A Powerful CMMS, But Underutilized Without the Right Skills
The mere presence of a CMMS does not guarantee performance.
Why? Because without trained, motivated, and engaged users, even the best solutions remain underutilized. Upskilling is no longer a complement: it’s the key to performance.
Designed to structure, secure, and digitize maintenance activities, the CMMS is full of promises: asset management, planning, inventory, work history, failure analysis… The features have multiplied, refined, enriched. Yet, in many industries, usage remains basic, often limited to entering work orders.
Advanced Features, Rudimentary Uses
Creating a conditional maintenance plan? Using a dashboard of indicators? Dynamically adjusting inventory thresholds? These functions are available, sometimes even configured… but rarely used.
This paradox often roots in a lack of internal skills, but also in a lack of awareness of the real benefits a well-utilized CMMS brings.
Without specific training or post-deployment support, users replicate logics inherited from paper or Excel systems. Result: only 30 to 50% of modules are actually used according to field feedback.
An ROI Hindered by Lack of Adoption
A CMMS represents an investment in licensing, configuration, and project load. Yet, without upskilling, the return on investment of the CMMS remains limited. Downtime not reduced, preventive plans poorly followed, resources misallocated: the tool’s potential remains untapped.
Several industrial companies have shared a common observation: as long as users have not acquired the right reflexes, the CMMS remains a recording tool, not a management tool.
Upskilling: An Operational Urgency
A well-trained maintenance team means fewer unplanned stops, better resource allocation, and ultimately, a more available production tool. Upskilling is not just about maintenance: it directly impacts the production line.
Deploying a tool, no matter how efficient, is not enough. The difference lies in the team’s ability to understand it, use it accurately, and especially to make it an operational lever. In this context, training is not a bonus — it’s a performance accelerator.
Better Uses for More Reliability and Responsiveness
Well-targeted upskilling strengthens four major dimensions:
- Reliability: through rigorous preventive planning and better failure cause analysis.
- Responsiveness: thanks to optimized work request processes and clear visualization of urgencies.
- Traceability: via complete histories, facilitating feedback and audits.
- Decision: relying on consolidated data, decisions are no longer based solely on intuition or urgency.
These cumulative effects create a more stable, readable, and efficient maintenance ecosystem.
What Training Concretely Transforms
Training also prepares teams to take advantage of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence which enhances predictive maintenance capabilities.
It’s a lever to evolve postures: from reaction to anticipation, from entry to management, from monitoring to performance control.
Trained technicians become capable of:
- diagnosing deviations based on indicators,
- proposing adjustments in plans,
- prioritizing interventions based on objective criteria.
This new autonomy lightens hierarchical chains, accelerates flows, and strengthens operational engagement.
This gain in autonomy lightens hierarchical chains, streamlines flows, and strengthens operational engagement.
The CMMS also transforms the profession: the technician becomes a user — even a producer — of data, essential to feed AI models capable of detecting weak signals or anticipating failures.
The Technician of Tomorrow, Data User
The CMMS also changes the nature of the job. It introduces an analytical dimension to the technician’s position, who gradually becomes a user — even a producer — of data. Reading an intervention recurrence rate, comparing histories, proposing a periodicity change: these are new actions that require a foundation of digital skills and performance-oriented reasoning.
This evolution deserves support. It redefines roles, but also expectations and professional benchmarks.
“DimoMaint MX allowed us to structure preventive maintenance and especially to upskill our teams. Today, they no longer just enter interventions: they analyze, anticipate, and prioritize. The CMMS has become a true management tool.”
— Maintenance Manager at Dextra
Dextra deploys DimoMaint MX to optimize its preventive maintenance
Smart Training: Methods That Stick to the Field
Training is also about valuing. By integrating technicians into structured paths, their role, expertise, and involvement in industrial objectives are strengthened.
In the industrial sector, training cannot be out of touch. It’s not about stacking theoretical modules, but creating devices that integrate into the reality of operations, without disrupting flows.
Short, Targeted, Operationally Anchored Formats
Experience feedback confirms the effectiveness of:
- Micro-trainings (30 to 60 minutes) on specific CMMS uses,
- Peer field tutoring, which values internal skills and spreads good practices,
- Open-access e-learning platforms, allowing reinforcement of skills on demand.
These complementary formats allow for progressive, fluid, and better-assimilated upskilling. They are also devices that teams more easily adopt because they respect their pace and constraints.
Training Without Hindering Production
Training should not be seen as an interruption. Some companies organize sessions at the start or end of shifts, or integrate training into continuous improvement projects.
Involving team leaders and production managers in training planning is a major success factor. It maintains asset availability while enhancing skills.
Different Paths for Different Profiles
A field technician, a planner, a method manager, or a maintenance manager do not have the same expectations or uses.
An effective training path must adapt to:
- the frequency of CMMS use,
- the necessary functional depth,
- the level of responsibility in maintenance decisions.
This modular approach increases training relevance, improves adherence, and reduces the risk of abandonment or erroneous uses.
Anchoring Knowledge for Sustained Performance
Good training leaves traces. And it’s the indicators that tell this story.
Successful training is not a moment. It’s a dynamic that settles over time. What matters is not what was learned yesterday, but what is applied tomorrow — and the day after.
Long-term Support: Coaching, Feedback, Situational Exercises
The most advanced companies on the subject have integrated post-training follow-up. It takes the form of:
- Individual or group coaching,
- Supervised situational exercises on real cases,
- Regular feedback on usage.
This follow-up prevents erosion effects, detects bottlenecks, and evolves practices over time.
Driving Progress with Simple Indicators
It’s not necessary to set up a complex system to measure training impact. A few indicators suffice:
- % of correctly entered work orders,
- module analysis usage rate,
- reduction in unplanned corrective maintenance,
- frequency of maintenance plan updates.
These indicators have a dual advantage: guiding training efforts and valuing the progress made by teams.
Towards a Shared CMMS Culture
The ultimate challenge is not just to train users, but to make the CMMS a central tool for industrial management. This requires developing a common culture:
- a demand for data quality,
- attention to traceability,
- a logic of information sharing between departments.
This culture is maintained daily, in routines, exchanges, team rituals. It relies on the exemplary nature of supervisors, but also on the recognition of good practices.
Implementing a CMMS is laying the foundations. Developing the skills to use it well is building the structure. And for the whole to hold over time, it’s necessary to maintain knowledge, adjust uses, support evolutions.
In a sector where asset availability conditions overall performance, training is not an expense: it’s an investment in the sustainability of results.
