July 31, 2023

Inside Your CMMS - Vendors

There is a lot of material to mull over when considering a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). Assets, inventory, work orders, and preventive maintenance. What if you want that system to help with purchasing the inventory used by the above? Let's look inside your CMMS this week and discuss this area.

All companies buy from other companies at some point. From the microprocessors to the screwdrivers to the napkins in the breakroom. Whether it's maintenance or another department that handles purchasing, a CMMS would be a great tool to use. Before you can use the purchasing feature, you'll need to set up the vendors from whom you buy. As with the previous posts in this series, how much detail you have is up to you. Churches may not need every factotum of a vendor's profile, whereas bigger plants that may deal internationally would want substantially more.

Let's look at some areas of interest you may want to have when thinking about a CMMS.

Name / Type. This first is pretty obvious. The type of vendor could be a manufacturer, a straight vendor, or both.

Contact information. Yes, this is obvious, too, but how much detail will you need? Representative's name, phone, email, fax, website, business address…whew!

Terms. Conceivably, this could be important to know. C.O.D., payment in thirty days, end of the month, etc.

Equipment. Remember way back in Assets, you might have wanted to input from whom you bought the big processor. Here's the other way to connect the two.

Inventory. Ditto as above, except with your parts and supplies.

Purchasing. Well, I suppose if you're going to be buying stuff from a company, you'd want to know what requisitions and purchase orders are currently associated with it. You'd want a place to make a quick check for the information.

Technicians. Not yours, but theirs. This could be any one of several scenarios. The company contracts with a cleaning service or an outside equipment repair service, etc. It would be nice to have the main person's contact info.

Products / Services. Okay, this is not to insult you or say you don't know with whom you're dealing. However, what if a particular vendor has a few other items you don't normally buy? Maybe, one day you'll need them. Your CMMS should allow for an entire shopping list.

Attachment. This should be standard. Know what your product looks like. This is just a nice reminder. Also, on the purchase order, you can include the image so the vendor knows exactly what you're ordering.

Site. Does your company have multiple sites? You should be able to specify which site a particular vendor services. When considering a CMMS for purchasing, you'll need at least basic information about vendors. Most likely, you've been transacting with them for years, so you know a lot already. However, one of the benefits of a CMMS is maintenance people can interact with purchasing personnel through the system.

Do you have vendor information on a spreadsheet? With a bit of organizing from your CMMS company, you should be able to import the data.

Keep all of your information in one place so that it is easy to access and find it again. A CMMS is a great tool to use to help organize all that vendor information and history.

You can discuss this and more vendor information with a Mapcon representative. 800-922-4336 gets you a free demo.