to build what you need.”