Convincing your management to validate the deployment of a CMMS solution is crucial in more ways than one. Whether it’s simplifying the creation and tracking of work orders or improving overall maintenance efficiency, the benefits are undeniable. Because, in addition to significantly improving maintenance conditions and traceability, the support of decision-makers can transform the project. Federating the teams and involving everyone in the use of the solution will indeed be one of the best guarantees of success of the CMMS project. So, how can you sell your CMMS project to your management and generate involvement?
The 4 arguments that will raise your management’s awareness
The CMMS solution provides a concrete response to business needs
Very complete, the CMMS solves the problems of all business lines. Each department will find elements for improvement and a simplification of its processes:
- Purchasing: dematerialized procedures, better followed contracts, easier comparison of suppliers
- Quality: precise indicators for monitoring the fleet, greater control of assets and its failures
- Maintenance: secure field jobs, more automated and traceable in real time.
- Finance: greater profitability and better allocated costs (in terms of subcontracting, stocks, consumption of machines, etc.)
The CMMS contributes to a more agile maintenance… and less expensive
Beyond the mere adoption of CMMS, the advantage of using an automated maintenance solution is to get ahead! When it becomes more planned than reactive, maintenance is a source of cost savings and agility. Parts inventories can be kept at a lower level, and human and material resources are less mobilized in emergency response. These two advantages are strategically valuable, since they leave more room for innovation and allow the company to get ahead of its competitors by basing each decision on the CMMS.
The CMMS makes it possible to draw up a clear roadmap and provides performance indicators
Lack of information about jobs and their cost is one of the main sources of inefficiency of maintenance services. However, the accuracy of operations and the definition of concrete objectives are becoming increasingly important. Preparing upstream makes it possible to avoid unnecessary costs, but also to better manage your activity and communicate more easily with all business lines. With the CMMS and its key performance indicators (or KPIs), the company knows more about its resources and orchestrates its maintenance more efficiently thanks to the right objectives. With clear indicators for everyone, it’s easier to create engagement among teams.
CMMS is a guarantee of compliance and security
The contribution of the CMMS for a better management of risks and standards is an unstoppable argument. By automating part of the processes, the CMMS itself takes care of demanding regulatory steps and ensures scrupulous compliance with standards. A key argument for highly regulated sectors, not tolerating any breach of legislation. The safety of technicians is also a major concern: human protection is better guaranteed thanks to a follow-up of jobs at each stage and complete documentation to support field work.
The main objections and how to remove them?
A major investment for the company
The cost of the solution is one of the main obstacles when you want to adopt a CMMS: however, the benefits of CMMS are proven, and in particular its impact on ROI. The maintenance costs themselves can be accurately estimated – based on the life of the assets, spare parts stocks, downtime, labor costs… – the contributions of the project and the ROI of the CMMS on the annual maintenance expenses can be demonstrated in a very pragmatic way.
Deployment and handling constraints
The adoption of a new tool goes hand in hand with an incompressible time of implementation of the solution. To this is added a period of getting started with the tool. Two a priori binding elements that often represent a brake on the adoption of the solution. However, it is possible to opt for an intuitive solution, quick to deploy, which will offer an excellent user experience and an almost immediate performance gain to employees. Medium-sized companies can thus hope to have a functional tool and operational users in less than a month.
Management’s support for the CMMS project is important: just as much as that of the teams!
More than just a maintenance support solution, CMMS must fully integrate the corporate culture to deliver the best possible results. The decision-making bodies must adhere to the project: involving management in the CMMS project will result in more informed and planned management. The operational teams, too, will have a decisive influence on the success of the CMMS project. From management to field actors, the CMMS must offer clear benefits and seduce by its management. Only in this way will the chosen solution be truly deployed, and everyone will adhere to maintenance-related decisions.
