How to compare maintenance software without a feature grid

A feature comparison grid will tell you that eleven products all do work orders, preventive maintenance, assets, inspections and reporting. That is true and useless. Every vendor ticks every box, and the differences that decide whether this works live below the level a grid can see.

Test one: build one of your rounds, live

Send each vendor one real checklist before the demo and ask them to build it while you watch. Not a prepared example. Yours, with your odd step that needs a photograph only when a reading is out of range.

You learn two things: whether the product can express how your work actually runs, and how long a change takes. If a small change needs a support ticket, every future change will need one too.

Test two: hand the phone to the sceptic

Pick the technician least interested in new software and have them complete a job on the phone, with no coaching, while everybody watches. Count the taps. Watch where they hesitate.

Test three: turn the signal off

Put the phone in aeroplane mode and finish a job with three photographs. Then turn it back on. If anything is lost, if the person is shown a warning about uploading, or if the app refuses to start, you have learned the most important thing in the process.

Test four: ask for a bad news report

Ask to see the screen that shows late preventive work, by building, with how late. Most products can show you a chart of jobs closed. Far fewer make the slip specific and impossible to ignore, which is the only report that changes what anybody does on Monday.

Test five: ask what leaving looks like

Ask for the export format, the notice period and the price of the export, in writing. A vendor confident in the product answers this in one line. Nobody has ever regretted asking it.

What to ignore

• •Any number in a brochure about downtime reduction that has no site name attached
• •Award badges, which are usually a category the vendor paid to enter
• •Long integration lists, unless the one you need is on it and somebody will demonstrate it
• •A roadmap, which is a promise about a product you would be buying today

One more thing to check

Ask for a customer in your industry with roughly your number of buildings, and speak to them without the vendor on the call. Ask them what took longer than they expected. Everybody has an answer to that question and nobody puts it in a case study.