A CMMS on WhatsApp: no fault gets lost, nobody has to report it twice and everyone knows where it stands

What a CMMS is

CMMS stands for computerised maintenance management system; in Spain it is called a GMAO. It is software that organises the work of whoever maintains a building or a set of machines, and almost all of them rest on three pieces: the asset register, with a record for each boiler, cold room or lift; work orders, which say what has to be done, who does it and with which parts; and the planned maintenance schedule, the calendar of recurring inspections. On top of that they usually track spare parts, hours, costs and maintenance KPIs such as MTTR or MTBF.

They were born in industry, where there is a maintenance department with its own technicians, a stores room and machines that cost a lot of money when they stop. At a business with premises, or at a residence, the landscape is different: the fault is spotted by a waiter, a receptionist or the caretaker, it is often fixed by an outside contractor, and whoever runs maintenance also runs five other things. The full definition of the term is in the glossary.

What a team really needs

Before comparing software, it pays to write down what has to happen when something breaks. At a business with premises, complaints about maintenance don't talk about modules. They talk about this:

The first three rows are the ones that decide whether maintenance works at a business with premises. And all three depend on the same thing: whoever spots the fault reporting it through a route that leaves a trail. Excellent software that the night shift never opens collects nothing.

Corrective and preventive: two different jobs

Corrective maintenance is what gets done after something fails: the shutter that won't go up, the air conditioning that drips, the dishwasher that has stopped. It arrives without warning, at any hour and from anyone. Preventive maintenance is what gets done beforehand, on a date, so that the failure doesn't come: the boiler service, the fire extinguisher check, cleaning the cooling tower. The European standard on maintenance terminology, EN 13306, separates the two in this way and, within preventive work, singles out predictive maintenance, which decides when to step in from how the measured condition of the equipment evolves.

At premises in Spain, half of the preventive work isn't optional: the law sets it. Fire protection equipment follows the RIPCI, a Spanish regulation that literally speaks of a "preventive maintenance programme"; heating, cooling and hot water follow the RITE; the fuse board, the low-voltage inspection; and where there are towers, showers or tanks, legionella prevention. They are almost always carried out by a maintenance contractor or an inspection body, and the owner has to know when they fall due and keep the paperwork. Which inspections apply to each kind of business in Spain is on regulations by sector.

The practical consequence is that the two jobs have different users. Preventive work is run by one person with a calendar. Corrective work is started by anyone on the team, and that is where software designed for factories trips up: it asks whoever reports to have an account, learn an app or scan a code, and at premises with staff turnover that doesn't happen.

Where WhatsApp fits

At the point where corrective work comes in, and in alerting whoever has to act. WhatsApp is already on the phone of every member of staff, of whoever fixes things and of the person in charge, and nobody needs training to send a photo. The trouble with WhatsApp as it comes is the group: the fault gets mixed up with the rota, nobody knows whether anyone has taken it, and three days later it is twenty screens up. What changes things is having something behind the number that turns each message into a ticket and chases it.

That's what we do at Bedel with the business's WhatsApp:

• It comes in the way people tell it. Text, a photo on its own or a voice note. The assistant works out what is broken, where and how urgent it is, and asks for the location if it's missing.
• An acknowledgement with a number. Whoever reports gets the fault ticket number in the same reply, and then every step: when someone takes it, for when, and when it's closed.
• To the phone of whoever handles it, not to a group. The report goes to the person in the role according to the shifts you set, with buttons to take it today, take it tomorrow, ask for more information or pass it on.
• Deadline and escalation. Each category has its deadline, with one reminder halfway and another close to the end. If it passes, the ticket goes up once to the person above; urgent ones ring again every day until they're closed.
• At night, only what's urgent. Whatever you mark as urgent rings on the on-call phone; the rest waits for the shift. Gas, smoke, fire or someone hurt alert the team straight away.
• A trail. Every ticket keeps three times, reported, taken and fixed, in an Excel sheet that belongs to you, with a dashboard of times over 7, 30 and 90 days and a summary every night there were tickets.
• And dated preventive work, remembered. We load the inspections you already keep in your spreadsheet, and every month they reach whoever runs maintenance on WhatsApp, with enough notice to book them.

When a classic CMMS is the better choice

Some maintenance operations outgrow a chat, and it's better to say so before anyone finds out halfway through a contract:

• You have full-time in-house technicians and want to plan their week with work orders that are assigned, carried out and closed.
• You need a record for each asset with its history, its spare parts and what it has cost, to decide whether to repair or replace it.
• There is a stock of spare parts and you want to know what each work order uses.
• Several sites that you want to compare on one screen.
• Machines with sensors that have to open the request on their own, without a person writing it.
• An audit asks you for the certificates filed alongside each inspection.

If that sounds like you, you need a CMMS. How to choose one with criteria that make sense for premises is in best CMMS for businesses with premises, and if you're torn between software and the spreadsheet you already keep, see CMMS or Excel. If what gets lost isn't the work order but the report itself, the problem is a different one, and it's covered in WhatsApp group or incident manager.

Maintenance at each kind of business

The journey of a fault is the same everywhere; what changes is who spots it, who fixes it and which inspections the law requires. How it works at each one is on its incidents on WhatsApp page:

• Restaurants: the cold room, the extractor hood and the dishwasher, nearly always with outside technicians.
• Hotels: what housekeeping finds in a room and has to be fixed before the next arrival.
• Gyms and sports centres: machines, changing rooms, the pool and its chlorine.
• Offices and coworking spaces: the air conditioning, the meeting rooms and the network, in someone else's building.
• Shops and franchises: the shutter, the lighting and the till, one outlet at a time.
• Blocks of flats: the entrance, the lift and the shared areas, with the managing agent in between.
• Schools and academies: what the caretaker or a teacher sees before anyone else.
• Clinics: the treatment room and the equipment, with no patient data going through the chat.
• Warehouses and workshops: the machine that stops, where there is usually a CMMS already and what's missing is the way reports come in.

Student residences and halls have their own journey, with residents reporting from their rooms; it's on the Bedel home page.

Where Bedel fits, and what it does not do

Bedel is not a CMMS. It is the way faults come in and are followed up through the business's WhatsApp, plus the reminder of dated inspections. For many businesses that is all the maintenance there is to manage; for others, it is the half their CMMS doesn't cover. What it does not do:

• It keeps no asset register or equipment records.
• It does not raise work orders with parts, hours or costs.
• It does not store inspection certificates or reports, which stay in your files.
• It does not connect to other software: what comes out of Bedel is its Excel sheet.
• It does not bring several sites together on one screen: each site is one account, with its own number.
• End customers don't open tickets on their own: the people on the business's list do the reporting.

The data is stored in the European Union; your business is the controller and Bedel the processor, with the processing contract published.