Published date: 17 February 2022
Published date: 17 February 2022Maximising the value from your CMMS/IWMS
Ensure your CMMS/IWMS remains a powerful tool that can support your business plans in 2022 and beyond with our Top 6 Tips…
An effective CMMS/IWMS is a powerful tool that can transform the speed and quality of business decision making. Whether using it to optimise operations or profitability via the performance of equipment, your people or any other assets within your organisation, it’s important that the system itself continues to meet your changing requirements.
Here are our Top 6 Tips to ensure you maximise the value of your CMMS/IWMS and that it remains a powerful tool for your business:
- Review the asset register regularly
The asset register provides the backbone for any CMMS/IWMS system and for the business decisions it underpins. For this to work effectively, it should be given due care and attention, and therefore time needs to be invested on a regular basis to check the information is up to date.
The asset register should provide a clear view and understanding of all the available assets and include relevant details such as location, purchase cost, age, etc. It sounds simple, yet many of the common pitfalls experienced by CMMS/IWMS users start and end with ensuring the asset register is accurate and up-to-date.
If the asset register is complete then associating work to it, both scheduled and reactive and details such as inventory transactions, will make sure you have a complete picture. Take time to review the information stored on a regular basis. That holistic view across the organisation will pay dividends and really cannot be achieved any other way. - Take advantage of systems integration
Harness the power of your data from a variety of different sources to drive further intelligent action and deliver qualifiable business outcomes. Your CMMS/IWMS should be the bridge to your existing business systems no matter what they are or how many you have.
Review all of the business systems that you have in place currently and any that you might be looking to utilise in the near future. Work with your supplier to understand the systems connectivity that they can provide through their API. Ideally, the API should enable you to translate information requests with your CMMS/IWMS and all your existing systems across a single bridge, rather than in previous years whereby there may have been a need for bespoke or single-use interface development to allow systems to talk to each other. This should permit a bi-directional flow of your data and ensure the facility to add additional integrations in future.
Systems connectivity will enable you to access, analyse, and action, valuable data insights faster and more efficiently than ever before. - Benefit from new technologies
The technology landscape is constantly evolving and in addition to mobile, there are numerous other new technologies your business could benefit from including IoT and automation, and these may already be part of your digital transformation plans. Find out about the scalability of your CMMS/IWMS and how it can not only cope with but also support your digital transformation, is crucial and will help you to understand your available options in terms of IoT and automation, for example.
In addition, ensure mobile technology is easy-to-use and empowers staff with all of the information held within the system, supporting them to work effectively, as well as to record information and complete jobs on the go. If you haven’t got mobile technology in place, then it is well worth considering to support agile and remote working, data-fast updates in real-time, and make life easier for staff, saving valuable time and money.
It is important to understand the potential in your current solution, the ability to harness new technologies and push the boundaries, to support your digital transformation plans and future business growth. - Spot the difference
Once a system is in place we don’t always review where it is having an impact and where it is not, it is important to spot the difference. A health check of the CMMS/IWMS system will enable you to rank your system usage to uncover any areas that are not being used to their full potential or may not be being used at all. This will reveal areas for improvement and adoption.
If you’ve identified an area of the business where the CMMS/IWMS is not delivering, or encounter frustrations within the team about the system’s lack of functionality, consider whether the team has the full breadth of knowledge about the CMMS/IWMS capability. Are there modules or features that exist that can address this problem? Is the team currently utilising a narrow set of the potential functions available? Are there areas in your business that incur high cost, are there correlating functions within the CMMS/IWMS that could help? - Assign a CMMS/IWMS Champion
“It’s easy when you know how”, we all know that saying to be true in most contexts, but it’s also easy to overlook the importance of upskilling team members to match and maximise investment in IT. Assigning a CMMS/IWMS champion is one way in which ownership can be applied within the team to really understand, administer and promote the system internally. In doing so the champion should be ensuring all users are properly trained and able to use the system well and consistently.
In the same way the asset register should be kept up to date, it’s important to hand the baton on should the CMMS/IWMS Champion leave the business. It may be the case that the original people trained and who helped to install the system have changed roles or left the organisation, and their knowledge, experience and training has been lost or diluted. Remember to promote and empower new individuals as needed. - Check which version of the system you are using
Although it can be tempting to stick with trusted legacy systems, or to avoid the investment of resources in revisiting a system already in place, it is worth checking to see if the version of the software you are using is the latest available.
With an upgrade you could immediately benefit from new features as well as advances in system security and stability. The cost to bring an out-dated system up-to-date might be higher than investing in an alternative and this is a good opportunity to review options.
Following these Top Tips will help you to get the most out of your CMMS/IWMS, helping to safeguard your system against underperforming.
If after reviewing your system you feel like it is underperforming, or perhaps that you have simply outgrown it, please reach out to one of our global teams today. We would welcome the opportunity to have a no-obligation conversation about your specific requirements, to share more about how the scalable Agility solution supports the growing demands of businesses like yours and others, and how it could support you to optimise your operations and profitability.