The Ultimate EAM Buyer’s Guide: How maintenance teams can evaluate and choose EAM software

Buying asset management software can be expensive. Buying the wrong system is even more expensive. 

This is especially true for a platform used by hundreds of staff across dozens of facilities to manage thousands of work orders, assets, and parts. At this scale, each extra click or broken workflow leads to more downtime, higher costs, and increased risk of everything from late deliveries to failed audits.

These stakes are why it’s critical to have a rock-solid process for evaluating enterprise asset management (EAM) software. While this may make the search a little longer and resource-intensive, it’s worth it to avoid years of slow adoption, unreliable data, ineffective workflows, and the inevitable untangling of the broken system when you replace it.

This guide walks you through the EAM evaluation process with a framework for choosing the right asset management software. It’s designed for maintenance leaders responsible for choosing an EAM platform alongside a larger team. It provides practical advice on building an evaluation team, getting buy-in for EAM software, and creating an EAM scorecard so you can decide on the best option for your business.

Key takeaways

• To avoid delays and poor adoption, include a broad team of stakeholders from day one of your EAM evaluation, including members of maintenance, operations, reliability, IT, and finance.
• Build your evaluation criteria using a needs assessment based on your goals, obstacles, and ideal workflows.
• Budget for total cost of ownership across an EAM’s complete lifecycle, including subscription, implementation, hardware, integration, and scaling fees.
• Pilot with real data and defined success criteria, since clean demo conditions will make almost any EAM look good.

But first: Should your maintenance team buy an EAM or CMMS?

You should be certain what software you need before diving into a full-on evaluation. There are two primary types of asset management software: a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and an enterprise asset management system. Here’s a quick rundown of what each one does, and you can find a more in-depth breakdown in this comparison of EAM and CMMS software:

• CMMS: A CMMS is software designed for managing all aspects of maintenance across one or multiple manufacturing, warehousing, or other industrial facilities. This includes managing asset hierarchies, work orders, maintenance scheduling, parts inventory, and maintenance reporting. A CMMS functions as the system of record for all asset maintenance history and the system of action for asset management. If a failure is identified, an inspection fails, a part is consumed, or any other event takes place, the work is created, scheduled, assigned, and tracked in a CMMS.

• EAM: An EAM system is software for managing the full asset lifecycle of industrial equipment. This includes installation, operation, and end-of-life. It houses all data associated with each asset and coordinates every action connected to equipment, like parts inventory orders, costs, performance, labor utilization, and compliance details. Most EAM systems include maintenance capabilities, but have a broader feature set extending beyond maintenance operations. 

The line between a CMMS and an EAM has become more indistinguishable in recent years as CMMS vendors expand their offerings to include features that traditionally existed only in EAM software. For example, multi-site management and parts inventory tools have become more common and sophisticated in CMMS platforms. 

This makes it both easier and more challenging to choose between an EAM and CMMS software. On one hand, it widens the scope of your search, making it more effort-intensive in the early stages when you’re building a shortlist of options. But it also means that you don’t need to zero-in on a single category of software and risk missing out on options that fit your needs and budget.

Instead of focusing on the label put on software by a vendor or analyst, center your evaluation on a list of targets to achieve, pains to eliminate, and the workflows that help you with them. This way, you can look at both EAM and CMMS software to understand which one best fits your ideal criteria.

Nine steps to help maintenance teams evaluate and choose EAM software

The EAM evaluation framework will help you assess asset management software through the lens of your team’s goals, obstacles, habits, and budget. But it will also ensure you have a solid foundation for implementing an EAM once you choose a system. Features, integrations, and total cost of ownership are important, but the most essential element of a successful EAM evaluation is having buy-in from everyone who will use or be impacted by the system.

1. Assemble an evaluation team

Choosing software should never be a one-person job. Making a unilateral decision significantly increases the odds that the project will stall at some point, whether it’s at approval or implementation. The risk increases when you’re dealing with enterprise-level software.

That’s why the first step in evaluating an EAM is to identify the major stakeholders in the decision and include them in the process from day one. This allows you to get broad support for the project and a clear understanding of the must-haves that’ll make asset management software successful.

Who you recruit to your evaluation team depends on the roles and responsibilities at your organization. A general rule is to include a representative from any team that’ll use or interact with the software or data in it. You want a big enough team to dispel major objections later in the process, but not so big that it paralyzes the search with endless opinions and add-ons. This may include

• Maintenance managers and other maintenance leaders: They often own the set-up and daily management of an EAM. The likelihood of failure is extremely high if they don’t like the way asset management software works.

• Maintenance technicians and other frontline staff: Technicians will use an EAM system all day, every day. Ensuring the system works for them will accelerate adoption and time to value.

• Operations leaders and production teams: Having plant managers and operators on your side ensures the EAM you choose drives alignment between operations and maintenance.

• Reliability engineers: Reliability engineers are a critical stakeholder in evaluating an EAM as they own the decision-making power on how assets are deployed at various lifecycle stages.

• Inventory and purchasing leaders: Inventory management is critical to the success of EAM software. Get it right, and you can save hundreds of thousands in carrying costs and additional uptime.

• Safety and compliance personnel: This team will ensure the right audit workflows and safety considerations are taken into account when assessing EAM software.

• The IT team: IT is where most technology projects die before they begin. That’s because IT isn’t included until it’s too late. Giving them a say at the earliest stages of an EAM evaluation allows you to avoid this roadblock, and helps you understand which systems are best for safely integrating into the company’s existing tech stack.

• A senior-level or executive advocate: Whether it’s the CFO, COO, or another high-level business leader, having the support and guidance of someone in the C-suite will align your search with the company’s top goals.

2. Get buy-in from key decision makers

You’ve assembled the team that’ll help you evaluate, choose, and implement an EAM. But you also need the approval of those who decide where budget, people, and systems are allocated. Getting this buy-in early ensures you don’t waste time doing the work only to have your request denied. Here’s a look at key decision-makers to get buy-in from when evaluating EAM software:

• CFO/Finance: The finance team, usually led by the chief financial officer, holds the keys to the budget. Working with them allows you to determine a spending limit and set realistic expectations for the ROI of an EAM. When the finance team is confident in a project, it assures everyone in the organization.

• CTO/IT: The IT team (headed by the chief technology officer) views tech evaluations based on the risk and reward to the company’s digital ecosystem. They are the gatekeepers of the tech stack, so having them on your side increases your chances of getting approval for an EAM.

• COO: A chief operations officer wants to extract maximum value from all assets and labor with as little risk as possible. If they believe EAM software can progress this goal, they’ll help you push the project forward and open the door to the right resources to make an EAM evaluation successful.

If you’re looking for an overview of what each of these business leaders value, how to appeal to their priorities, and a step-by-step framework for making your case for an EAM, check out this guide to pitching your next maintenance project, and get a customizable proposal template to match.

3. Complete a needs assessment

To kick-off your search, gather your evaluation team and complete this four-step needs assessment:

• Goals: Make a list of goals, whether it’s team-specific or a broader target. Don’t get caught up in connecting it to an EAM or making sure they’re perfect. Think of quantitative and qualitative targets. For example, “Increasing equipment uptime by 5% every quarter for the next six quarters,” and “Digitize, centralize, and standardize maintenance data,” are both valid goals.

• Obstacles: Identify the obstacles preventing the team from achieving each goal. There may be several roadblocks for each target, so make sure you list them all.

• Associated workflows: What are the ideal workflows to bypass existing obstacles and achieve your goals? For example, if your goal is to digitize maintenance knowledge and the obstacle is that technicians have no time to document work properly, the ideal workflow might be enabling staff to create voice-to-text notes that are automatically attached to work orders and asset records.

• EAM capabilities: Translate the components of each ideal workflow into an EAM capability. This helps you build a list of EAM criteria that best fits your goals and processes. Think beyond technical capabilities to factors like implementation support and customer success services. Use this list to conduct research, assess demos, and build successful pilots.

Here’s an example of what a completed needs assessment might look like:

4. Determine your must-haves and nice to haves

The next step is to prioritize the list you just created in your needs assessment. You won’t find software with every single capability you outlined. Separating your must-haves from the other features on your list allows you to make informed trade-offs and find asset management software that best fits your organization. 

For example, you might prioritize usability for frontline staff over everything else. One system might have advanced features you like, but it requires 30 clicks to complete a maintenance work order. You can immediately rule out that platform.

The best way to prioritize EAM features is to take the capabilities in your needs assessment and have each member of your evaluation team score it out of five. A score of five means the capability is essential, while a score of one means the capability is completely optional. The capabilities with the highest combined scores are your must-haves.

Make sure you don’t only consider individual tools and features, but also broader characteristics of the software, like usability, ease of integration, and customer support.

Here’s an example of what this prioritized list may look like:

5. Set your budget

Cost will always be an important factor when evaluating EAM software. It’s important to have a budget range before you look at individual vendors. Knowing your range allows you to eliminate options far above your limit so you don’t waste time on a system you would never purchase.

When looking at the cost of EAM software, account for the total cost of ownership across several years. Consider these five factors when calculating the cost of an EAM:

• Subscription fees: Most EAM vendors operate on a subscription model that requires you to pay a monthly or annual fee per user. The cost of a subscription depends on the tier you subscribe to. Lower tiers have fewer capabilities, but a lower price while higher tiers include more features at a higher cost. Some EAM vendors differentiate between different users with varying costs for each. For example, someone who can use all features and someone who can only view and export data are two types of users, and may have two costs associated with them.

• Implementation and support costs: Many EAM vendors charge implementation fees to help set up the software. Most companies that achieve high adoption rates, clean data, and quick time to value are the ones that invest in implementation. While this is often a one-time fee, some EAM vendors offer ongoing support beyond the standard services that come with a subscription.

• Hardware costs: You may have to purchase some hardware to make the most of your EAM software. This may include mobile devices and accessories (like tablets with protective cases, charging stations, and storage) and IIoT infrastructure (like condition-monitoring sensors).

• Integration: Connecting your EAM to the rest of your industrial tech stack, like an ERP or MES, is valuable, but often comes at a cost. Many of the best EAM software have pre-built integrations to major platforms, like SAP, which reduces the cost. Other, more custom integration projects can mean a pricier build you will need to factor into the total cost of ownership.

• Scaling: Scaling costs are projections for how the price of an EAM solution will change based on the long-term growth of your team and company. As more people join your team, your operations become more complex, or you introduce new technology to your stack, the cost of an EAM may increase. For example, if you hire three maintenance technicians, that may mean purchasing three user licenses and mobile devices. When you multiply this cost across several sites and several years, it can be significant. Although it’s a projection, future costs are important to discuss at the very beginning of conversations with potential vendors.

6. Create a short list of EAM vendors to consider

With your needs assessment, features scorecard, and budget in hand, it’s time to look at your EAM options. These foundational resources help you quickly understand which vendors are worth taking a closer look at. Building your short list of asset management software can be done in two phases:

Phase 1: Build your long list

This phase helps you narrow down your options to EAM software that matches the criteria you’ve outlined in earlier steps so you can quickly discard vendors that don’t fit. Here are some resources to help you put together this list:

• Peers: Ask other maintenance and operations leaders about EAM systems they’ve used before
• Review sites: Sites with customer reviews of EAM software, like G2, give you a good sense of what other users liked and disliked about different solutions
• Vendor websites: Look for feature lists, pricing options, and support details
• Analyst industry reports: Analyst companies, like Gartner or Forrester, often publish annual reports that include the best EAM vendors with their strengths and gaps 
• LLM search engines: Tools like ChatGPT can help you compare the information you’ve collected with your list of must-haves and budget

Phase 2: Build your short list

Take your long list and pare it down to between two and five options. Having a small group of potential choices allows you to go deep on each one and ensure you make the right decision. Here are some strategies for arriving at your short list:

• Case studies and customer references: Read case studies and ask vendors to talk to customers with similar qualities to your company (industry, size, goals, etc.)
• Vendor referrals: Ask existing vendors if they have recommendations or insights on software
• Software demos: Many vendors have short video demos you can watch on your own time so you can see what the software looks like and how it functions
• Vendor calls: Most EAM companies allow you to book an initial 20-minute conversation so you can make sure your needs align with their software
• Evaluation team scoring: Have your evaluation team score software based on your must-have capabilities and the information you’ve collected

7. Test software and run pilots

It’s critical to test any EAM software you’re seriously considering. Click around the system, explore features, and build simple workflows. This helps you separate the systems that sound good on paper or have a flashy demo from the ones you like working with and add value to your operation.

But beware, software tests and pilots often fail because they’re based on ideal conditions instead of real-world ones. This covers up gaps, shortcomings, and quirks of an EAM solution that often emerge when it's too late. Instead, EAM pilots should pressure test solutions using real-world situations with all the messy data and edge cases that come with it. The goal is to identify the possible downsides of a tool before committing to it. Here’s how that might look to your team:

A pilot without success criteria is just a longer demo. Decide upfront what you're measuring and how you'll know if the test worked. Designing a successful EAM pilot also requires a few key decisions:

1. What's the narrow, specific use case? It's tempting to expand the scope of a pilot when you see early results. Resist that. Pick the smallest version of the problem that’ll prove the tool works.
   
2. Is it running on real data and conditions? Clean data and a small, curated scope will make almost anything look successful. That's the point of a demo, not a pilot.
   
3. Who is testing? Include representatives from all stakeholder groups in your pilot and source feedback from them regularly.
   
4. What does success look like, and did you define it before you started? If you can't answer this before the pilot begins, you're not ready to run one.

8. Make your implementation plan

You can purchase a powerful EAM solution and still fail, not because the technology doesn't work, but because nobody uses it. Most failed EAM projects are due to readiness and adoption failures.

Most of what determines whether EAM software succeeds happens after the purchase, in the people, process, and change management around it. A great EAM with no adoption plan is still a failed investment.

That means adoption can't be an afterthought as you go through the evaluation phase. It has to be part of the process of choosing a solution. Have in-depth conversations with potential vendors about:

• An implementation roadmap: How should the software be set up and rolled out to ensure maximum adoption and time to value? Understand what data is needed, what workflows should be created, how onboarding should look, and the level of support you’ll get from the vendor.
  
• How to measure success: What metrics indicate strong adoption and which ones uncover risk? Vendors should have a list of KPIs to help you track the success of your EAM from initial kick-off to full maturity, and show you exactly how it’s reported in the platform.
  
• Continuous improvement: Implementation is a checkpoint, not an end point. Ensure vendors can help you build a long-term plan to get the most value from your EAM, whether that’s quarterly check-ins, site-by-step expansion, or a strategy to maximize the system’s capabilities as you get more sophisticated. 

9. Choose your EAM

It’s time to choose your EAM software. Use the information you’ve collected and decide as an evaluation team which software is the best fit for your operation. Remember to consider:

• Your needs assessment and prioritized list of capabilities: The best EAM software often ticks off the most high-priority items on your list of needs, including non-features, like usability and support. This makes adoption easier and helps you to draw a line from EAM use to ROI.

• Your budget: As long as you operate within your budget range, price doesn’t necessarily indicate fit. An EAM at the top of your budget range might seem expensive, but will be worth it if it’s the best fit. Similarly, a lower-priced EAM isn’t always the one with the fewest features or the least sophistication.

• Your pilots: There’s nothing that can replace experience, which is what you get with a well-run pilot. Knowing the ins and outs of software gives you confidence it’ll work for you and your team.

• Your adoption plan: The odds of success increase significantly when a vendor is a partner in the project rather than just the facilitator of a purchase. The technology that’s best for you is usually the one where the vendor feels the same level of accountability for the project.

The best EAM software is the one that fits your team and its goals

The organizations that get the most value from EAM software are often the ones who did the work upfront to align stakeholders, define what success looks like, and test systems under real conditions.

That upfront investment pays off twice. It gets you a system that fits how your team actually works, and it builds the buy-in you'll need to drive adoption once the contract is signed. A powerful EAM that nobody trusts or uses is no better than the spreadsheets and sticky notes it was meant to replace.

Use this framework as a starting point, not a rigid checklist. Every operation has its own mix of goals, constraints, and legacy systems, so adapt each step to reflect what's actually true for your team. The goal isn't to find the EAM with the most capabilities. It's to find the one that closes the gap between where your maintenance program is today and where you need it to be.