How it works
A CMMS starts with an asset register: every boiler, air handler, elevator, fire door and piece of plant, with its location, make, service history and maintenance plan.
Work arrives in two ways. Preventive maintenance is scheduled from the asset plan, by calendar or by meter readings such as run hours. Reactive maintenance starts with a fault report from an occupant, a help desk or a building system, which becomes a work order assigned to a technician or contractor.
Each closed work order records who did the work, how long it took, which parts were used and what it cost. That history drives budgets, repair-or-replace decisions and compliance evidence for inspections. A CMMS is narrower than CAFM or an IWMS: it manages maintenance, not space or leases.
How to measure it
- Track the ratio of planned to reactive work orders; a rising reactive share usually means preventive plans are slipping.
- Measure response and completion times by priority and by site.
- Monitor the backlog of open work orders past their target date.
- Review cost per asset over time to support repair-or-replace decisions.
Examples
- A technician receives a work order on a phone to replace a filter, scans the asset tag, logs the part and closes the job.
- An occupant reports a broken screen in a meeting room, and the report becomes a ticket for the facilities team with the room and time attached.
Common mistakes
- Loading an incomplete asset register, so preventive plans miss equipment.
- Accepting fault reports by email and chat instead of one intake point, which loses history.
- Measuring only closed tickets rather than response time and repeat faults.
How Kadence helps
Kadence is not a CMMS. Employees can report facility issues through Kadence ticketing, and Kadence Room Displays (WorkOps Pro) can raise a ticket from the meeting room door. Outbound webhooks and the public REST API can pass events to the systems your maintenance team already runs.
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Frequently asked questions
What does a CMMS do?
It keeps a register of assets, schedules preventive maintenance, turns fault reports into work orders, assigns them to technicians or contractors, and records the time, parts and cost of each job. Managers use the history to plan budgets, decide when to replace equipment and show inspectors that required checks were done.
What is the difference between a CMMS and CAFM?
A CMMS is built around assets and maintenance work. CAFM is built around space: floor plans, rooms and occupancy, with maintenance as one module. Engineering-heavy sites such as plants and hospitals often run a dedicated CMMS, while office portfolios more often use CAFM or an IWMS.
What is the difference between a CMMS and an IWMS?
A CMMS handles maintenance only. An IWMS covers maintenance plus real estate and leases, space management, capital projects and assets on one database. Some organizations use the maintenance module of their IWMS; others connect a specialist CMMS to it.
What is a work order?
A work order is a record of a maintenance task: what needs doing, on which asset or location, by whom, by when and at what priority. It is created from a preventive schedule or a fault report and closed with the labor, parts and notes, which become the asset's service history.
Related terms
- CAFM (computer-aided facilities management) Software that links floor plans to a database of rooms and assets to run space, maintenance and service requests.
- Facilities management (FM) The function that keeps buildings and their services working: maintenance, cleaning, security, catering, energy, safety and space.
- Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) Enterprise software that runs real estate, leases, space, maintenance and assets from one shared database.
Kadence editorial team · Last reviewed