Effective implementation and adoption across your organization hold the keys to your success when adding CMMS to the workplace or changing systems. As you prepare for CMMS implementation, take time to put together a plan, and make a list of the systems you want to connect to your CMMS. 

But as you work on your implementation plan, don’t forget to collaborate with leadership and other employees across your organization. For a CMMS to provide value, you need to program all assets in the building, set up workflows for employees to submit work order requests, and get buy-in from everyone involved.

Before building your project plan for implementation, consider these questions:

• Who will be users for your CMMS, and do you know their needs?
• Do you have buy-in from leadership to move forward with implementation?
• What systems will connect to your CMMS?
• Have you built a timeline for when you need to implement the CMMS?

There are five steps you can take as part of your CMMS implementation that will ensure your success and full adoption of the software.

Step 1: Review your plan with leadership

Support for large organizational changes comes from the top. Sit down and review your plans with your leadership team to ensure you have their support before beginning implementation. 

As your leaders, they will likely have questions and be checking to make sure that the new software supports their work culture. They’ll also want to know how all employees will be involved and trained on the system. Through these meetings, you can check to make sure you don’t have any blind spots in your implementation and make sure you’re on the right track. 

Take this time to also manage your leadership team’s expectations. Make it clear how long implementation will take, the working hours involved, and what the end result will look like.

During your meeting, you’ll also want to discuss your goals. What are you hoping to accomplish with implementing CMMS or changing CMMS systems? Because this is an investment in time, your leadership team will be looking for results and you need to make it clear what those results will be.

Step 2: Get input from key stakeholders

When a CMMS is implemented well in an organization, it is not a standalone system. It simplifies existing workflows and communicates with other systems to make your entire organization run more efficiently. 

Map out the teams and leaders who will work with CMMS or a related system that will feed your CMMS. Take time to discuss the implementation with them. This will have two distinct benefits:

1. These stakeholders will feel involved in the process because you’re asking for their input.
2. You might learn of interoperability or functionality you didn’t know you needed to worry about during implementation.

Step 3: Have a clear project plan

Now that you’ve conducted important meetings with leadership and key stakeholders, you should be armed with the information you need to develop a project plan. 

The duration of your project plan will be dependent on how complicated your implementation is. And you might have phases within your project plan where the CMMS becomes operational but still has features that will come online once you’ve completed the next step of implementation.

Be sure that your project plan includes important dates and milestones that you’ve set with your leadership team. This will help you stay on task and meet your goals.

Step 4: Project kick-off

You’ve completed the important steps in preparing for your CMMS implementation. Now you’re ready to get started. Don’t forget that part of the project includes preparing your organization for change, including training staff. 

Check-in with your CMMS vendor regularly throughout your project. Discuss where you’re at in the process and ask questions about any part of the process that seems unclear. They’ll be able to help you ensure things go well.

Step 5: Complete the CMMS implementation and constantly evolve

The work doesn’t necessarily end with implementation. Instead, remember that evolving is an important aspect of your implementation. Make tweaks, changes, and updates throughout the life of your CMMS to ensure you’re always getting the most out of it.

CMMS support

From the moment your team starts considering Proteus MMX to ongoing support, our team will be there for you. We offer a resource center with whitepapers, case studies, and webinars and videos to help you learn more about CMMS and what we have to offer. 

Once you’ve chosen Proteus MMX as your CMMS, we offer technical specifications to help with implementation, a technical support team, and help with data import and conversion. 

Call us, or send us an email, or schedule a demo to learn more about Proteus MMX and reach out to us with any questions.