Hidden Costs of Not Using a CMMS
Your work in maintenance and operations is tied to efficiency. The way you fix assets, organize your team workflow and make decisions about resourcing all affect your budget.
Now is a time when resources are in high demand and every dollar truly counts against your bottom line.
While adding maintenance and operations technology may seem like an extra cost, operations professionals who have tapped into its efficiency wins know that the ROI of using a CMMS (computerized maintenance management system) far outweighs the cost.
And for those who are still relying on paper processes, complex Excel sheets and housing critical knowledge in your head, you are experiencing the hidden costs of:
- → Operating in reactive mode
- → Wasting time getting work done
- → Increased risk and liability
Let’s dive into what those areas are costing you and how you can start saving with technology.
1 | Operating in reactive mode
If you could get ahead, would you? Of course you would. But without the right technology to help you organize your processes, budget and workflow, it’s hard to do so.
When you are always fighting fires and working reactively, you waste resources, budget, and burn out you and your staff.
Your preventive maintenance (PM) program is critical to getting out of reactive mode of maintenance – and you need a CMMS to support that.
Not to mention that a PM program plugged into a CMMS can result in lower overhead and maximize uptime, as well as help you make data-driven decisions to maximize your asset lifecycle, leading to equipment and assets lasting longer.
As a result [of preventive maintenance], our equipment has far exceeded the industry standard life expectancy and we receive less work order requests because our equipment is well maintained.
Curtis Orndorff
Frederick County Public Schools
2 | Wasting time getting work done
Do you ever feel like your team could complete work faster if they were more organized about what they should be doing, where and when?
If you have a disorganized workflow and everyone isn’t on the same page, then you’re bound to be wasting resources, especially if you’re:
- → Using paper processes, creating waste with printing and tethering technicians to paper instructions
- → Wasting windshield time or expecting technicians to come back to a central location to enter work details
- → Not communicating back to work requesters or if you have to do so verbally
Especially if you’re not using a mobile app to capture work and organize staff tasks for the day, then you’re losing time and money — and maybe even inadvertently promoting a perception of your team as slow or ineffective.
Your staff deserves the organization and transparency of a digital maintenance system to help them prioritize tasks, and your leadership deserves a place where they can adequately report on work being done.
I don’t know why or how you would do work orders without having mobile.
Ryan Ferguson
Glenaire Retirement Community
3 | Increased risk and liability
When you don’t have a system to digitally document your maintenance processes, you open yourself and your organization to much more risk – and that can really cost you.
DOCUMENTATION
Without maintenance work and assets documented in a digital system, how can you:
- → Make the right decisions about what to repair vs. replace
- → See work history by asset
- → Effectively train new team members or make the knowledge transfer when staff retire
This can equate thousands of dollars lost repairing the same asset over and over again or replacing the wrong asset at the wrong time, or spending weeks getting staff and contractors up to speed on what’s needed where.
COMPLIANCE & I NSURANCE
If you’ve had any run-ins with compliance issues or insurance claims, then you know that it’s a place an organization. And documentation can mean the difference between thousands of dollars in fines and proving that you’re doing the work you need to promote safety.
Without a system to track compliance documentation, you open your organization to:
- → Increased risk for your staff without well understood and distributed safety and compliance protocols
- → Fines from failing compliance inspections and incurring insurance claims
- → Decreased levels of service and a lower level of safety in your environment that can negatively affect your business
No one wants to promote risk with maintenance and operations work – and that’s why you need a CMMS to help you avoid it.
Are you ready to keep up instead of falling behind?
You deserve to be in control of your operations, to own your daily work and feel confident about your future. And it may be even easier than you think to get a CMMS implemented and start seeing the savings.
If you’re ready to get ahead and experience the benefits of using a CMMS to streamline your maintenance workflow, stretch your resources and gain efficiencies, we’re here to help.
Your work in maintenance and operations is tied to efficiency, and now is a time when you need to find efficiencies more than ever before.
So, what hidden costs could you be incurring without relying on maintenance software like a CMMS (computerized maintenance management system)?
Download our guide to see how you can avoid:
- Operating in reactive mode
- Wasting time getting work done
- Increased risk and liability
