What Is CMMS Software? (Meaning, Benefits, & Examples)

To put it simply, computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software centralizes maintenance information to help businesses oversee operations involving their most prized assets. The earliest versions of CMMS involved maintenance technicians using punch cards to track maintenance tasks. But today’s CMMS is a SaaS (software as a service) solution that’s cloud-based and highly mobile. That means better team communication coupled with better asset tracking and reporting for on-the-go workers — all from a mobile app on your phone.

Better yet, CMMS software can offer so much more than simply enhancing maintenance processes. A quality CMMS can shift company culture from a previously reactive maintenance approach to a more proactive one. This contributes significantly to cost savings and asset longevity as well as overall employee and customer satisfaction. It’s no surprise, then, that the CMMS software market is projected to grow significantly in the coming years. Currently valued at $982.2 million in 2023, it’s expected to balloon to $1.9 billion by 2030. 

Whether you’re a seasoned maintenance professional or just learned the CMMS acronym, our guide will teach you what a CMMS does, its benefits and how to select the right one for your needs.

Best CMMS Features & Elements

Every CMMS software solution has an asset database at its core. From there, maintenance teams can use the software to build out a maintenance strategy that’s as robust as they want. Here are a few capabilities that several top-rated CMMS software offer:

• Asset and inventory management: A CMMS revolves around its asset management system. That includes everything from equipment serial numbers to the location of an asset as well as equipment performance and downtime data. You can even store procedural documents and images within a given asset template.
• Work orders: In order to keep your physical assets operational, you need to ensure they’re being properly maintained. Enter the maintenance work order. This template or document allows maintenance teams to schedule, assign and track maintenance tasks. The best CMMS software also allows you to communicate within a given work order, either through messaging or uploading documentation such as photos.
• Preventive maintenance: Take your work orders a step further by scheduling automated preventive maintenance by days, weeks or months.
• Predictive maintenance: Using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, you can track real-time data for condition-based maintenance. This involves sending notifications to you if anything unusual happens with your equipment. Better yet, you can use the data to forecast future maintenance needs.
• Maintenance reports: Create reports for all aspects of your maintenance program. That includes everything from spare parts usage, labor costs, asset performance trends and maintenance history on any given piece of equipment.
• Mobile CMMS: Most of today’s CMMS software have an app that allows on-the-go maintenance technicians to access information and update work orders from dashboards on their mobile devices.

How Exactly Does CMMS Software Work?

CMMS software can make or break businesses where infrastructure is a key component. Think manufacturing, oil and gas production, construction and transportation, to name a few. That’s because a CMMS completely organizes maintenance operations by tracking assets and managing work orders.

For example, to keep an airline operational, there are a lot of assets involved. There’s a fleet of airplanes to maintain, not to mention the various locations they land in and the parts required in those locations to keep these assets in working order and ready to take off on time. Can you imagine tracking work orders on maintenance for one airplane let alone setting up an entire fleet maintenance strategy without the help of a CMMS?

While airlines may depend on location tracking for their assets, manufacturers may care more about downtime. Case in point: A food processing plant is only as successful as the amount of food being processed in its production line. If a major piece of equipment — say, a conveyor belt — breaks down, that downtime quickly translates to lost production and profits.

CMMS Implementation Results in 50% Reduction in Unscheduled Downtime

Todd Cleppe, an executive engineer for Chelsea, Iowa-headquartered C-FAB LLC, a company that helps manufacturing and food processing companies find the best machinery solutions for their businesses, worked with a manufacturing client on its CMMS implementation. The result was a 50 percent reduction in unscheduled downtime in the first year as a result of optimized preventive maintenance scheduling.

“Work with solutions experts to determine the right CMMS for your needs and budget,” Cleppe says. “Then, train staff, define schedules and procedures, and commit to continuous improvement driven by software insights. Done right, a CMMS becomes the foundation for next-level manufacturing intelligence.”

Benefits of CMMS Software

OK, you get how a CMMS works and what purpose it serves, but what are some other benefits that CMMS software can offer?

Maintenance Cost Savings

We said this before, and we’ll say it again: Allowing CMMS software to digitize your maintenance workflow allows you to cut down on maintenance costs by tracking things like equipment downtime. If equipment is down too long, it may be cheaper to replace it. Or maybe you need to look into having more parts on hand at any given time.

Improved Maintenance Team Performance

Maintenance management software can also track how long it takes an employee to finish a given task. Slow task completion may indicate a need for more training.

Preventive Maintenance Scheduling

Schedule preventive maintenance activities on your key assets, days, weeks and even months out. By automating maintenance tasks ahead of time, you keep your equipment working longer.

Increased Asset Lifecycle

Using preventive maintenance measures before an asset breaks down is not only 3.3 times more likely to decrease downtime, but it also helps prolong asset lifespan.

Streamlined Maintenance Tracking & Reporting

A CMMS stores all maintenance data and analytics information. With the click of a button, you can generate reports for business execs or investors interested in learning how money is being spent.

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing CMMS Software

So, if all CMMS software have the same basic parts, how do I know which one is best for my business? There are key differentiators to factor in when looking for CMMS software. These include:

• Ease of use: You need intuitive software to get an entire maintenance team to adopt a new solution as part of their daily workflow. Better yet, if the software has a mobile app, this will make it much easier for teams to use in the field, allowing for real-time updates and communication.
• Customization: If you find a customizable CMMS, you can get up-to-speed quicker. For instance, you can change the field names in your work order template to match your internal language. But customization should go beyond that. Coast allows users to customize the software to their internal workflows.
• Preventive maintenance: Preventive maintenance is key to any robust maintenance strategy, so you’ll want a CMMS that allows you to schedule preventive maintenance tasks days, weeks, months and even years out.
• Asset inventory: While every CMMS has an asset management system at its core, the best ones allow you to easily access your assets and parts inventories within the software. Some CMMS solutions also offer QR codes or barcoding to put on your equipment for anyone to look up asset maintenance information or create a work request from their mobile device.
• Communication: Every good CMMS system should have some sort of messaging component for staff to provide real-time updates. Of course, offering messaging within a work order helps streamline communication even more.
• Tracking tools and reporting: What good is implementing CMMS software into your workflow without proper asset data to back it up? Make sure the CMMS you choose provides the tracking tools and reporting you need to improve your maintenance planning and overall decision-making.

What Matters Most to CMMS Customers

“[Using a] CMMS simplifies operations through automated work orders, inventory tracking and real-time data provision that can prolong equipment lifespan by 20 percent,” says Martin Heaton, director at England-based Heaton Manufacturing Ltd., which also manages the U.K. construction website, Reinforcement Products Online. “When selecting a CMMS solution, it is important to consider aspects like user-friendliness, scalability and integration capabilities with existing systems.

“A user-friendly interface is crucial for ensuring adoption by your team. Moreover, scalability enables the software to expand alongside your business growth, while integration guarantees data flow across departments.” 

5 Best Maintenance KPIs to Track in Your CMMS

Speaking of data, which key performance indicators (KPIs) should you track to ensure your CMMS is helping your bottom line? There are several maintenance KPIs you can track, but the best ones focus on improvements, strategies and long-term growth. Here the top five:

• Equipment downtime: This refers to the time that equipment is non-operational due to breakdowns or maintenance, which directly affects a company’s productivity.
• Maintenance response time: Here, we’re talking about how quickly the maintenance team responds to a maintenance request.
• Mean Time to Repair: MTTR measures the average time it takes to repair failed equipment, typically highlighting a maintenance team’s efficiency. “Reducing mean time to repair by just 10 percent can translate to major cost savings, especially for high-volume operations,” Cleppe notes.
• Overall Equipment Effectiveness: OEE is a calculation that highlights how effective and efficient a piece of equipment is, which can help determine maintenance strategies and costs.
• Completed work orders: This metric shows both team efficiency and asset performance. More work orders completed can highlight how quickly a team is working. But it can also point to poor asset health if equipment is repeatedly requiring maintenance.

Using a CMMS Cuts Emergency Response Time by 20%

Allen Chenault, owner and founder of Orange County, Fla.-headquartered AC’s Heating & Air LLC, believes CMMS software has been essential for managing his company’s 200-plus residential and commercial HVAC customers. “By tracking metrics like response times, repair costs and customer satisfaction, we improve operations and service,” he says. “For example, after implementing a CMMS, we cut emergency response times by 20 percent through optimized scheduling and dispatching.” 

Chenault credits CMMS software with reducing his company’s emergency response times by 10 minutes per call, saving over $15,000 a year in overtime pay. “Using CMMS data, we identified that 90 percent of after-hours calls were for the same five parts,” Chenault adds. “Stocking more of these parts on our emergency vehicles cut call times and saved thousands.”

What Makes Coast’s CMMS Software Unique?

Most cloud-based CMMS software offer the same key features: asset management, work order tracking, preventive maintenance scheduling and mobile apps to use out in the field. But Coast is a CMMS provider that takes it a step further. It allows maintenance teams to create additional customizable workflows. The software’s no-code platform gives users the opportunity to build a product tailored to their needs instead of relying on industry-specific templates. Through drag-and-drop features and customizable fields and modules, your maintenance management system can be set up quickly without the need for technical guidance.

“Case studies show that the ROI on a well-implemented CMMS is often realized within the first year through increased uptime, reduced labor costs and maximized asset lifespan. However, a CMMS is only as good as the data and resources you put into it,” Cleppe says.

Why a Custom CMMS Is a Game-Changer

A custom CMMS is key to building out your workflows exactly how you want. Think of your typical CMMS software as a 3D print in that it’s solid but static. Coast is less rigid, like a lego set that can be deconstructed and reconstructed to meet an individual business’ unique pain points. Take warranty tracking, for example. Users can set up a workflow in Coast to help ensure safe lockout/tagout procedures that adhere to compliance.

“Coast is very user-friendly, and the company is very responsive to development and improvement,” says Coast Customer Lisa Bosworth, manager of quality and continuous improvement at Canton, Ohio-based Solmet Technologies. “When we’ve needed specific features, Coast helped create fields or search options and worked on continuous development of its software to meet our needs. As a result, we’ve been able to optimize our maintenance scheduling and decrease equipment downtime.”

Whether you’re a manufacturer or oversee facility management, a CMMS solution like Coast excels at increasing the productivity of maintenance operations. This leads to cost savings in terms of improved equipment uptime and asset longevity as well as employee efficiency.

Check out Coast today for a free trial or enterprise asset management (EAM) pricing!