The French company Europhane, whose production site is located in the Eure department (France), specializes in the manufacture of smart & connected lighting solutions. To manage their maintenance, they have chosen a next-gen CMMS, mobile and community-based, in greater accordance with their needs than any traditional software.
Alexandre Hérisson, maintenance manager, led the deployment of the Mobility Work maintenance management platform. Convinced by this SaaS solution, he looks back at the reasons that led him to try out the CMMS and the benefits incurred by its implementation.
Mobility Work: “Can you start by telling us more about yourself?
My name is Alexandre Hérisson, I’ve been working at Europhane for about fifteen years now and I’ve been in charge of maintenance for three years. Our plant is located in the Eure department and has about 200 employees, including five people in total in the maintenance department and no less than a hundred pieces of equipment.
What kind of solution did you use before you switched to the Mobility Work maintenance management platform?
The reason I wanted to implement Mobility Work was that we used to rely on Excel to monitor our operations. Given the number of machines on site, it was a bit complicated for us to manage their maintenance and avoid overlooking preventive measures, especially.
With a system like Excel, we couldn’t log comprehensive information, in fact, only a quarter of the operations carried out were entered into the software, which means that only the main activities could be tracked. Therefore, when I started seeking a better solution, I wanted our teams to be able to document all their interventions on absolutely all machines, which is finally possible today.
So you initiated the process. How did you hear about us?
Yes, I have. The research was actually divided into several stages because my predecessor had already tried to implement a CMMS software, which was more traditional and therefore quite cumbersome. Unsurprisingly, this kind of solution involved significant financial investment and seemed very difficult to handle.
So when I joined the maintenance department three years ago, I reaffirmed my desire to implement a maintenance management tool. As it was not my core business at first, I found it quite hard to assess precisely the needs of the team. I wanted both to help the technicians in the follow-up of their work and to simplify my daily life.
So I did an Internet research with the aim of finding a solution that was at least connected and up to date, and not a traditional software as mentioned earlier. Actually, I was looking for a solution like yours. So I quickly came across your site and the presentation and explanatory videos that you publish on your YouTube channel, which I find very well done. Thanks to these materials, I was able to submit the project to my hierarchy, who immediately understood that it matched perfectly our expectations.
What did finally tilt the balance in the favor of our CMMS?
For my part, your videos have once again perfectly illustrated the ease of use of the product. It takes only a few minutes to understand the solution.
We appreciated the community aspect of the solution, which is based on an entire network of companies: if necessary, the user can contact other maintenance professionals. This is a feature we don’t use yet but it is very interesting.
Of course, the analytical part that your maintenance management platform offers is essential. The application aggregates our maintenance data and presents it in the form of dynamic tables and curves. This proves particularly useful when my management asks me for the percentage of preventive and curative maintenance activities, for example, even more so since we didn’t use to collect this data. Now, in just a few seconds, I’m able to display these indicators.
With Mobility Work’s analysis tool, analyze all your maintenance data and adapt your strategy
Of course, the financial aspect also played a major role in our decision making. This is one of your great strengths since the initial investment is very low compared to other maintenance management tools and traditional CMMS.
How long has this maintenance management platform been implemented?
I started using it on September 15, 2019: I filled in the database for almost two weeks, so that the CMMS could be operational on site quickly. From October 1st, 2019, the technicians were using it. One of our colleagues, from the regulatory controls team, has been using it for a month now.
During this process have you been in contact with our team?
Yes, indeed. I spoke with Marc-Antoine Talva (founder of the Mobility Work maintenance management platform) over the phone, who convinced me that your solution was the right one. He was available to answer any questions I might have, but in the end, I didn’t have to ask him because the tool is so intuitive and user-friendly that the support material available to users (videos, tutorials, Help Center in the form of FAQs) was sufficient.
To take the example of my colleague at regulatory controls, he sometimes has some questions but he doesn’t even need to get in touch with the customer support because in most cases we can find the answer in less than a minute in the app.
Based on your daily use, what do you think are the greatest benefits of our CMMS?
I have to say I couldn’t find something in your software that I don’t like, it seems quite complete. The planning feature, for example, is the one I use the most as a supervisor. All I have to do is take a task in the calendar tool and drag it to reschedule it and automatically inform the person(s) assigned, where it would have taken me 10 clicks to achieve this with a competing maintenance management solution. In a word, as an administrator, everything is much faster.
Thanks to their maintenance management platform, maintenance teams organize their workday with the calendar
Based on the feedback I get from the people on the field, I would say that the technicians particularly appreciate the ease of use of this CMMS software. They no longer have to keep all their daily or weekly tasks in mind: they not only have access to their own calendar but can efficiently track all their daily activities. All they have to do is pick up their smartphone and look in the application to see what was done the day before and what they have to do today. They can also check whether they have been assigned to an emergency intervention…
These are all factors that improve communication while not restricting it to a phone or tablet screen. On the contrary, we keep on exchanging just as before, even between the different hierarchical levels, and the communication is of better quality.
What I would also like to highlight, and what I very much appreciate, are the updates that you provide on a regular basis. At the beginning of the year, for example, you completely overhauled the design of the mobile application, and after a few hours for the technicians to get accustomed, the feedback was unanimous: the solution is even more intuitive than before. It’s simpler, you can find what you’re looking for in just a few seconds, the navigation is visually more pleasant and user-friendly… So the adoption of this new version came about naturally.
You noticed an improvement in communication, would you say that this is the main asset of this CMMS?
Yes indeed, we don’t lose any more information compared to before. Having all the necessary feedback and knowing precisely which part has been changed on a particular piece of equipment is essential: we have much better visibility on the spare parts orders to be made and can anticipate them better.
Previously, if a technician changed a spare part on a machine, caught up in his schedule and daily operations, he could forget to tell me that he had taken a new part out of stock – and that’s normal. Eventually, if two or three such pieces of information are lost each day, the company very quickly finds itself out of stock. Thanks to the Mobility Work maintenance management platform, we no longer have this problem.
Have you already contacted our online support?
Yes, mainly at the beginning, because I had a few questions during the deployment phase. I wasn’t necessarily going to look for answers to my questions since the support is directly available in the application, through the Intercom button. I always got an answer – and an adequate one – and my requests were taken into account.
The team is very reactive since I always get an answer within the hour or on the very same day. In comparison when you call on the services of a supplier, you often have to wait several days and send several reminders to get an answer. That proves how fast everything is at Mobility Work.
I would also like to point out that your approach is clearly customer-oriented: I can testify to this because I submitted ideas for improvement four months ago and some of them, which were in line with those of several other of your customers, are already being implemented!
What are your upcoming projects regarding the Mobility Work CMMS?
Coming back to maintenance indicators, we hadn’t any before deploying your CMMS solution. After four months of use, we obviously don’t have enough hindsight to carry out in-depth analyses of operations, but in six to eight months’ time, we would like to look at the subject more closely. These figures will be much more valuable and we will then be able to put in place a real follow-up strategy.
I would also like to dig further on the QR codes functionality: I have to install them on the machines so that the technicians only have to scan them with their smartphone to find in a second the equipment files containing the documentation and the tasks linked in the application.
Anything else?
I would just like to repeat that the deployment and use of this next-gen CMMS is going particularly well and I hope that our collaboration has many years ahead of it! This maintenance management tool is so easy to use and so powerful that I wouldn’t think I’d be able to find a competitor’s solution or even go backwards as I find Mobility Work so simple and intuitive!”
Many thanks to Mr. Hérisson for his testimony and his trust!
