This article was originally published in 2015. It's provided here for reference and so we can keep a repository of all the material we have created. It is a little outdated but some of the topics may still be of help to some readers.
Introduction
The answer to the question of "What is the Best CMMS
Available?" is the holy grail of the Computerized Maintenance
Management field for both vendors and customers. Vendors want to
know the answer because they can maximize sales by providing the
solution every organization needs. Organizations, on the other hand,
don't want to make an investment in both time and money to implement
a product that is not suitable for their actual needs and will
eventually need to be replaced.
As it is to be expected, the answer to the above "holy-grail
question" depends on a wide range of factors but, as technology
evolves and users become more tech-savvy, a few trends start to
emerge that make it easier to ensure your CMMS choice of today is
proven as the correct choice for the future of your organization.
The following points and considerations highlight some of the
most obvious trends for the future of the CMMS industry and are put
together in order to assist you in making the decision that better
serves your needs and will be the most future-proof anyone can
realistically foresee. Note that, on the following text, the company
size can be gauged by the number of employees directly involved in
the organization's maintenance efforts and includes not only
technicians but also maintenance managers, direct maintenance
purchasers and maintenance planners. Small companies are companies
with a number of staff anywhere between 1 and 20. Medium sized
companies are companies with 20 to 50 maintenance staff and large
companies are companies with more than 50 people working directly
towards asset maintenance.
Future CMMS Developments that are Independent of
Company Size
First, it is an undeniable fact that software providers are
shifting towards cloud based offers. This is an industry-wide shift
for providers of all types of software that is justified by the
lower cost of running the applications on external third-party
servers rather than keeping the IT equipment (and support staff)
in-house.
Second, and also in line with the wider software industry, most
suppliers will shift to paid subscription type models rather than
the license based model so common in today's options.
Third, access with mobile devices will be built-in and no longer
an option. This access will be provided as a dedicated mobile app or
as a simple responsive view designed to dynamically adapt to the
smaller screens of mobile devices.
Future CMMS Developments for Large and
Medium-Large Sized Companies
Companies that are large in the number of maintenance staff are
usually large in terms of asset number and maintenance procedures
complexity. As such, this type of organization will still require
the use of consultants to some degree, tasked with the job of
adjusting or customizing the CMMS to fit the organization's needs.
Since the use of consultants for this type of company is already a
reality on the present, it seems there will be little changes on
this for the future.
Future Developments for Small and Small-Medium
Sized Companies
Companies of this size are the ones that stand to benefit the
most from the new trends in CMMS technologies. These are companies
that are not very complex in terms of their maintenance procedures
but still need the reliability of a robust CMMS option like the ones
until now reserved to their larger counter-parts due to the high
implementation costs.
Similar CMMS functionality and power at a lower cost implies a
few trade-offs. None of these trade-offs are expected to be a big
issue for companies of this size, specially when offset with the
gains these new solutions provide in terms of maintenance management
efficiency and inherent additional cost reductions.
If yours is a company with this size, you will make the best
option if you consider the following points:
First, the CMMS will be completely user configurable. This means
no external consultant involvement with the resulting cost savings
traded-off by a temporary and short-duration increase in hours of
existing staff as they learn and configure the new system.
Second, the software will be non-modular. This is different from
current offerings where suppliers tend to please all organization
types by allowing users to add functionality (and costs) as they
need them. At first this may seem like a good idea but the reality
is that this creates confusion and to the client feels like an
incomplete implementation on what is possibly an already expensive
solution. The new CMMS options will provide all functionality in one
package and users choose to use them or not.
Third, there will be minimal vendor customer support which will
be replaced by community support through vendor-provided channels.
Users will seek support from other users creating a rich community
that actively assists one another and eventually may even adjust the
system to specific niche markets.
Forth, the community as a whole will lobby the developer towards
the development of new program resources. This results in lower
development costs to the CMMS vendor (which are then passed on to
the client) as only popular enhancements are pursued (as opposed to
wasting time and money in capability very few will ever use).
Fifth, most of the valuable maintenance log information can be
saved without the need to involve the vendor. This protects you from
the vendor going out of business and allows you to potentially
change to another provider without much loss of historic records.
Lastly, fees will be charged on a per month and per user basis.
This does not mean that supply contracts cannot be longer than one
month, it means simply contracts are user and monthly based with an
annual contract being twelve times the fee per user per month).
Conclusions and Last Comments
To find out the best option for you today you need only classify
your company within the size-definition loosely specified above. If
you are concerned about your company growing in the future and if
your CMMS is going to keep up, consider that the general
recommendation is that you look no further away than 5 years into
the future. Technology will change faster than you can predict.
As with most things, there are no formulas that will absolutely
guarantee a given choice is right, but considering and scanning
potential CMMS suppliers for the points above that apply to your
company size, will cut a lot of the guessing and risk you need to
accept if you shop for a solution in another way.
Lastly a comment specifically aimed at small and small to medium
sized companies: With offers in the market such as the class 1.5
CMMS, implementation costs are now so small that you can even take a
calculated risk of going with a certain vendor and change after some
time with very little capital lost. It has never been easier to use
the power of a CMMS.