So you've decided you need a CMMS, what now?

In our last blog, we looked at the value proposition of taking control of your assets. In this blog, we will explore the next leg of the journey, which is how to determine your CMMS needs, then convert these into a technical specification, to support the CMMS selection and implementation process.

Establishing clear goals and objectives is critical to success, as this helps to align focus, trigger new behaviours, and sustain momentum. When it comes to a CMMS, people will have differing expectations of the system, so it’s important to understand these whilst ensuring alignment to the top-level business drivers. Also, it’s important to confine the focus to business goals, not features of the CMMS as this will be dealt with later on.

Here are some examples of goals and objectives we commonly encounter with our clients:

• Reduce equipment downdown
• Reduce maintenance costs
• Enable risk-based decisions
• Improve safety performance
• Eliminate duplicate work
• Enable mobility across devices
• Optimise spares and inventory
• Manage Statutory Inspections
• Standardise work across sites
• Improve work management flow
• Enable failure analysis with codes
• Improved reporting & visibility

Once you have established your goals and objectives, it can pay to check if they are actually SMART. That is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time based, as this will help to develop KPI’s to track how you are performing over time.

In our experience the key areas for consideration here are:

1. Understand if the CMMS will need to integrate with existing financial or other business systems, or will it operate as a stand-alone tool/system
2. Establishing which parts of your business will live in the CMMS. i.e Fixed plant, mobile fleet, facilities, utilities or all of the above.
3. Ensuring your Work Management business processes align with your goals and objectives.

Developing a Work Management Business Process Map which covers all aspects of your operation, is an imperative part of the CMMS selection and implementation process. This may even reshape your thinking about your initial goals and objectives.

Having the Work Management process maps now enables you to understand what roles and skills will be required to support your CMMS, and identify what gaps or duplications exist within the organisational structure. Using a tool such as a RASCI matrix is effective in structuring an organisation to support the effective use of the CMMS.

Now that you have a sense of what you want your CMMS to do, how it will fit within your organisation, and what you wish to measure performance, you now have the key ingredients to develop a technical specification for your CMMS.

Due consideration should also be given to what systems will remain in place and any changes that may be lurking over the horizon that could have a bearing on your specifications.

It’s important to note that there is no “one size fits all” solution when it comes to selecting and implementing a CMMS, hence a structured and tailored approach can mean the difference between success and failure, and this is the EnterpriseIS difference.

Reach out to the experienced team at EnterpriseIS to start a conversation about how we can help you choose and implement a CMMS.

In our next blog, we will explore how to shortlist and assess potential CMMS candidates to arrive at the one that’s right for you.