How Arnold Automation is Turning its Service Team into a Growth Engine with MaintainX
Arnold Automation sells, installs, and services automated packaging machinery. Its services team is a lean but high-performing crew. They provide maintenance services for more than 60 active customers, including some of the largest distribution centers in the US.
While the team was solid, the systems were out of date. Service operations ran on several disconnected systems, none of which were built for services. Every task, from building preventive maintenance plans for clients to documenting work, took hours longer than it should have. With a busy schedule and a mandate to grow, the team knew something had to change, which is what led them to MaintainX.
Today, the services team at Arnold Automation uses MaintainX to run service from end to end. That includes scheduling techs, tracking and documenting work orders, and sending automated email updates to customers. The result is a service business that can scale without additional headcount.
Challenges before MaintainX
Disconnected systems made every job take longer
Before MaintainX, Arnold Automation managed service work across paper tickets, Outlook, texts, emails, Excel, and an ERP with no built-in service workflow.
“Everything was on paper,” says Malcolm Moore, the Director of Service for Arnold Automation. “The customer would sign the service ticket physically, and then I'd have to scan it in. And that was just one of three or four attachments going to the customer.”
The result was hours lost to manual updates, technician debriefs, searching for information, and rebuilding job histories. Important details disappeared if they weren’t scanned or copied into the right place.
That also meant Malcolm had no reliable view of asset history, failure trends, repair costs, or recurring issues. Instead of using data to guide repair-versus-replace decisions or justify preventive maintenance investments, the team was stuck reconstructing records by hand—sometimes spending hours piecing them together for a single customer.
Manual processes and a lack of standardization created bottlenecks
There was also no standardized way for technicians to capture notes, photos, or recommendations in the field prior to MaintainX. Malcolm's technicians would document work on paper tickets, scan them, and send customers separate emails with multiple attachments. What was documented depended on the individual, which made it difficult to build consistent records or use past jobs to inform future ones.
This also left customers with an unclear picture of an asset’s work history.
"It was very cumbersome," says Malcolm, "and even after all that work, the scans wouldn’t always work and you couldn’t get information to customers.”
Selling a preventive maintenance contract was a weeks-long project
Malcolm and his team knew that expanding preventive maintenance services would be a key source of revenue for the business while keeping the team embedded in customer operations.
But scoping and quoting a PM plan was so time-intensive, it was hard to pursue at scale. Building a single PM plan meant manually creating procedures from scratch, according to Malcolm. For a lean team managing over 60 customers, burning weeks on one proposal put a hard ceiling on how many PM contracts they could realistically pursue.
Why MaintainX
Built for the way services teams actually operate
Malcolm's first priority in evaluating software was how it fit with his team’s workflows. He found that MaintainX checked every box without extensive customization or workarounds.
"MaintainX offers a lot of things that naturally work with the way we operate," says Malcolm, "especially compared to other software we looked at or were using."
Malcolm was especially impressed by the in-depth asset hierarchy that made it easy to view the full service history of equipment. MaintainX put every work order, part consumed, and technician note in one place to build a record tied to a specific machine. Paired with PM tools designed around a service workflow, this capability won over the services team.
Allowed the team to quickly standardize its work
Malcolm was also looking for a CMMS that could help him quickly establish and enforce standardization. That meant putting an end to free-form text fields and inconsistent documentation that made reporting unreliable.
MaintainX allows the team to accomplish this. They used Work Order Templates with controlled dropdowns, required fields, and standardized procedures to give the team a consistent structure for every job. Checklists with pass/fail fields, signatures, and photo capture replaced paper tickets. Parts consumption could be tracked against individual work orders. Because the platform is mobile-first, technicians complete all of this from the field instead of logging work at the end of the day.
"MaintainX makes my life so much easier,” says Malcolm. “Everything I need is right in front of me. There’s zero searching."
Customer visibility that delivered a competitive advantage
One capability that Malcolm was drawn to is the ability to share more updates and insights with customers in a fraction of the time.
Clients can submit service requests, track work order status, and access service history from a customer portal, while automated email notifications keep customers updated at every stage of a job.
"It's a huge differentiator," Malcolm says. "Transparency is the name of the game. We want to make sure the customer understands what value we're bringing to them. A lot of companies don't communicate enough with customers. We want to be the opposite. We want to give customers every detail and insight we can."
AI that turns the most time-consuming work into the quickest tasks
Developing a PM plan used to take Malcolm a full day, stopping him from focusing on other important work. That’s why he knew the AI-Powered Procedure Generation feature in MaintainX was a difference maker as soon as he saw it. It allows him to use OEM manuals to generate asset-specific checklists in a fraction of the time.
"Getting all that time back was a massive win for us," Malcolm says.
Results
Hundreds of hours saved in a year
Malcolm is using MaintainX to save time on almost every item on his to-do list. The single biggest gain was in PM procedure creation: what used to take eight hours now takes one with MaintainX AI, allowing the team to save more than 300 hours this year.
MaintainX also helps Malcolm move faster by allowing him to pull an asset’s history in seconds — something he says used to take hours. He also automated scheduling and significantly cut down on the time it takes to debrief with technicians because they’re able to log notes from the field.
“Being able to attach videos and photos to completed work from our phones in a couple of seconds has been a game-changer,” says Malcolm. “It used to be so time-consuming, and we’d miss it sometimes. Now it’s simple, which improved the way we communicate with customers.”
Increased revenue from PM contracts
PM contracts are how the team converts one-time service calls into recurring revenue. MaintainX is what made that strategy scalable for Arnold Automation. With AI-Powered Procedure Generation, Malcolm can build a PM plan quickly and show prospective customers exactly what technicians will do during every visit. That level of detail builds trust even before the contract is signed.
"I have really good information to give them ahead of time," Malcolm says. "It’s a big advantage for us. It’s a way to create transparency and trust with customers and help them be proactive."
Turned asset data into upsell opportunities
MaintainX has given Malcolm and his team the tools to spot signs of failure before it happens and proactively bring solutions to customers.
With full service history attached to every asset, the team can identify machines trending toward bigger problems before they fail. Now, a machine that has broken down four times in a year and absorbed thousands of dollars in repairs is a capital planning conversation, not just another work order.
What’s next
Malcolm’s immediate priority for MaintainX is using it to build PM programs for customers, which would turn one-time jobs into recurring contracts and significantly boost predictable revenue.
"MaintainX is differentiating us from a lot of other companies because they're not offering the same level of service and detail that we are."
Malcolm also wants to use MaintainX to give more customers direct visibility into work orders, asset histories, and upcoming work. He believes the data that’s captured will serve as both a retention tool and a long-term sales asset.
"MaintainX is all you can ask for in a partner,” says Malcolm. “It’s one of the biggest reasons we’ve improved as much and as fast as we have.”