What a CMMS WILL NOT do for you?

Published 2023-07-28 by Rui J Alves (a 3.4 minute read) | Back to the main page

This article was originally published in 2014. Pretty outdated. Kept here for reference and because it still may have a little value.

After over one year in business with comma CMMS, we think we are in a position to address one of the biggest misconceptions companies have regarding the use of maintenance management software. This is a discussion that comes up over and over again and one that, we believe, is better to get out there as soon as possible in order to prevent misunderstandings from the very beginning.

The core of the subject in question was extremely well put by Bill Gates in the following quote about the use of technology to automate procedures in an organization. On this, Mr. Gates famously said that:

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

This is a brilliant quote from a man that knows a thing or two about the use of technology in business. But how do we see the rules above applied to the use of a CMMS? Well, read on:

Nowadays it's safe to say that most maintenance managers know of CMMS success stories and also generally know what a CMMS can potentially do for them and their organization in order to streamline operations and increase efficiency. Assuming that most people really do want to do better at their job, the thought of a computerized system that will increase efficiency along with a reduction in costs is hard to ignore. Adding to that, there's tough competition out there between software vendors. This understandably results in vendors insisting on what potential customers want to hear in order to make a sale, which further accentuates the idea that a CMMS is the answer to all troubles, a kind of Holy Grail of maintenance procedural organization that will force, in a good way, managers and technicians to suddenly become more organized and thorough in record keeping, data logging and maintenance report analysis.

The expectations of some managers about what they need to put in in order to get reliable and valuable information out of a CMMS are, in a lot of cases, considerably far from reality. While it is true that recent software packages have become more and more easy to use that does not mean that they work by themselves and automatically generate equipment maintenance strategies without user input. This sounds like common sense but it still happens frequently to any software vendor.

The impossible expectations of what a CMMS can do are one of the reasons behind why CMMS implementations fail (and these failures are true for both cheap and expensive and even free solutions). The reality is that the companies that stand to benefit the most out of this software are the ones that already have a culture of organization and good record keeping and understand that organizing that information takes time but is an absolute requirement before you can start generating meaningful maintenance reports that truly help in increasing efficiency and equipment availability and reduce costs.

It is very sad to hear that money was invested with no meaningful results along with users complaining solely on the software package and failing to see that the reasons, sometimes, lie much deeper than that.

As Bill Gates said, efficient companies will become even better with the use of a CMMS while inefficient companies will now have another “distraction” added to their operations which will probably result in even higher costs and lower efficiency, ultimately resulting in even lower equipment availability.