Seven Tips to Improve Your CMMS
Business support software like work management, asset management, capital program management, and billing management is more in common than they are different. A management system is how an organization manages the interrelated parts of its business to achieve its objectives. A management system is more than software.
Creating a system of integrated parts that achieves common objectives is necessarily hard work. It takes structure and discipline. Here are seven tips if you are considering modifying or purchasing new software:
Do a Formal Assessment before purchasing a different software because it is usually not the software that is the root cause of your problems.
Pause to Make Sure You Have the People because organizational capacity is the primary reason most systems fail.
Do a Formal Implementation Program because every organization's context is different. Plus, you can use your organization-specific configuration document as the cornerstone of your training program.
Find Your Champions because it is not the software or the written procedures that make or break your program.
Success Must be Driven from Top-Down because most people have enough work to do already so they know that the extra time and paperwork are valuable to senior management.
Fully Integrate Across All Business Units If Used for Budgeting and CIP Development because work divisions migrate into their own ‘stove pipes.'
The Organization Will Never Be Integrated Until Everyone Is Bought In because we all tend to migrate to the approach that creates the least amount of effort.
Remember that most business support software is a relational database that can do whatever you wish to do – at least with enough time and money. The key is knowing what you want at each key step in the journey.
JD Solomon Inc. performs assessments of business support software and root cause analysis of failing business processes. Contact us for more information on our standard 6-step approach for CMMS assessment and implementation or our FAST approach for root cause analysis.
