CMMS trends – What’s hot in the CMMS industry?

To succeed in the competitive world of CMMS development, CMMS providers are focusing their attention on innovation. Recent CMMS trends include more focus on research and development, which are key in ensuring that packages are up to date and that the system can adhere to the increasing demands of the end-user. Because of competition, it is important for vendors to invest in quality R&D to ensure profitability. Companies that can supply modern systems at a reasonable price are assured success.  That’s not to say that that innovation guarantees success, or that companies that don’t innovate cannot succeed.  It is a sad truth that the CMMS world is populated by companies with outdated legacy software, who survive through highly paid salespeople.  Companies like this can only get by for so long, before market forces expose their inferior products for what they are.

One of the biggest CMMS trends is the push for mobile technology. The smartphone revolution has contributed significantly to the evolution of the CMMS industry. Having mobile technology at your disposal has lead to increases in productivity, since mobile devices now allow access to work orders, equipment history and more from the palm of your hand. You can also perform a lot of data entry on the go, depending on the abilities of the mobile app. This includes meter readings, reporting breakdowns, capturing serial numbers, and more.  Another useful feature of mobile technology is a running clock that automatically attributes labor hours for the opening and closing of work orders. Accessories such as GPS, cameras, network access, and barcode scanning are also great features that speed up data entry.

Another one of the CMMS trends we’ve taken note of is the use of case-tracking that users have recently found quite useful. Distinct from work order management, this includes corrective action, investigations and assessments, and incident reporting. Situations such as chemical spills, audit infraction, and health or environment incidents are only a few examples of what the case-tracking functionality can manage.

A discussion of CMMS trends wouldn’t be complete without discussing reporting. Analytics are more important in our modern age than ever before. There’s an increased demand for RCM and failure analysis. Scheduling, coordination, and better planning have helped maintenance shops to decrease the number of failures and errors. CMMS vendors are integrating more features to assist with system failure prevention such as initiation capabilities & RFCA. Other packages include the RCM functionality such as FMEA, failure modes and effects analysis. The FMEA allows users to assign certain functions and their failure modes for any element. Over the years, CMMS vendors have found many ways to improve their scheduling and planning implications. The graphical scheduling capability is especially beneficial for more complex environments that could use features such as zooming in on scheduling details, finished and unfinished assignments, and progressive analysis.

Since demand for sustainability is continuously increasing, CMMS packages contribute to this are bolstered. Some of these packages include features such as tracking and analyzing thermal footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, and the consumption of electricity, gas, and water. Many packages include notifications that let the user know when certain levels go beyond the usual range.

Most companies rely on the CMMS system to alleviate and validate variables and functions around the work environment. Therefore, CMMS vendors must follow the demands of their customers and ensure that scheduling and analysis can be understood easily and be quickly implemented. Furthermore, vendors must be sure that the CMMS system can fix the problems that arise in productivity and the continuous changes in the CMMS technology market.