How Many CMMS Users Do You Need?

The number of people who participate in maintenance is not necessarily the number of CMMS licenses you need.

A maintenance operation may involve technicians, supervisors, planners, storeroom staff, administrators, contractors, managers and hundreds or thousands of employees who only submit work requests. Depending on the product and contract, those people may be treated very differently for licensing.

That is why starting with “How many users do we have?” can produce the wrong number.

Start with the work.

Maintenance participation is not the same as licensed population

A person can participate in maintenance without needing the same system access as a technician.

A requester may only need to report a leaking faucet and check its status. A technician may need to receive assignments, record labor, consume parts, enter meter readings and close work. A planner may create job plans and schedule work. An administrator may configure workflows, security and master data.

Those are all CMMS participants. They are not necessarily equivalent commercial users.

The useful buying question is therefore not:

“How many employees might touch the CMMS?”

It is:

“What does each participant need to do, and how does the proposed licensing model treat that activity?”

CMMS licensing models: how vendors convert operations into cost

Mobile CMMS: what technicians need in the field

The Participation Map

CMMSBuyersGuide uses a six-step Participation Map:

Person → Maintenance Role → Required Action → Access Depth → Usage Pattern → Commercial Treatment

Build it before asking vendors for final pricing.

1. Person

Identify the populations that interact with maintenance.

Typical groups include:

• technicians
• planners and schedulers
• supervisors
• maintenance managers
• CMMS administrators
• storeroom or inventory staff
• purchasing participants
• operations personnel
• employees who submit requests
• managers who view reports
• contractors
• seasonal or occasional workers
• integration or service identities

Do not assume every group needs a paid seat.

2. Maintenance role

Describe why the person touches the maintenance process.

The same employee can hold more than one role. A maintenance supervisor may approve work, schedule technicians and view reports. A technician may also issue parts.

The purpose is not to reproduce the organization chart. It is to expose the work the system must support.

3. Required action

List what each role must be able to do.

Examples:

• submit a request
• view request status
• receive work
• update or close work
• record labor
• issue parts
• create PMs
• plan or schedule
• approve work
• administer users
• configure workflows
• run reports
• export data

This is where a vague “user count” becomes an access model.

4. Access depth

Separate people who create or change maintenance records from people who only request, view or approve.

Current commercial models illustrate why this matters. UpKeep states that people assigned work or configuring the system take paid seats while requesters and view-only users are unlimited and free on its published plans.

These are examples, not universal rules.

The point is that identical maintenance participation can produce different license counts under different products.

5. Usage pattern

Ask how often and when the role uses the system.

A full-time technician and an occasional contractor may need similar permissions but very different usage patterns.

A concurrent-user model may react to simultaneous use. A named-user model may react to total enabled accounts. A site or enterprise model may absorb both.

Capture:

• daily vs occasional use
• simultaneous use at peak periods
• seasonal workforce changes
• shift overlap
• contractor access
• expected organizational growth

6. Commercial treatment

Only now map each role to the vendor’s licensing rules.

For every population, mark:

Paid | Free | Included | Concurrent | Limited | Unknown

“Unknown” matters.

It identifies a pricing question that still needs to be resolved.

How to create a CMMS implementation plan

The Minimum Licensed Population

The goal is not to buy the fewest possible licenses.

It is to identify the smallest licensed population that still lets the maintenance process operate as designed.

If a buyer saves money by excluding supervisors who need to approve work, technicians who need to record history, or requesters who need to report problems, the organization may reduce software cost by weakening the maintenance information flow.

Ask:

“If this population does not receive the access we assumed, what part of the maintenance process moves outside the CMMS?”

If the answer is spreadsheets, shared logins, email, paper or somebody re-entering information, the license decision has created a hidden system.

Peak participation matters in concurrent models

When licensing is concurrent, headcount is especially misleading.

The relevant question becomes how many licensed users need access at the same time.

Estimate peak use by shift and role:

• technicians starting or closing work
• supervisors reviewing assignments
• planners scheduling
• storeroom staff issuing parts
• administrators working during business hours

Then test a busy operating period, not an average day.

A concurrent license pool that works at 2:00 PM may fail during shift change or a major outage.

Do not solve licensing with shared identities

A shared device is not automatically a shared user identity.

Several technicians may use the same shop tablet while still signing in individually.

Whether shared accounts are permitted, appropriate or auditable depends on the system, security model and organizational requirements.

During the demo, ask the vendor to show the exact workflow on shared field devices while preserving the individual identity of the person who performed the work.

Count growth before it happens

User requirements change.

A buyer may add a shift, outsource work, acquire a facility, centralize planning or extend the system to another department.

Under some licensing models, each change affects price differently.

Create a second Participation Map for a plausible future state.

Compare:

Current population

12 months

36 months

The purpose is not to predict headcount precisely.

It is to expose the commercial effect of growth before signing.

The Excluded Participant Test

For each role not receiving normal CMMS access, ask:

1. What maintenance action does this person still need to perform?
2. Where will that action occur?
3. Who moves the information into or out of the CMMS?
4. What history or accountability could be lost?
5. Is the exclusion operationally intentional or only a licensing decision?

This test is particularly useful when a proposal appears inexpensive because very few people are licensed.

Questions to put in the RFP or quote request

Ask vendors to state:

• the licensing unit
• which roles require paid access
• whether requesters are free or unlimited
• whether view-only access is free or limited
• whether administrators consume licenses
• whether contractors require licenses
• whether licenses are named or concurrent
• whether users can be reassigned
• whether inactive users remain billable
• whether additional licenses can be purchased individually or only in blocks
• the price or pricing method for additional users
• any tier thresholds
• any minimum user commitment
• how licensing changes when another site or department is added
• whether mobile access changes licensing
• how service/integration accounts are treated

Do not accept “unlimited users” without asking what else is limited.

The commercial meter may have moved to sites, assets, modules, transactions or plan tiers.

What should be included in a CMMS quote?

A simple user-planning worksheet

For each population, record:

Role | People | Required actions | Access depth | Peak simultaneous use | Current license treatment | Future population | Unresolved question

That table is more useful than a single cell labeled “Users: 75.”

The buying principle

CMMS access should follow the maintenance process first and the pricing model second.

The software should not force the organization to redesign legitimate maintenance participation merely to protect a seat count.

Count everyone who needs to participate. Define what they need to do. Then determine how each vendor converts that participation into licenses.

Count maintenance participants first. Count licenses second.

How to decide what CMMS is best for your operation