How to choose a proper EAM/CMMS solution for an SME plant?

Many SME plant owners feel difficult to choose a suitable EAM/CMMS solution for their plant. This is because the choices are various and such initiative generates risks that are hard to be anticipated. Furthermore, the following questions become obstacles:

Most EAM/CMMS solutions from local and international suppliers are rather expensive, ranging from 300 K to 1 Million RMB

Once there is an indication of budget constraint, the project will be split into several phases or modules reduced, which is logically contradictory to the original overall management logic

After-sales support turns into a bigger headache, resulting from the fact that most IT companies would mostly focus on business development which can bring more revenue rather than a support contract renewal

Once the investment is done, it is very difficult to get the expected result or return on investment because of improper implementation done by IT consultants lacking modern maintenance management background

Now it comes back to the real question: how to choose a suitable EAM/CMMS?

First, you’d better clearly numerate your current challenges, turning them into your hard requirement.

Second, don’t be baffled by big company names. When you choose an EAM/ CMMS vendor, you need to ask who will implement the system, the system vendor or the third party. It is strongly recommended that your project consultant would not be a subcontractor, otherwise, this adds the risk the project will not reach the original goals.

Third, we strongly advise you to do not to neglect the after-sales services once the system will be live. As IT systems are constantly evolving, you may have to upgrade your system, at least for security reasons or system requirements that are outdated (such as your IT department would not keep a server with a deprecated release of Java). Thus, the cost of further system upgradings, in terms of the license and also in terms of service fees should be taken into account in your selection process of EAM/CMMS.

Last but not least, the inevitable topic of price. In order to reduce your investment risk, you can at least think about two approaches: 1) Is there any way you can pay on a monthly or yearly basis, rather than the whole investment for one time? 2) Is there any way you can drop the price down with the availability of new technology, such as the SaaS cloud? Actually, the SaaS solution has been more widely used than you had known. the most obvious would be Salesforce, SAP Hana or any of your email accounts. The immediate benefit you can get from SaaS cloud technology is there is no need for you to purchase hardware, no need to maintain hardware, no need for extra IT support, hence, your investment is less for your maximum benefits.