Test: do you need maintenance software?

The fastest way to know if you need a maintenance system isn’t reading about features: it’s answering twelve questions about how you work today. Each one points to a specific gap.

Count them, and the criteria are at the end.

The twelve questions

1. Can you say, right now, when a specific piece of equipment was last checked and what was found? Without calling anyone.

2. Do you know how much it’s cost you to maintain that equipment this year? Hours plus materials, not an estimate.

3. Is there a single list of what’s pending? Or are there three, spread across several people’s heads.

4. Has a scheduled review slipped in the last six months without anyone noticing?

5. Do technicians’ hours get logged as they work, or noted at the end of the day?

6. Does your spare parts stock match what’s actually on the shelf?

7. Have you ever paid for a repair on equipment that was still under warranty? If you don’t know, the answer is usually yes.

8. Can you prove, with a date and an author, that a specific review was done?

9. Do you get calls from clients just to ask how something is going?

10. What would happen if the technician who knows the most about a site left tomorrow?

11. Do you know which maintenance contracts are actually profitable?

12. Does someone go back to a site because a part was missing, more than once a month?

What each one means

They don’t all carry the same weight. These four matter the most:

4 and 8 are the critical ones. If reviews slip without anyone noticing, the plan doesn’t enforce itself: it only exists on a calendar. And if you can’t prove a review happened, any complaint, claim or inspection catches you with nothing to show.

5 is the one that corrupts every other number. Hours noted from memory always come out lower, so the cost of every intervention and the margin on every contract are optimistic by construction.

10 is the one that takes longest to hurt and is hardest to fix afterward. Maintenance knowledge that lives in one person leaves with them.

The result

None, or one uncomfortable answer. No rush. A well-maintained spreadsheet can work for years with few pieces of equipment, one site, and one person running everything.

Between two and four. There are specific gaps worth addressing, but not necessarily with a big project. Start with whatever hurts the most.

Five or more. The operation no longer fits in one person’s head. And that — not the number of assets — is the point where a system stops being an expense and becomes what holds the service together.

Any number, but including 8. If you have equipment subject to regulation or clients demanding proof, 8 alone decides it. Legal maintenance rests on the history of orders, completed checklists and documentation with its dates.

What solves each gap

For the test to be useful, here’s the mapping:

• 1, 8 and 10 → asset-level history and checklists written by equipment family.
• 2 and 11 → time measured with a timer inside the order itself and materials charged to it, which is where reports come from.
• 3 and 9 → single-entry incidents and client access.
• 4 → preventive maintenance that generates orders with an owner and a date, not reminders.
• 5 and 12 → field logging from the app, which works without coverage.
• 6 and 12 → minimum stock in warehouses and items and the van registered as a warehouse.
• 7 → warranty end date on the asset record.

Three more questions, if maintenance is your business

The test above is for someone maintaining their own equipment. If your business is maintenance, there are three specific ones, and all three carry a lot of weight.

13. Can you prove how many contract visits were done last year? If the contract says four a year and three were done, the problem is contractual before it’s operational.

14. Do you have the signed report for every intervention, and can you find it? That’s what backs up the invoice when someone disputes whether the visit happened.

15. Do you know which client costs you more than they pay you? With measured hours and charged materials, this stops being a guess.

Any one of these three with an uncomfortable answer is usually enough on its own, because it’s not a matter of efficiency: it’s about billing for what you work and being able to defend it. More in CMMS for third-party maintenance.

What the test doesn’t measure

And it’s worth keeping in mind before deciding anything.

Whether you have the process agreed on. If nobody today decides who handles what and with what priority, no software will decide it for you: it will just record the same disorder with more precision. That conversation comes first and costs no money.

Whether the team will actually use it. The system gets fed by whoever is in the field, and that’s the variable that best predicts the outcome.

If the answer is yes, where to go next

The test tells you whether you need one; it doesn’t tell you which to choose or how to start. For that, three steps in order.

First, scope it. Do you want to log technical work and get reports out, or do you want the system to cross departments into purchasing and administration? The first rolls out in weeks; the second requires prior agreements that take longer than the configuration itself.

Second, look at the criteria that aren’t on the spec sheets. How pricing works as your team grows, whether technicians will actually use the app, what happens with older versions, and how you export your data. These are covered in how to choose the best CMMS.

Third, test it on your own data. With two or three real assets and their frequencies, half an hour shows what two hours of a presentation won’t. And have a technician watch it, because they’ll spot in two minutes whether it’s going to waste their time.

What you can do this week

Regardless of what you decide: write the list of your critical assets — the ones that stop production or service if they fail — and, for each one, what’s done to it and how often.

It’s the work that takes longest in any rollout, it’s worth the same with any tool, and if by the end you discover you had it all in your head, you’ve learned something too.

If you want to check your answers against a real case, you can request a demo or get in touch.