What is a CMMS?
A CMMS is the system that records what has been done to each asset, who did it, when and at what cost. Everything else — planning, alerts, indicators — comes out of that record.
The acronym stands for Computerised Maintenance Management System. In Spanish it is GMAO: Gestión de Mantenimiento Asistido por Ordenador. They are the same kind of software; this page uses the two terms interchangeably.
First it is a record. Everything else comes after.
The usual description — “software to plan and automate maintenance” — starts at the end. A CMMS can plan because it has stored things first: the asset inventory, the history of work on each asset, the materials used, the hours spent and the state each job was left in.
Everything else rests on that record. Recurring scheduling needs to know when the last inspection took place. Mean time between failures needs the previous failures, with their dates. Cost per asset needs every item consumed to be charged to a work order, and every work order to an asset. If the record has gaps, whatever you calculate on top inherits them.
That is the practical difference between a CMMS and a shared spreadsheet. It is not the interface. It is that the record is created as a by-product of the work — the technician closes the work order and the data is there — instead of depending on someone typing it up later.
CMMS = GMAO. The two terms do not differ in scope or category: one is the English name and the other the Spanish name for the same product.
Four uses, and each depends on the one before.
They are usually presented as a list of separate functions. In practice they are a sequence: each one only works once the previous one is in place.
Centralise
One place for the inventory, the history, the technical documentation and the cost. While the data is scattered across folders, emails and a spreadsheet per branch, nothing else holds up.
Carry out the work and record it
Work orders with their assignment, their execution in the field and their closure with evidence: forms, photographs and a sign-off signature.
Schedule
Preventive maintenance plans with a set frequency that generate the work orders on their own, instead of depending on someone remembering.
Decide on what was actually done
Indicators calculated on the real history — times, costs, repeat failures per asset — not on what someone said would happen.
The five parts every CMMS has to include.
The detail of each varies from product to product. But if one of the five is missing, that is where the cycle breaks.
- Asset inventory One record per piece of equipment or installation, with its location, its work history, its accumulated cost and its documentation: manuals, warranties and certificates. When assets are spread across a territory, the location should be real geometry, not an address field typed by hand.
- Work orders The full cycle: creation — manual, from an incident or generated by a plan — assignment, execution, closure and later analysis. With the materials used deducted from the warehouse and the hours charged.
- Preventive maintenance Plans by asset type or for a specific asset, with their frequency, that generate work orders automatically. Scheduled by time or by meter reading — operating hours, kilometres, cycles.
- Field app The part that decides whether the record gets filled in at all. If the technician has to go back to the office to type up the job sheet, the data arrives late and arrives worse. And if they work in places without coverage, it has to work offline for the whole working day, not just in read-only mode.
- Indicators and reporting MTBF, MTTR, availability, preventive maintenance compliance, backlog and cost per asset, calculated on execution data. Plus a way to get the raw data out and take it wherever it is needed.
The difference from an FSM is where the asset is.
Both manage maintenance work. They part ways on their starting assumption, and that assumption decides which problems each one solves.
The line between them is getting blurrier, and some operations need both halves: deep technical inventory and geography. That is the gap Maptainer fills — a CMMS with native GIS, where the asset’s geometry and the cost of travel are not an add-on but part of the data model.
| Traditional CMMS | FSM | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting assumption | Assets sit inside one site and belong to you. | Assets are spread out and often belong to a customer. |
| Location | A location hierarchy: plant, line, machine. | A coordinate on the map, with routes and travel. |
| Travel | Not a variable. You walk there. | Half the cost and half of planning the day. |
| What it does well | Preventive maintenance, spare parts, criticality, plant shutdowns. | Assignment by proximity, contracts, customer portal. |
| Where it falls short | With distributed assets: the map ends up as a text field. | With complex fixed assets: the technical history per piece of equipment is thinner. |
Any organisation with assets to maintain.
The useful question is not the sector, but whether the assets are spread across a territory or concentrated on one site. That changes which CMMS suits you.
- Industry and manufacturing Concentrated assets, high value per machine and a high cost of downtime.
- Public administration Street furniture, lighting, parks, buildings and roads, spread across the whole municipality.
- Water, gas and electricity Linear networks with buried assets and queries by section and by area.
- Street lighting Tens of thousands of light points, each with its own record and history.
- Healthcare and facilities Equipment with mandatory traceability and narrow windows for intervention.
- Transport and infrastructure Assets stretched over kilometres, where getting there costs time and fuel.
Five questions to answer before the demonstration.
They are not about price. They are the ones that separate a product that fits from one you will have to force.
- Where does the asset’s location live? If it is a text field, the system cannot tell you which assets fall inside a polygon, or which one is actually closest. Connecting a GIS later does not add geometry to the data model.
- Can the field app last a day without coverage? There is a big difference between a cache of whatever was last viewed and a full working day offline, with sync when the signal comes back.
- Is cost calculated or estimated? Materials at the cost of the stock movement that took them out of the warehouse, hours at each person’s cost and kilometres valued: either it is charged to the work order, or it is overhead.
- Can you read the functional documentation before signing? A published scope and an accessible API reference tell you more about a product than any sales page.
- Can you get the data out? A public API and a full export are your insurance that the history you are about to build stays yours.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a GMAO and a CMMS?
How does a CMMS work day to day?
What is the difference between a CMMS and a spreadsheet?
Does the CMMS need to integrate with the ERP?
How long does it take to implement a CMMS?
Does a CMMS work if my assets are spread across a territory?
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So what does a CMMS look like when the map is the system?
The functional documentation is published in full and the API reference is open without a key. You can review all of it before signing anything.