Many software publishers and training organizations offer CMMS training courses. In fact, there are so many on the market that you’d think it would be essential to be trained in order to use your software correctly.
But is this really the case? Do all computer-aided maintenance management solutions require training for maintenance managers and teams? The question is important, as it has financial and human consequences.
To answer this question, it is necessary to make a distinction between the different types of CMMS and to understand why many of them require specific training.
Traditional CMMS and team training
Conventional CMMS solutions generally require substantial training of the teams dedicated to using them.
What are CMMS software?
A computerized maintenance management software is a computer program created to manage and optimize the maintenance of a plant’s machinery and equipment. It generally offers the following features:
- management and follow-up of maintenance interventions;
- management of spare parts stocks;
- equipment management (location, inventory, etc.);
- organization of the safety of installations before maintenance interventions;
- management of maintenance staff and planning;
- key performance indicators.
In general, this type of software therefore allows you to:
- better manage the costs related to maintenance;
- set up a maintenance strategy (corrective, preventive, predictive) based on an in-depth analysis of the plant’s needs and shortcomings.
Mobility Work is provided with an analytic tool to help you analyze all your maintenance data and adapt your strategy
What are the benefits of a traditional CMMS?
When the first CMMS software was launched on the market, it represented a major evolution in maintenance management, as it quickly replaced “home-made” management using spreadsheets such as Excel or even paper records. With a CMMS solution, companies should be able to improve:
- their cost control, thanks to the planning of maintenance operations, which facilitates in particular the anticipation and forecasting of future expenses;
- their traceability, by simplifying and securing the recording and consultation of interventions;
- their productivity, in particular by reducing periods of machine inactivity.
Operator’s essential training in traditional CMMS
However, this software has major drawbacks to its use, particularly due to its design, which is often not user-friendly enough. Conventional CMMS software are often difficult to configure, to understand and to use; they force companies that choose to implement them, to call upon long and costly training for their maintenance teams.
CMMS training courses enable users and administrators to understand and to use the system efficiently. They are necessary in order for the software to be implemented and they help increase the adoption rate among the teams by teaching them best practices for use.
The adoption rate is precisely what makes this type of CMMS so attractive. As any organizational change within a company is likely to generate reluctance, a new CMMS solution must be useful and effective in the eyes of the employees concerned.
In the case of traditional CMMS, the obligation to undergo long and tedious training courses before being able to use the new tool, as well as its lack of ergonomics, generally gives rise to misgivings, which can lead to a refusal to work with the solution. This is all the more true since it is always the user who has to adapt to the tool, even when it evolves (and sometimes requires new training).
Next-gen CMMS, an intuitive solution
In recent years, next-gen CMMS software have emerged, with Mobility Work spearheading the development. While they, just like the ones before them, are designed to facilitate maintenance management, they are different in many ways.
The new 4.0 CMMS approach
The main innovation of Mobility Work is that it is based on the model of the applications we use on a daily basis on our smartphones and tablets. This feature considerably modifies the approach of the CMMS tool by managers and maintenance teams. Its use is very intuitive and does not require any specific skills or knowledge, thanks to ergonomics designed to make the application accessible to all.
A no-training, high-performance CMMS
The ease of use of Mobility Work has a major advantage: no training is required. Thus, when a factory chooses to implement the application for maintenance management, teams can use it after a presentation of the tool by the sales department. They then take on the functions that are useful to them, just like the user of an everyday application.
“Unlike many professional software programs, especially conventional CMMS, Mobility Work is easy to implement. It took Laurent Lefebvre about three months to deploy the solution and make it fully functional for his maintenance department. However, he points out that “for an average user, it takes just 10 minutes to get started”. Geoffroy Topart, for his part, “immediately saw the interest of the tool”. CMD users easily adopted it.”
Read our user’s testimony: Mobility Work at CMD Gears: a versatile tool for maintenance
Moreover, accessibility helps winning the support of the teams, which is a major issue in any organizational change within a company. Where traditional CMMS software tend to discourage maintenance operators, bringing more constraints than benefits, Mobility Work facilitates their tasks from the very first days of use, encouraging them to make full use of the application.
Mobility Work CMMS is based on a community of users who exchange and follow their plant’s activity thanks to the newsfeed
An application at the service of its users
Whereas traditional software require its users to adapt to the way they work, a next-gen CMMS such as Mobility Work adapts to them, as it aims to be entirely at their service. It works thanks to very regular application updates, based on customer feedback, to meet their most specific needs. In a way, it is the users who shape their CMMS, and not the other way around.
The Mobility Work CMMS solution revolves around a user community: all users of the application have access to different communities, be it their factory, their industrial group or the whole Mobility Work community. This allows them to share experiences and quickly find relevant answers to their questions from other maintenance professionals.
Training for a new CMMS software has long been an indispensable step due to the heavy and complex nature of existing solutions. But Mobility Work’s 4.0 CMMS frees companies from this investment in time and money by offering an application that is both high-performance and designed to be quickly and easily functional for all its users.
