Why ‘Ease of Use’ Is the No. 1 Enterprise Feature in 2026

Most enterprise CMMS rollouts don’t fail because the software is broken. They fail because nobody uses it.

CMMS implementation failure rates range from 50 to 80 percent — and low user adoption is consistently cited as the primary cause. Not bugs, integrations or missing features. Technicians went back to spreadsheets, text chains and whiteboards. The investment died on the floor.

Enterprise buyers have started connecting those dots. Instead of asking “which CMMS has the most features?” procurement teams are asking a harder question: “Will our field technicians — the people who work in basements, docks and server rooms — actually open this app tomorrow morning?”

That shift to prioritizing ease of use is exactly why Coast earned the No. 1 spot on G2’s CMMS Usability Index for Spring 2026. And the data behind that ranking tells a larger story about what enterprise implementation success actually looks like.

The $75 Million Cost of a Slow Rollout

A CMMS implementation that drags on for months doesn’t just delay value — it actively drains it. Across enterprise software broadly, the numbers are sobering. According to research cited by Sci-Tech Today, 50 percent of enterprise software implementations are classified as a failure, abandonment or significant disappointment on the first attempt. Sixty-four percent of organizations exceed their original implementation budget, with cost overruns averaging 25 to 40 percent of the initial estimate. And the average mid-market deployment takes 18 months — roughly 30 percent longer than the internal timelines companies project at kickoff.

Those numbers reflect a dynamic that plays out in maintenance management software rollouts every week. Technicians who aren’t onboarded can’t log work orders. Managers who don’t trust the data keep running manual workarounds. Executives who approved the budget start asking uncomfortable questions at the six-month mark.

A 2024 SAP S/4HANA rollout for Zimmer Biomet, a global medical device manufacturer, offers a vivid enterprise-scale example. The implementation — projected to deliver hundreds of millions in operational benefits — experienced repeated go-live delays spanning more than two years. Following its eventual launch, the company attributed approximately $75 million in annual revenue impact to implementation-related shipment disruptions, according to court filings reviewed by Elevatiq.

That’s an ERP example at extreme scale. But the lesson applies directly to all maintenance operations. Every week a platform isn’t fully adopted is a week of reactive maintenance, missed preventive maintenance tasks and invisible asset data. The cost accumulates faster than most procurement teams model for.

Why Enterprise Teams Resist New Software

Resistance to CMMS adoption isn’t laziness. It’s a rational response to complexity.

Maintenance technicians are busy. They’re pulling work orders mid-shift, scanning assets in low-light conditions and switching between tasks before lunch. Software that requires navigating multiple menus, remembering field naming conventions or logging in through a desktop portal fails before it starts. Every extra tap is a reason to abandon the tool and use a paper form instead.

Three failure patterns show up again and again in enterprise rollouts. These include:

1. The Top-Down Mandate

IT or procurement teams select a platform without input from frontline technicians and then present it as the “new way of doing things.” The maintenance team didn’t choose it, doesn’t trust it and has no ownership over making it work.

2. Feature Bloat

Next is feature bloat. Enterprise-tier platforms often include dozens of modules, complex configuration requirements and documentation that runs to hundreds of pages. Most of those features never get used — but they generate enough confusion to slow initial adoption to a crawl.

3. Rigid Workflows

The third failure pattern is rigid workflows. A facility maintenance team managing 15 locations doesn’t operate the same way a single-site manufacturing plant does. Software that forces every team into the same process structure creates friction at every point of contact.

The numbers confirm the pattern. According to EAM and CMMS market data published by Market Reports World, 31 percent of organizations in 2024 delayed CMMS implementation due to lack of internal technical expertise or absence of standard digital maintenance workflows. Among smaller enterprise units, 47 percent reported low platform utilization in the first six months post-deployment. More than 12,000 software deployments required extensive customization and retraining for legacy users — adding an average of 5.6 weeks to onboarding timelines.

Five-plus weeks of extra onboarding for a deskless workforce. That’s the adoption tax complex enterprise software charges.

What G2’s Spring 2026 Rankings Actually Tell Enterprise Buyers

G2’s seasonal reports aren’t just a leaderboard. For enterprise buyers evaluating implementation risk, the Index Reports — which measure real user outcomes, not just feature breadth — are the most relevant data available.

G2 publishes four CMMS Index Reports each cycle: Implementation, Usability, Results and Relationship. These are built from verified customer reviews, not analyst assessments. They reflect what actually happened after teams went live — not what the vendor promised during the sales cycle.

In the Spring 2026 reports, Coast topped three of the four CMMS Index Reports and ranked No. 2 on the fourth:

• No. 1 — CMMS Implementation Index, Spring 2026 (second consecutive cycle)
• No. 1 — CMMS Usability Index, Spring 2026 (score: 9.27 out of 10)
• No. 1 — CMMS Results Index, Spring 2026 (score: 9 out of 10)
• No. 1 — Facility Management Implementation Index, Spring 2026
• No. 1 — Asset Management Usability Index, Spring 2026

Verified reviewers gave Coast a 98 percent score for both Ease of Use and Ease of Admin. They gave it a 96 percent score for Meets Requirements. And in the Results Index — the category that measures whether the software actually delivered on its promises — 100 percent of reviewers said they would recommend Coast to someone else. That’s every single one.

The ROI data is equally striking. Coast users report an estimated payback period of 9.41 months compared to the industry average of 14.19 months. And on implementation speed, Coast users report going live nearly twice as fast as the category benchmark.

Monica R., a senior SEO Strategist at a mid-market business, described the field experience in her G2 review: “I’m impressed by Coast’s user adoption rate within our field teams […] It’s intuitive, mobile-friendly and requires almost zero learning curve.”

That’s not a product claim. That’s a verified enterprise customer describing a live implementation.

What ‘Ease of Use’ Looks Like on the Ground

Abstract usability scores are useful, but operational outcomes are better. Here’s what ease of use produced at three organizations that switched to Coast.

Solmet Group — Canton, Ohio (Manufacturing)

Solmet Group, a manufacturer specializing in open die forging and machining, previously tracked 188 assets through paper documentation. Work orders “floated around” and took about 10 days to complete. During the free trial, Coast’s customer success team set up all 188 assets directly from a basic Excel spreadsheet — no IT engagement required. Today, work orders turn around in one to two days. Lisa Bosworth, quality and continuous improvement lead, described the implementation as “exceptional.”

UT Southwestern Animal Resource Center — Dallas, Texas (Healthcare)

The Animal Resource Center manages 258,000 square feet of facility space across seven buildings at UT Southwestern Medical Center. The team previously used ServiceNow for work order management but found it too cumbersome and unable to tie work orders to specific equipment. After switching to Coast, completion time dropped from weeks to the same day or within two days — a 600 percent increase in efficiency. The team now has 35 active users and has closed approximately 3,000 work orders.

Largo Facility Management — Multi-Site Operations

Scott Mairs, founder of Largo Facility Management, previously implemented facility maintenance software that took months to configure. With Coast, the team went live in days — simultaneously onboarding a new client at launch. “We implemented Coast out of the box in a few days,” he says. “Other software applications took much longer. Support has been fantastic — I can’t get that with other providers.”

Notice the pattern: no extended IT engagement, no months-long configuration cycles, no retraining loops. The software adapted to how each team worked — not the other way around.

Why Enterprise Buyers Are Choosing Coast Over Incumbent Platforms

There’s a common objection in enterprise CMMS evaluations: “We need a robust platform — can something user-friendly actually handle our scale and complexity?”

Coast’s enterprise customer base answers that directly. Customizable work order forms, automated alerts and role-based dashboards meet the operational complexity multi-site enterprise teams require. But they don’t require a consultant, a 60-day configuration sprint or a dedicated IT resource to get running. The mobile-first design — built for technicians in the field, in server rooms and in facilities with spotty connectivity — drives adoption from the bottom up, which is exactly where adoption needs to happen.

The QR-code integration is a particular differentiator for enterprise field teams. Technicians scan a code on any asset and instantly access its full history: manuals, past repair and maintenance records, upcoming preventive maintenance schedule tasks and parts inventory. 

Udi L., a CMO at an enterprise technology company, described his Coast experience directly in his G2 review: “Our facilities and operations teams were fully onboarded and using the software within a week, a stark contrast to the multi-month industry average. The mobile-first design ensures high adoption among our deskless workforce, which is critical for any tool’s success.”

The McCluskey Group — a 700-employee Tim Hortons franchisee — offers perhaps the clearest enterprise adoption proof point. Between 50 and 70 percent of all employees actively use Coast, from the company’s president to 15-year-old team members. Before implementing Coast, equipment downtime stretched to two days. Now the team resolves most issues within a few hours — and maintenance expenses dropped 50 percent in the first year. Director of Operations Tara Lee-Hendrycks says: “It truly simplifies our lives. We do everything in it.” 

How to Evaluate a CMMS for Adoption Before You Sign

The G2 Implementation Index rank matters more than the Grid Report quadrant. Ask any vendor where they place on it — not just whether they carry an “Enterprise” or “Leader” label.

Before committing to a contract, run a structured pilot with the people who will use the software most: frontline technicians, not the IT team or procurement lead who evaluated the demos. Score the pilot on one metric: time to first completed work order. If a new technician can’t figure out how to close a work order on their phone within their first shift, the rollout is going to struggle.

Evaluate the mobile experience specifically. EAM software vendors often build polished desktop dashboards and treat the mobile app as an afterthought. For deskless maintenance teams, that’s backwards. The app is the product.

Finally, ask directly: “Can our team go live in under two weeks?” If the answer defaults to a multi-month onboarding engagement as the standard path, that timeline cost belongs in the total cost of ownership calculation.

Start With a Platform Your Team Will Actually Use

The most effective preventive maintenance program in the world prevents nothing if the team logs work orders on paper and ignores the software. Enterprise scale doesn’t change that math — it makes adoption harder to achieve and more expensive to recover from.

Coast earned the No. 1 spots on G2’s CMMS Usability Index, Implementation Index and Results Index Spring 2026 — not because it won a feature checklist competition but because verified users said it worked, their teams used it and they’d recommend it to everyone they know. 

Ready to see what a CMMS rollout looks like when your team actually adopts it? Coast makes it easy to go from onboarding to completed work orders in days — not months. Sign up for a free Coast account and see how quickly your team can go live.