Maintenance and procurement: two departments, one performance goal

The purchasing and maintenance departments of industrial organisations often operate in parallel. However, both pursue common goals, including maximum availability of assets, lower costs and the highest quality. To achieve these goals, the two functions benefit from working together. Integrating the CMMS software with procurement platforms is one of the most obvious levers to align priorities and better control purchasing. From cost control to supplier relationships, sharing data between maintenance and procurement delivers maximum value to the company.

Why is collaboration between maintenance and procurement essential to optimize costs?

Maintenance requires a high level of responsiveness. Manufacturers, in particular, must be able to order spare parts as quickly as possible, correctly receive orders, while having complete confidence in the quality of the parts used. The procurement department will seek to negotiate the best prices, centralize orders and rationalize spending.

By collaborating, these two departments will gain access to:

• Clear orders without duplicates
• Inventory levels matched to demand
• Consistent supplier performance (delivery times, part quality)
• Greater operational continuity thanks to steady availability of parts.

Cooperation between procurement and maintenance is also the best way to reduce costs, both direct (purchase price, delivery fees) and indirect (asset downtime, overstock, loss of productivity). But for this cooperation to be sustainable, the company must adopt a shared view of needs and processes. This is precisely what connectors between CMMS tools and procurement platforms enable, designed to freely exchange data between the two departments.

A unified view of inventory, lead times, suppliers and spare parts

One of the first benefits of such integration between maintenance and procurement is the synchronization of critical information: spare parts needs, availability, delivery lead times and approved suppliers are known to both departments.

With connectors between procurement software and the CMMS, you will be able to:

• monitor in real time inventory status on each site
• view current orders, backorders or delivery delays
• trigger an automatic purchase request when a critical threshold is reached
• reduce reference errors thanks to access to shared supplier catalogues.

Both departments will thus work from the same information, in a just-in-time approach, but secured.

Contracts, budgets and TCO: more consistent management

Collaboration between maintenance and procurement is not limited to operational matters: it also covers key areas such as contract management, budget tracking and total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis of assets.

Cross-referencing maintenance data – failure frequency, asset performance, intervention costs – and procurement data – commercial terms, negotiated volumes and supplier commitments – will enable:

• assessing an asset’s profitability over its entire lifecycle
• deciding between repair, replacement or upgrade
• to prioritize investments based on combined technical and financial criteria.

Adopting a connector between the CMMS and a procurement solution will also ensure full traceability of operations, from order to delivery and quality control.

DimoMaint integration with procurement tools: a concrete response to operational needs

Integration between DimoMaint and procurement tools such as Proactis allows industrial and service organisations to control the entire process, from identifying the need to receive the part, thereby saving costs at every step.

The main features offered by the interconnection:

• Creation, for maintenance, of a catalogue of products pre-approved by procurement to prevent off-contract purchases

• Automatic generation of purchase requests from the CMMS and transmission of information to the finance department
• Order status tracking (pending, approved, delivered) and management of receipt
• Reconciliation between invoices and purchase orders
• AI features that allow access to alternative suppliers in case of a supplier stockout and thus support maintenance decisions

For companies that have shared their data, the benefit is threefold: true cost control, complete confidence in partner suppliers and very detailed monitoring of the supply chain. Finally, alignment between maintenance and procurement objectives becomes optimal, with both departments working hand in hand to ensure final quality.

DimoMaint enables companies to fully exploit the potential of this interconnection by providing concrete solutions precisely designed for their needs.