Long-Distance CMMS

— By Kelly Patterson, Assistant Editor

Internet technology has brought such advances as e-mail, e-commerce and online work-order management to facilities maintenance and engineering departments, speeding up the completion of work requests and enhancing communication with customers.

Now, another application enabled by Internet technology is on the rise. The growing use of application service providers (ASP) is giving managers the option of running computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) over the Internet, with data maintained through a server off-site. The ASP model is helping departments address their needs for increased speed and efficiency.

Software evolution
Traditional CMMS are installed via CD-ROM on a server located somewhere in the facility. The software is updated, upgraded and maintained in-house.

Using an ASP, the software runs on one centralized server — typically, at the vendor’s site — and departments access the CMMS through the Internet from any computer with a standard Web browser.

With this Web-based CMMS, the software vendor is responsible for upgrades and software maintenance on the main database server, without any need for modifications on the user’s end. The ASP provides the software, service and support to facilities. One main difference between an in-house CMMS and an ASP is that facilities do not own the software. Instead, they rent it from the vendor.

“As far as the future goes, Web-based software is the future,” Bill Price, facility maintenance controller for the Washington State Military Department Army National Guard. But as with any new technology, concerns go along with the benefits.

Cost concerns
“Of course, cost was a concern,” says Paul McClellan, director of the Nova Scotia (Canada) School Boards. He, along with the Department of Education, each of the school boards and the province’s Department of Finance made the decision to use an ASP. The boards were at the point where they would have had to upgrade computers and find people to maintain the system if they had chosen to buy a CMMS.

“The startup cost was very, very low,” McClellan says. “Using somebody else’s software — essentially leasing it on an annual basis — has significantly lower costs than buying the software and the training and everything else all at once.”

Typically, the cost of running an ASP — most often paid monthly, sometimes annually — is based on the number of users plus a service fee. Vendors base use limits on the number of user licenses the facility purchases. For instance, if the facility buys five licenses, that means five people can be logged onto the system at one time.

“Instead of paying big bucks for the program, customers would rather pay a monthly fee than the much bigger cost of buying the application outright,” says Bert Bitter, a facilities management consultant for Catalyst Facilities Consulting in Madison, Wis. Also, sometimes buying the software means paying for hardware upgrades, training and the cost of an in-house technician to maintain the system.

Some facilities have an in-house information technology (IT) department that helps to maintain the CMMS, but not every department has that capacity.

“In our case, it was hard for us to keep somebody in the IT department,” Price says, because “we didn’t have the money to pay them enough.”

Managers also say they have to compete with other departments for technicians’ time, especially in health-care facilities, where patient-care equipment and software take priority.

“With an ASP, you have someone there seven days a week,” Price says. “You aren’t high enough on the priority list with an in-house IT department.”

On the other hand, under the ASP model, maintenance and engineering departments bear the entire cost burden, whereas IT departments are shared throughout an organization.

Time matters
Time is an issue for departments, and waiting too long to access work-order requests quickly adds frustration to daily tasks.

“The most important factor for us is that our CMMS used to be on the hard drive,” Price says. “In order to download work orders, the farther you were away from the server, the longer it took to access the information.”

He says the ASP option has been a more efficient choice .

“We’re all working from the same server, and it’s instantaneous,” Price says. “It’s like working with a remote control.”

Having a separate server off-site also can relieve the bogged-down effect some organizations experience when a significant number of users in different departments all try to work off of one server.

“The CMMS on the owner’s server in the hospital is very data-driven, so it can be really slow, especially when other applications are working,” says Michael Kuechenmeister, director of facilities for the Drake Center hospitals in Cincinnati. “Opening and closing work orders is slow. The ASP reduces the frustration level of the users. They no longer have to wait to retrieve the information.”

Universal application
Bob Florence, facilities manager for the Rouge Valley Health System in Toronto, chose an ASP because he wanted to make a connection between the two hospitals that make up the Drake Center.

“It was the ability to put together PM systems between the two sites,” Florence says. “Sharing information becomes a whole lot easier.”

With each of the province’s 460 schools individually submitting work requests on different systems, McClellan says the school boards now can more easily decide who handles which work requests.

“Before, we were working with seven different databases,” McClellan says, adding “there was that risk that all seven would be doing different things at different times.”

McClellan says there are about 40 people using the system daily at different times, and he expects that number to reach about 700 by the end of the year when the system will be fully implemented.

Finally, instead of upgrading and updating software and hardware in-house, the ASP vendor takes care of revisions.

“I know I’m always current on the best offering,” Florence says. “I’m not worried about outdated software.”

Risky business
“We haven’t run into any big disadvantages of this system so far,” McClellan says. “Some might show up further down the road.” Putting so much trust into another company’s hands can feel a little risky.

“We were concerned,” Kuechenmeister says. “We were dumping all our eggs in one basket, but we looked at the site carefully and are confident now.”

• “We do backup on a weekly basis here,” says Michael Kuechenmeister, director of facilities for the Drake Center hospitals in Cincinnati.
• “The boards are given backup on a frequent basis,” says Paul McClellan, director of the Nova Scotia (Canada) school boards.
• “We can rely on them [the vendor] to make backups,” says Bob Florence, facilities manager for the Rouge Valley Health System in Toronto. “The information isn’t sensitive. If they lost the information temporarily, we would just wait.”
  

Data ownership. What if the facility decided to switch providers or buy a CMMS?

“There might be some overhead in changing the data over to another provider,” says Mark Levi, building management specialist, GSA Pacific region, “but we own the rights to our data.”

Vendor stability. What if the vendor goes out of business?

• “If it happened overnight we’d be in trouble,” Florence says. “If not, we have the backup here. We would have to rebuild all of our work tasks on someone else’s software.”
• “There is that concern that the vendor could go out of business, but you take that chance,” McClellan says. “If that happens we can revert to a manual system until another vendor is selected.”
  

Managers who have invested in an ASP advise their peers to ask important questions before deciding to use the ASP model:

• How many customers does the ASP have?
• How many of these customers are in a facility like yours?
• What size facility is the software designed for?
• What about backup and firewall protection?
• Is there the option to download the data onto the facility’s system?
• What other kind of protection/backup is offered?
  

— Kelly Patterson