Assets
What needs maintaining, where it is, and what history it accumulates. Everything else rests on this.
Guide
The feature list isn’t the question
Every CMMS has a long, similar-looking list. The useful question is which ones you’ll actually use, because turning on modules nobody touches isn’t free: it clutters the screen for the people who do the work.
Core, situational, and skippable
A CMMS’s features can be sorted into three groups, and that classification saves a lot of arguments. There’s a core that any operation needs, because without it there’s no system: assets, work orders, and a way for the technician to record work in the field. There’s a second group that depends on your case: warehouse, quotes, client portal, HR management. And there’s a third that only makes sense in specific operations and that, turned on without need, just adds noise. The decision isn’t what the product offers: it’s what you switch on.
The core, for any operation
If any of these four is missing, there’s no system worth the name.
Work orders
The unit where hours, materials and evidence get recorded. It’s the system, really.
Field app
Because the work happens on site. If recording it means going back to a computer, it doesn’t get done.
Preventive maintenance
As soon as something repeats, and it always does. Without it, the system only documents fires.
Depending on your operation
Four questions that decide what else you need.
Do you work for third parties?
Then you need a client portal, quotes and cost per contract. If you maintain your own assets, not much of that applies.
Do you consume your own spare parts?
If the client supplies the material or you buy it per job, warehouse management is overkill. If you hold stock, it’s essential.
Do you have regulatory obligations?
Then inspection checklists and documents with expiry dates stop being optional.
Do you subcontract part of the work?
The supplier portal completely changes traceability for that part of your operation.
What’s best left switched off at the start
Almost everything else. A rollout that switches on fifteen modules on day one produces a tool nobody understands and a project nobody finishes. What works is starting with the core, letting the team get used to it, and switching on the next thing when someone asks for it out of real need. Projects, capital works, HR, advanced notifications or integrations are things that fit in much better three months in, with the system already in use, than in the initial setup. That’s exactly the advantage of modules being switchable: being able to not use them yet.
Shall we look at it with your way of working?
Leave your details and we will get in touch to see whether we fit. No commitment, no lock-in period.
About the app, which is what decides it
It deserves its own paragraph because it’s the feature that most determines whether the project succeeds, and the one that gets evaluated worst in a demo. What matters isn’t how many things it does, it’s what it does without a connection, how many taps it takes to close a work order, and whether the technician can use it with one hand. An app that requires a connection turns sixty percent of interventions — basements, warehouses, plant rooms — into exceptions, and exceptions get handled on paper. If you can only evaluate one thing thoroughly, make it this.
What order you need them in
A feature catalog gives the impression that everything carries the same weight, and it doesn’t: there’s an order in which things are needed, and skipping it is the most common reason for having to redo the work. Assets come first, because without them there’s nothing to attach work to or accumulate history on. Then the work order and corrective-work logging, which is what’s already happening and doesn’t need inventing. Once that’s running on its own, preventive maintenance comes in, and it comes in with the advantage that there are already months of data to decide what deserves a plan and at what frequency. Warehouse, purchasing and quotes arrive when volume justifies them. And reports come last, not because they’re less important but because they need everything before them to have been running for a while: a dashboard built on three weeks of data doesn’t inform, it entertains.
The ones that look essential and almost never are
Some features show up in every comparison chart, impress in a demo, and then go unused. Predictive maintenance with sensors is the clearest case: it makes sense on a handful of very critical, very expensive assets, and in most operations the investment pays off far less than simply doing basic preventive maintenance well. Deeply configurable dashboards tend to end up as two charts nobody has touched since month one. Multi-level approval workflows work where they already existed on paper and get abandoned where they were invented along with the system. The useful test when evaluating isn’t whether the feature exists, it’s whether you already do that today in some form, even badly. What’s already being done somehow can be carried over; what isn’t done at all rarely starts happening just because there’s a screen for it.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need every module from the start?
Almost never, and switching them all on day one is counterproductive: it multiplies the configuration decisions you have to make without any usage experience, and it fills the interface with options nobody will touch. It’s more sensible to start with what will be used from week one and switch on the rest when volume calls for it.
What are the minimum features a CMMS needs?
Four: an asset inventory, work orders, a field app for technicians, and preventive maintenance. Without any one of them, there’s no system to hold up the rest.
Do you have to switch on every module?
No, and switching them all on day one is a common mistake. What works is starting with the core and adding the next one when someone asks for it out of real need.
Which is the most important feature?
The field app, because it decides whether recording actually happens. And within it, what it does without a connection: if it requires one, sixty percent of interventions get handled on paper.
How do I know what I need?
With four questions: whether you work for third parties, whether you consume your own spare parts, whether you have regulatory obligations, and whether you subcontract part of the work. The answers determine almost everything else.
We’ll tell you what you don’t need
In the demo we look at your operation and mark which modules make sense and which ones can wait.