Organizing purchases in line with fiscal requirements is a balancing act that needs to be managed perfectly to keep your maintenance teams equipped with the resources they need without overextending allocations. Today’s cloud-based CMMS solutions are well-equipped to add a layer of intelligence to project management, maintenance budgeting, and purchasing that has certainly come a long way from previous system iterations.
Pushing forward with project management
According to the Project Management Institute, a project is defined as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.” In the maintenance world, that could include capital improvements, landscaping initiatives, and energy conservation efforts, among others. 
Project management can be tackled in CMMS by defining time frames, statuses, categories, and associating particular work orders. Budgets and actual costs may also be linked for an end-to-end scope of the project management processes, from initiating to closing.
But budgets aren’t just effective components of projects. They can also be useful as standalone functions. Managers may want to create a budget for a specific piece of equipment or asset, a location or site, or to simply track their annual operational budget on a monthly or fiscal basis, for example. Modern CMMS gives you the flexibility to filter work orders types and statuses that should be compared against that budget, as well as budget time frames. Budgets can be further refined using the options available through a filter builder. Once budgets are established, they can be “favorited” for easy future reference.
Filter builders in CMMS can give you a variety of conditions to show only desired data, including adding groups, conditions, and more.
Purchasing playing a part
The breakdown of budgets – by labor, miscellaneous areas, and parts – is affected by the purchasing and inventory functions of CMMS. Parts may have set re-order points that may trigger automatic e-mail notifications to personnel. Once notified, maintenance team members may either order parts directly within a work order or create a purchase order (PO) within the purchasing function. These POs may include multiple suppliers and parts, and can have configured statuses to mold to an organization’s processes. For instance, a primary default status of “preliminary” may indicate the requirement for approval as a next step along the purchasing process. Receipts, invoices, pick tickets, and other documentation may be added to the image library for association with a particular PO.
Keeping an eye on your maintenance expenditures doesn’t have to be a daunting task – nor an all-consuming one. With built-in project management, budget, and purchasing functionality, a well-designed CMMS can help you track each stage of your project while staying on top of budgetary impacts like labor and parts inventory. Are you finding success or struggling with these areas? Comment below to include your maintenance projects and how your organization manages them today.
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