Are you an operational leader who likes to be hands-on? A desire to know what everyone is doing throughout the workday? Someone who likes to get ahead of problems before they get worse?
This makes for great leadership. But, as your business and team grow, have you noticed how hard this becomes?
In Engaging the Deskless Workforce, McCausland writes that “without making a conscious effort to engage and communicate with this crucial population of employees, organizations risk a disengaged and uninformed workforce, which can lead to a negative impact on productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability.”
We know that when leadership makes this effort implementing a modern CMMS can make all the difference in how a business runs. In fact, CMMS now makes it possible for you to meet your deskless workforce in the cloud as if you are working alongside them. This is leading through change, what nowadays is called “Change Leadership.” These days, how we work together changes every day.
What is CMMS?
A well-implemented CMMS, short for Computerized Maintenance Management System, provides real-time, on-the-ground benefits, including increased productivity, improved inventory management, reduced equipment downtime, and enhanced industry and government compliance and safety standards. With access to a mobile and modern CMMS, employees become productive, efficient, accessible, and accountable. What leader wouldn’t want that?
Think of it as activating your digital twin — one on the ground with your workers and one in the cloud — where you have access to the day-to-day and can make decisions about the future. Physical on-the-floor presence and accountability are no longer directly correlated. This digital twin connects workforces, and “ultimately, your success in building and using enterprise mobile apps comes down to selecting platforms that will position your company to achieve success,” according to Adobe.
The right platforms for any purpose achieve success only upon successful implementation. It might sound obvious, yet, leadership teams often focus too much on the promise of a platform without exploring usability on the ground floor.Companies that use mobile apps report a 47% improvement in internal communications and a 23% increase in employee satisfaction (Hall, 2018).Strong leaders can manage productive change at the same time they enhance employee satisfaction. Change does not need to make employees nervous or anxious about their jobs.
In fact, it can be just the opposite.Employees feel empowered to move from work order to work order without needing to check-in at the office to pick up their next job or search for a maintenance manual.
CMMS and Industry 4.0 means that organizing, tracking, and executing work orders should seamlessly take place in a cloud-based system. In fact, according to Forbes, “despite its prevalence, deskless work has been largely underserved by the tech industry… But with advances in mobile devices and wireless connectivity, technology’s ability to benefit a more diverse array of workers has drastically improved.”
Why Use CMMS?
We know that production, maintenance, and service processes don’t always age well and, as a result, end goods or service output may no longer meet always-evolving quality standards.Gathering and analyzing asset operation data allows a company to move from reactive maintenance to preventive maintenance.To summarize, a well-implemented CMMS optimizes assets to achieve greater asset availability, reliability, and performance.
Required CMMS Functionalities and Benefits
In this new and necessary time of mobile, cloud, and analytics technologies, a well-designed CMMS database needs to, among other things, nimbly manage historical data, employee time-on-task, and regulatory compliance. These functionalities bring the following benefits:
- Asset visibility: Centralized information in the CMMS database that shows when an asset was purchased, when maintenance was performed, frequency of breakdowns, parts used, etc.
- Workflow visibility: Dashboards and visualizations that help assess status and progress virtually in real-time.
- Dashboards and reports: Databases that track daily activities, compliance, audits, and maintenance.
- Consistency and knowledge transfer: Online documentation, repair manuals, and operating procedures.
How to Choose the Right CMMS
Knowing what functionalities are important is one thing. Being able to implement and use the CMMS is crucial. The right CMMS will provide:
- Ability to communicate with workers in real-time.
- Photo upload and e-signatures.
- Robust reporting and cost analysis capabilities.
- Foolproof accountability provisions.
Not all CMMS are created equal. Mobile functionality is more than checking a box. Therefore, the CMMS software you settle on should be:
- Easy to use. If it’s too complicated, you and your workforce won’t use it.
- Intuitive and streamlined. Mobile apps that are user-friendly and require minimal training.
- Fast to implement. If it is difficult to set up, it won’t be easy to maintain.
- Ready to use with workflow management features including calendar views, reporting dashboards, simple asset work history, customizable forms, and chat features.
- Cloud-based CMMS (Web and Native Mobile apps). If you can’t access it, it doesn’t matter how good it is.
With so many CMMS on the market, there is no reason to settle for a system that does not offer these functionalities. It would be like buying pencils without erasers, freezers without ice makers, cars without air conditioning.We are at a pivotal moment where a change-leadership model that empowers and engages deskless workers is the future of work. Choosing to lead through change in today’s business environment means choosing to implement a modern CMMS designed to break down those silos, work across management spectrums, and connect your workforce.
