Ask a facilities leader what system runs their operation, and they’ll probably name their CMMS. Watch how they get through a Tuesday, and the real answer looks more like a CMMS, six spreadsheets, a few service provider portals, email, and at least one group text keeping everyone honest.
There’s the CMMS logging work orders. A spreadsheet tracking budgets because finance needs the numbers differently. An email chasing a vendor who hasn’t updated a work order in four weeks. A group text between regional managers trying to figure out what’s actually happening across their facilities.
You get the picture.
None of these tools are necessarily broken. Most are doing exactly what they were built to do.
The problem is that facilities operations have evolved beyond what a traditional CMMS was designed to manage.
CMMS was built to solve a narrower problem
A CMMS does an important job: track maintenance work and assets. Log a work order, assign it, close it, maintain service history.
That’s useful, but it addresses only one part of the job.
Ask a director of facilities running 1,000 plus locations what actually consumes their week, and “logging work orders” probably isn’t near the top.
They’re asking:
- Which service providers are actually meeting service-level agreements across our portfolio?
- Why is one region’s cost per location significantly higher than another’s?
- Can technicians access what they need when they’re standing in a mechanical room without cell service?
- Could we produce asset or vendor compliance records across every location tomorrow if someone asked?
Those aren’t really work order questions. They point to a much bigger need: I need to know what’s happening across my operation, and I need one place to see it.
Traditional systems weren’t designed to manage all that as one connected operation, so facilities teams built their own workarounds: spreadsheets, shared drives, text threads, service provider portals, and a slew of other software.
Eventually, the “CMMS” becomes a CMMS with six other things duct-taped around it.
And the facilities team is the tape.
Where the gaps show up
Vendor accountability. Assigning a job is easy. Knowing which vendors consistently respond on time, resolve issues correctly, control costs and document their work across hundreds of jobs is much harder.
Cross-site financial visibility. Leaders don’t just need a work order log. They need to understand whether rising spending at Site 47 is a one-time issue or an emerging trend — and what it means for the broader repairs and maintenance budget.
Field reality. Technicians and field personnel aren’t sitting behind desks. They’re on rooftops, in loading docks and inside mechanical rooms. The technology they rely on has to work where they work — and be intuitive enough that using it doesn’t become another task. When it’s easy for field teams to capture information as the work happens, leaders get better, more timely data and a clearer view of costs, downtime and operations.
Standardization at scale. Multi-site organizations need consistent processes, reporting, preventive maintenance and escalation paths while still accounting for local realities.
These aren’t simply feature gaps. They’re operating-model gaps.
Facilities teams need more than a CMMS
The next generation of facilities technology shouldn’t simply be a better ticketing system. It should function as a facilities operating platform: one connected system for managing work across every location.
That requires a shift in how leaders evaluate the technology running their facilities.
It’s no longer enough to ask whether a system has a certain feature. The better question is whether that feature supports the way the operation actually needs to work.
Instead of: Can we log and close work orders?
Ask: Can we see work, costs and performance across every location without reconciling five different systems?
Instead of: Does it have a mobile app?
Ask: Can technicians actually use it where the work happens?
Instead of: Can it generate reports?
Ask: Can operations and finance trust those numbers without someone rebuilding them in Excel?
Technology can check every box on an RFP and still leave teams filling the gaps themselves. The real question is whether it solves the problem.
The category is catching up to the job
This isn’t an indictment of CMMS technology. The category solved an important problem, and it still does.
But the way facilities teams operate has changed.
Facilities teams are managing larger portfolios, more service providers, more data, tighter budgets and higher expectations. More stakeholders also want answers now — not after someone spends Friday afternoon reconciling spreadsheets.
The question is no longer, “Which CMMS has the most features?”
It’s “Does our technology reflect how facilities actually operate today?”
The CMMS didn’t fail. The job outgrew the category.
At myWork, we didn’t build for the category as it was. We built our platform for what comes next.