Technological and/or digital interventions have made significant inroads into corporate boardrooms across industries. Companies looking to use software applications around Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) are no different. With evolving customer expectations and an imperative to reduce cost structure, many are looking towards such software applications to enhance the customer experience dished out to their stakeholders.
Companies in the field services with the right set of technology tools can manage customers, inventory, technicians, vendors, suppliers and various other parts of their operations seamlessly while continuing to focus on providing a superior customer experience.
Through the course of this article, we are going to evaluate the benefits that an MRO software can bring to your business and how these can turn into a substantially large ROI percentage which would not just outdo the investments in implementing the software application, but also result in significant cost savings in the medium to long term.
But before we can figure out the value an MRO application suite can deliver, one should be careful while making such claims: The ROI of any MRO suite is dependent on so many factors, many of which are specific to you, your goals, and your facility. So this is less of an exact ROI calculation and more of a list of areas where an MRO application suite brings value to the business and how it can outdo any investments made in implementing the software application.
Significantly reducing downtime. Downtime can cost anywhere from a few thousand to a few million dollars every year. An MRO application can help you reduce downtime and the related costs by:
Helping you understand the cost of each hour of downtime
Tracking the number of downtime hours before and after implementing an MRO application suite
Giving you visibility into individual types of failure or PM tasks to highlight how an MRO suite has reduced downtime in each case.
Labor. Eliminating inefficient processes with MRO applications can save your organization a lot of time and money. Once you have a baseline in terms of the time it takes to complete tasks as well as labor hours and pay rates, you can start finding answers to the following questions, and find the ROI of MRO software as it relates to labor costs:
Are fewer unplanned breakdowns resulting in fewer additional staff or expensive contractors?
Are we running more planned maintenance? (Keep in mind that planned maintenance has been shown to cost three to four times less than reactive maintenance)
Are we saving time on data entry thanks to easier, digital report building?
Is work getting identified and done faster, thanks to mobile notifications?
Are facets like productive time, quality of work, and the total value of labor hours increasing?
Inventory. Fine-tuning your spare parts purchasing and organization can lead to fewer costs. You can measure this by calculating the amount you’ve spent on inventory before and after MRO software implementation. Here are some ways an MRO software can lead to smarter inventory decisions:
Spend less on emergency parts purchasing by scheduling maintenance and establishing condition-based monitoring
Track inventory and set minimum quantities so you’re not overstocking
Locate inventory easier to decrease downtime and labor costs
Asset life and efficiency. Part of the ROI of MRO application software comes from ensuring assets get the maintenance they need to operate longer and run at full speed. There are two main advantages of this that can save your company thousands or millions of dollars in the long term:
Machine availability, performance, and quality are increased.
The life of assets is prolonged.
Company sustainability and success. There are many ways an MRO application can deliver a higher ROI by affecting the business outside the shop floor.
Here are just a few examples:
Better maintenance helps keep machines in like-new condition, decreasing utility costs.
The software can make audits easier, ensuring your company capitalizes on partnerships that require compliance with certain regulations.
Using a CMMS to schedule and track PMs can decrease downtime which cuts down manufacturing delays, so products are shipped on time and your customers stay happy.
Streamlined Communications and Coordination. One of the biggest advantages of having an MRO solution is that it brings everyone on the same unified platform – the managers, maintenance technicians, suppliers and vendors, and any other stakeholder.
The customer service can use MRO software as a dispatch board to schedule service calls or create work orders. In addition, technicians on the factory floor or on the field can then use the mobile software and be notified when a new job is assigned to them. By providing various stakeholders the access, you can allow them to raise requests, get notified of the status of their requests, and feel empowered. All these save you valuable hours of manual work or call-center employees catering to incoming queries, translating into direct savings for your organization. To remain competitive, service providers have to manage various business activities to meet the demands of stakeholders, which can only be achieved in a scalable way by using a digital MRO solution.
Streamlined Operations and reporting. MRO software puts everything in one place, making it straightforward to manage operations and generate insights that might help decide the future course of action. Workflow automation can optimize and streamline processes saving valuable resources. The software allows reporting dashboards that allow you to track business growth and view the real-time health of your business operations. They even provide information on technician performance and help manage customer relations ensuring retention and loyalty.
Invoicing and Feedback Automation. Typically, it is invoicing which can be held up massively by the paper trail - completed work documentation arriving from one/all of your field workers at once, leads to inevitable bottlenecks and admin teams frantically playing catchup. The MRO software will capture and record everything from hours worked, parts used electronically, and when a job is completed. The digital solution will then sync back all the necessary information instantly to your office staff to action for invoicing - resulting in not only a quick invoice turnaround but also accurate invoicing every single time. In case of late payments, automated reminders and notifications could be set up so that all your customers and stakeholders do not miss an invoice.
Scalability for business growth. As service processes and technologies become more sophisticated and field service teams get larger, keeping the administration cost structure and profit margin intact becomes more urgent. This is where MRO Software has its greatest payback. An MRO supplication suite mitigates the complexity of meeting growing industry demands and aggressive service delivery levels, and balances all the moving parts that go into deploying field personnel to complete service work.
ROI of MRO applications - One Size fits all?
The primary downside of a manual approach is the absence of real-time communication with the various stakeholders leaving them unable to effectively deal with surprises. With MRO software and mobile devices offering real-time, two-way communication, schedulers and service teams can respond quickly to dynamic circumstances and alert the teams, reorganize priorities, and address any shortfalls from the field. Not just does it streamline the operations, but also improves the customer experience to enhance retention and brand recall.
MRO applications are very different – at different features and at various price points, each of the solutions in the marketplace comes with different features, capabilities, use cases, and ROI. Figuring out the cost of an MRO application and the value it provides requires a careful analysis of your company, its goals, and the MRO application options available. It’s important to consider all these factors and talk to different vendors to get the full picture.
With QuickReach's No-Code MRO Platform, you could customize the application to suit your unique processes and workflows. This would allow your organization to modify the templates available on Steer to ensure that the workflow is created to suit your requirements. The Steer license allows you to build unlimited applications on its No-Code platform to extend all your digital transformation requirements.
Get in touch with a QuickReach's customer success associate HERE or visit www.quickreach.co to understand how QuickReach No-Code MRO suite could keep you prepared for any business challenges in the future.
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