CMMS vs. Spreadsheets: When Is It Time to Switch?

Spreadsheets can be good maintenance tools.

They are inexpensive, familiar, flexible and easy to change. A maintenance team can use a spreadsheet to maintain an equipment list, track upcoming preventive maintenance, record completed work or keep a simple backlog.

If that process is working reliably, moving it into new software may accomplish very little.

The decision becomes more interesting when the spreadsheet is no longer just storing maintenance information. People are also using it to coordinate work, communicate priorities, manage recurring schedules, preserve equipment history and figure out what is happening across the maintenance operation.

At that point, ask what the team is doing around the spreadsheet to keep the process working.

That is often more revealing than the size of the file.

What a maintenance spreadsheet can do well

A spreadsheet can hold a surprising amount of maintenance information.

An equipment list might contain:

• asset or equipment ID;
• description;
• location;
• manufacturer;
• model;
• serial number;
• installation date;
• criticality;
• last service date;
• next service date.

Another sheet can track maintenance work:

• date;
• equipment;
• problem;
• priority;
• assigned technician;
• status;
• completion date;
• notes.

With formulas, filters, conditional formatting and multiple tabs, a capable spreadsheet user can build considerably more.

NIST researchers examining maintenance data from manufacturers encountered records ranging from customized spreadsheets with relatively few columns to CMMS files containing much larger sets of maintenance information.[1]

The format alone does not determine whether maintenance is being managed well.

A spreadsheet may be entirely adequate if the people responsible can keep it current and reliably get the information they need from it.

What changes as the maintenance operation becomes more complicated

Maintenance information does not sit still.

A problem is reported.

Someone reviews it.

The work receives a priority.

It may need planning, parts, labor or coordination with production.

Someone performs the work.

Findings are recorded.

The job is completed.

The resulting information becomes part of the maintenance record.

NIST's maintenance-management workflow describes a maintenance work order moving through the process from inception to completion and being shared along the way. In that workflow, a CMMS maintains the work-order record and provides access to information about assets, resources and other relevant documentation. Work orders can be generated, tracked and archived, and the system can report tasks that are due.[2]

That distinction helps explain when a spreadsheet begins to strain.

The question is no longer only:

Can the spreadsheet store this information?

Look at what people have to do to keep the maintenance process moving.

Work requests are arriving outside the spreadsheet

Imagine that maintenance requests arrive through:

• email;
• phone calls;
• text messages;
• radio;
• conversations on the floor;
• paper forms;
• a shared spreadsheet.

Someone then has to turn those requests into a current picture of the work.

For a small operation, that may be easy.

As the volume or number of people involved increases, someone may spend more time collecting requests, entering them, checking whether they were entered twice, updating priorities and telling people what happened to them.

The spreadsheet can still hold the list.

The surrounding process is becoming more demanding.

Ask:

• Is there one reliable place to see requested work?
• Can people tell whether a request has already been recorded?
• Who decides its priority?
• Can the person who reported the problem see what happened to it?
• How much manual work is required to keep the list current?

Several people need to act on the same maintenance record

A maintenance job can involve more than one person.

Someone reports it.

A supervisor reviews it.

A planner may prepare it.

A technician performs it.

Parts may be issued.

A manager may later review the history or cost.

A shared spreadsheet can support several users, particularly with modern cloud collaboration.

But the more people who depend on the record, the more important ownership, status and consistent updates become.

Consider a work order marked Waiting.

Waiting for what?

A part?

Production access?

A contractor?

Approval?

Another technician?

If the answer exists in an email, text message or someone's memory rather than the maintenance record, the spreadsheet is only showing part of the process.

Preventive maintenance requires more administration

A spreadsheet can be an effective preventive-maintenance schedule.

For a manageable number of recurring tasks, someone can record the frequency, calculate the next due date and update the schedule when work is completed.

The question is how much human administration is required to make the schedule operate.

As the PM program grows, someone may need to:

• identify what is coming due;
• create or communicate the work;
• assign it;
• reschedule work that cannot be performed;
• record completion;
• calculate the next occurrence;
• identify overdue work;
• combine PM work with the rest of the maintenance workload.

A Massachusetts government best-practices report describes a school district using a computerized maintenance-management system to schedule preventive maintenance, track work orders and record maintenance and repairs. Its system maintained a yearly PM schedule and allowed administrators to query preventive-maintenance tasks by month, building, component or worker.[3]

The useful comparison is not whether a spreadsheet can contain a due date.

It is how reliably the maintenance organization can turn that schedule into completed and documented work.

Equipment history has to be reconstructed

Suppose a pump fails today.

You want to know:

• When was it last worked on?
• What was wrong?
• What did the technician find?
• What was replaced?
• Has the same problem occurred before?
• How much work has this asset required?

That information may already exist in a spreadsheet.

Or parts of it may exist across a work-order tab, PM sheet, parts file, paper records and technician notes.

Historical maintenance work orders can contain important knowledge about maintenance activity and equipment behavior.[4]

If finding an asset's history requires reconstructing it from several records, consider whether the current structure still matches the way the information needs to be used.

Technicians work somewhere other than the spreadsheet

Maintenance usually happens at the equipment.

The technician may need information before starting and may generate new information while performing the job.

That could include:

• equipment history;
• instructions;
• documents;
• readings;
• labor;
• parts;
• photographs;
• failure information;
• completion notes.

If technicians cannot conveniently access or update the maintenance record where the work occurs, another process usually fills the gap.

Paper.

A notebook.

A photograph.

A text message.

Memory until the end of the shift.

Later, someone has to move that information into the official record.

The extra step does not automatically justify buying a CMMS. It does tell you to examine how much information is being transferred manually and what gets lost or delayed in the process.

Reporting depends on maintaining the spreadsheet correctly

Spreadsheets are powerful analytical tools.

If the underlying maintenance data is structured and maintained consistently, formulas, pivot tables and charts can answer many useful questions.

The limitation may be upstream of the report.

NIST researchers examining maintenance work-order data found missing repair times, limited information about who identified or repaired faults, inconsistent descriptions and other data-quality issues. They also noted manufacturers' interest in deriving useful analytics from maintenance records.[1]

A CMMS does not automatically produce good data either.

NIST's maintenance-data research illustrates the same broader problem: reporting and analysis depend on what was captured during the maintenance process and how consistently it was recorded.[1]

So when reports are difficult to produce, determine why.

Is the spreadsheet incapable of the analysis?

Or is the information needed for the analysis not being collected consistently in the first place?

That distinction matters when evaluating replacement software.

The spreadsheet is becoming a system you have to maintain

This may be the clearest signal to investigate.

Over time, a maintenance spreadsheet can grow into:

• an asset tab;
• a work-order tab;
• a PM schedule;
• a parts sheet;
• a backlog;
• a dashboard;
• formulas;
• macros;
• conditional formatting;
• lookup tables;
• instructions that only one person fully understands.

There is nothing wrong with a sophisticated spreadsheet.

Ask what happens when the person who built it is unavailable.

Can another person understand how it works?

Can they safely change it?

Do people know which fields must be completed?

Can someone accidentally overwrite a formula or alter the structure?

How much time is spent maintaining the maintenance tracker itself?

The answers tell you more than the number of rows in the workbook.

When a spreadsheet is still the right tool

You do not need to graduate from spreadsheets simply because CMMS software exists.

A spreadsheet may remain the better choice when:

• the maintenance operation is straightforward;
• relatively few people need to maintain the records;
• work volume is manageable;
• preventive-maintenance scheduling is simple;
• equipment history is easy to find;
• field access is not a significant problem;
• the information managers need is easy to produce;
• the current process is reliable.

Cost and implementation effort matter too.

New software has to be selected, configured, populated with data, learned and maintained. People have to use it consistently.

If the existing process works and the expected improvement is small, introducing another system may not be worthwhile.

What a CMMS changes

The important change is not that information moves from cells into a different-looking screen.

A CMMS can organize maintenance information around connected records and workflows.

An asset can have work associated with it.

A work request can become a work order.

A work order can have a priority, status, assignee, labor, parts and completion information.

Completed work can remain connected to the asset.

Preventive-maintenance plans can generate or support scheduled work.

Managers can use the resulting records to see open work, upcoming work and maintenance history.

NIST describes this role directly: the CMMS supports maintenance management through records of maintenance work orders and access to documentation about assets, resources and other relevant information.[2]

The value of that structure depends on whether your operation needs it.

Don't switch because the spreadsheet looks messy

A messy spreadsheet may need cleaning.

It does not necessarily need replacing.

Before evaluating CMMS software, identify what is difficult about the current process.

Problem: Work requests arrive through several channels and some are difficult to track.

Possible requirement: a consistent method for submitting, reviewing and tracking maintenance requests.

Problem: Supervisors manually review the PM spreadsheet each week and then communicate assignments separately.

Possible requirement: scheduled maintenance that can become visible, assignable work.

Problem: Technicians have to return to a computer to enter completion information.

Possible requirement: field access to work orders and the ability to record completion information where maintenance occurs.

Problem: Equipment history has to be assembled from several files.

Possible requirement: completed maintenance records connected to individual assets.

Now the software evaluation has a purpose.

A practical test: follow one week of maintenance work

Take a recent week and follow the work through your existing process.

For each maintenance job, ask:

1. Where did the need originate?
2. Where was it first recorded?
3. Who reviewed it?
4. How was its priority communicated?
5. How was it assigned?
6. Where did the technician get the information needed to perform it?
7. Where were parts or other resources recorded?
8. Where was completion documented?
9. Did anyone have to enter the same information again somewhere else?
10. Did the completed work become part of an accessible equipment history?

Look for places where the process depends on:

• duplicate entry;
• manual reminders;
• separate files;
• disconnected messages;
• information being retyped;
• people reconciling different records;
• someone remembering what happened;
• reports being manually rebuilt.

Those are not reasons to buy a particular product.

They are evidence about how your current maintenance system is working.

If the spreadsheet still gives the team a reliable way to manage the operation, there may be no reason to replace it.

If maintaining the spreadsheet and everything around it is becoming a substantial part of managing maintenance, document where that effort is occurring.

Those problems can become inputs to your CMMS requirements.

Next: How to Build Your CMMS Requirements

If your current process is creating problems, the next step is not to collect a giant list of software features.

Start with the operation.

Map the work, information, people, decisions and conditions the software will need to support.

How to Build Your CMMS Requirements →