Factors for Choosing Issue-Tracking Software

Choosing maintenance and issue-tracking software usually isn’t simple, and not for lack of options. Good programs aren’t cheap, not all of them are easy to use, and all of them require an adjustment period: for the staff who will work with them, and for the configuration itself, so it does what the company needs rather than what it came with out of the box.

Switching CMMS once it’s in use is difficult from almost every angle. That’s why it’s worth investing time beforehand, and doing it in this order.

First: how far you want to manage things

It’s the decision that shapes all the others, and the one that gets skipped most often.

Every department in a company is its own world and works its own way, so the first step is to define the scope. Do you just want a record of what technicians do, with their reports? Or do you want the system to interact with other departments, so certain procedures reach the right person on their own — purchasing, admin, accounting — without going through the supervisor?

It’s not a rhetorical question. A system scoped to technical work gets implemented in weeks. One that crosses several departments requires prior agreements about who does what, and those agreements take longer than the software.

Second: how issues come in

If the goal is issue tracking, the critical point is intake, because that’s where information gets lost. An alert over WhatsApp to a technician, another by phone to the team lead, and another by email to admin are three separate jobs that nobody can count together.

What to look at: how many entry channels it supports and whether they all end up in the same place. At GMAO Cloud, an issue can originate from the backend, from client access with its description and photo, or from an email inbox that the system empties and automatically converts into issues.

And also look at what’s attached to it: type and subtype, priority, client, address, affected equipment, who’s handling it. Each status can have its own maximum time, which lets you see what’s overdue instead of guessing.

Third: who’s actually going to use it

A classic mistake is evaluating the software with the people who are going to buy it, not the people who are going to use it. The decision is made by whoever plans; the data is entered by whoever is out in the field.

If the app is clunky or requires coverage, logging gets pushed to the end of the day and hours get written down from memory, always understated. It’s worth showing the technician app to a technician and watching their face: if they can start the timer right on the work order, consume materials, fill out the checklist, and collect a signature without leaving it, and if all of that works without a connection, the system will feed itself.

Fourth: analyze the forms, not the feature list

This is a concrete tip that saves headaches later. In the demo, ask to see the actual forms: the work order, the purchase order, the listings, the filters.

That’s where you see whether the system fits how you work or you’ll be fighting it. A program that forces you to fill in six fields you don’t need, on every report, multiplies that friction across every order of the year.

Fifth: ask what can be adapted

No software was designed specifically for you, so what matters is knowing how far it can be adjusted without turning it into a custom build that’s impossible to maintain.

The useful questions: can you add your own fields to the asset record, with their own type and unit, because the data that describes a boiler isn’t the same as what describes an elevator? Can you define the statuses an issue or a work order goes through, with their associated alerts? Can checklists be defined by equipment family and fine-tuned only where needed, or do they have to be configured one by one?

A system that isn’t perfect but adapts is preferable to one that fits today and can’t be moved tomorrow.

Sixth: the full cost

The license price is one part. It’s worth adding up the rest: whether it’s billed per user — and in that case, do the math with the headcount you’ll have in three years and the clients you’ll have registered, not today’s — whether you need your own server with backups and maintenance, and what’s included in support versus billed separately.

At GMAO Cloud, licenses are unlimited across all three plans and there’s no infrastructure to maintain, which are the two line items most underestimated when comparing options.

Seventh: try it before you buy it

Look for a provider that lets you try a demo version before deciding. But test it properly, which is the part almost nobody does: with your own assets, your own checklists, and your own intervals, not the provider’s sample dataset.

In half an hour on real data you see what you don’t see in two hours of presentation. And have the technician and whoever answers the phone try it too, because they’re the two people who are going to use it the most.

Eighth: what happens the day you grow

Systems get chosen for the company you have, and get used by the company you become. Two questions cover almost all of that risk.

What happens if a second site appears, or a second company in the group? Some systems solve this with a whole new installation, which means you’ll never see the full picture. Worth knowing before you need it.

What happens to old versions? A major version change can leave anyone still on the previous one without support: the system keeps working but stops receiving improvements or fixes, and getting out of that requires a migration nobody budgeted for. Ask directly what happened last time and who handled the migration. The answer describes the provider better than its catalog does.

What you shouldn’t expect

A CMMS doesn’t fix a process that doesn’t exist. If today nobody decides who handles what or with what priority, the software will record the same disorder with more precision. It also doesn’t decide how often a piece of equipment should be checked: that comes from technical judgment, regulation, or the manufacturer.

And none of them guarantee compliance with a regulation. What it does is leave proof of what was done, with its date and its author.

If you’d like to run that test on your own data, you can request a demo.