Enterprise asset management (EAM) software tracks your equipment from the day you buy it until you scrap it, collecting data on performance, costs, and maintenance along the way. It helps organizations manage every phase of asset ownership by tracking new acquisitions, monitoring active equipment performance, and managing the retirement of unusable assets.
Large organizations with 100s or 1000s of assets across multiple facilities need EAM software. Procurement departments, asset managers, financial teams, and operations leaders commonly use these platforms when they need enterprise-wide visibility into asset performance and costs.
Key takeaways
- Enterprise asset management software shows you everything about the lifecycle of your assets across multiple sites—what you paid, how they're performing, and when to replace them.
- While a CMMS focuses on maintenance tasks, EAM software connects to your finance and procurement systems so you can make better business decisions about your equipment.
- The primary benefits of an enterprise asset management system include reduced unplanned downtime, lower maintenance costs, and standardized operations across your entire organization.
- Evaluating an enterprise asset management system involves assessing its core features, such as asset lifecycle management, work order management, and reporting analytics, to ensure it meets your specific operational needs.
What is enterprise asset management software?
Enterprise asset management (EAM) software is a comprehensive platform that tracks and manages your equipment throughout its entire lifecycle, from procurement through disposal. Unlike basic maintenance tracking software, an EAM platform integrates with financial and operational systems to provide complete asset visibility.
Most maintenance leaders begin their digital journey with a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). These platforms help managers schedule preventive maintenance tasks, track work orders, manage inventory, and catalog equipment information.
However, large companies often outgrow standard CMMS capabilities. When managing hundreds of assets across multiple sites, you need robust systems that track warranties, monitor depreciation, and integrate with financial data.
This is where EAM software becomes essential. It documents each phase of an asset's lifecycle for complete operational transparency. Modern CMMS platforms, like MaintainX, now include many traditional EAM features, blurring the distinction between these asset management systems.
Benefits of enterprise asset management software
EAM software helps you see exactly how your equipment performance affects your bottom line.
For large organizations managing assets across multiple facilities, the benefits extend beyond maintenance to impact your entire operation:
- Improve asset reliability and reduce downtime: By centralizing asset data and automating preventive maintenance schedules, you proactively address potential failures before they lead to costly unplanned downtime. This ensures your equipment runs as expected, directly supporting production targets.
- Lower total cost of ownership: EAM software gives you complete visibility into asset costs, including maintenance, labor, and parts. This data allows you to make informed repair-or-replace decisions, optimize maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) inventory, and extend the useful life of your high-value equipment.
- Standardize processes across all sites: An EAM platform allows you to define and deploy best practices for maintenance, safety, and compliance across every facility. This standardization ensures consistent operational quality, simplifies training, and allows for meaningful performance comparisons between sites.
- Enhance data-driven decision-making: With comprehensive reporting and analytics, you can track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to asset health, maintenance costs, and team productivity. These insights empower your leadership team to justify budgets, allocate resources effectively, and drive continuous improvement initiatives.
How enterprise asset management systems work
An EAM system stores all your asset information in one place. It integrates data and workflows across maintenance, operations, and finance departments.
Here's how it works:
- Data centralization: The system consolidates information for every asset, including specifications, purchase dates, locations, warranty details, maintenance history, and costs. For a manufacturing facility, these asset records might include everything from production line conveyors to HVAC systems, creating one source of truth for all teams.
- Workflow automation: The platform automates critical processes, like generating preventive maintenance work orders, managing parts inventory levels, and tracking labor hours. These workflows are also designed for mobile teams, so when, for example, a technician completes a bearing replacement, they can mark it as complete on a mobile device, which will instantly update asset records in the system.
- Performance monitoring: The software continuously tracks asset performance metrics. It integrates with sensors and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices to monitor equipment health, like vibration levels on motors or temperature readings on compressors, triggering alerts when performance deviates from normal parameters.
- Reporting and analytics: An EAM generates reports and dashboards that transform raw data into actionable insights. This helps you identify failure patterns, analyze maintenance costs by equipment type, and measure the effectiveness of your asset management strategy.
Key features of enterprise asset management software
You can configure EAM software to match the way your company works. Most standard platforms include these core capabilities:
Core asset management features
- Asset lifecycle management: The system helps you get the most out of every piece of equipment you own.
- Work order management: Managers create, assign, and monitor work orders with complete visibility into upcoming preventive maintenance tasks.
- Inventory and MROmaterials management: The software provides full control of procurement processes and optimizes parts inventory across facilities.
Business integration capabilities
- Labor management: Human resources departments manage technician assessment, training, certification, and scheduling through integrated modules.
- Contract management: You can create and manage service contracts with employees, partners, and vendors.
- Financial management: You get detailed financial data on every asset so you can budget smarter and control spending.
- Reporting analytics: The platform generates reports that cross-reference data from different departments to analyze performance and identify trends.
The capabilities of EAM software differ from basic CMMS solutions through complete lifecycle tracking and financial integration. Traditional maintenance management systems focus primarily on maintenance tasks and asset conditions.
Modern platforms like MaintainX bridge this gap by offering comprehensive EAM functionality within a mobile-first maintenance management system.
What's the difference between enterprise asset management software and a computerized maintenance management system?
The chart below summarizes the difference between EAM and CMMS software:
The four phases of asset lifecycle management
EAM software manages every phase of an asset's life cycle. The four phases of asset lifecycle management are:
1. Design and specify
You can review performance and maintenance reports for all your assets on EAM software. The reports are valuable in designing an asset acquisition strategy that gives you the best utility at the lowest price. You can then document the specifics of the ideal asset for your procurement department.
2. Procure and build
The platform includes a purchase order feature for enabling the procurement of new assets. It then tracks data about the new asset after delivery and installation. This includes the date of commission, asset value and location, its preventive maintenance schedule, and the primary technician.
3. Operate and maintain
The software can also record and analyze an asset's activity as recorded by users and maintenance personnel. Technicians can attach barcodes to the assets, and the software then scans them for easy work request creation in the event of a breakdown. Maintenance technicians can easily view an asset's historical and present work orders on a mobile device while on site.
4. Decommission and dispose
At the end of an asset’s lifecycle, financial departments and asset managers can use EAM software to review useful information such as depreciation and maintenance costs to decide whether to keep an asset operational or decommission it. The software archives records of disposed assets for future audits.
The bottom line: Modernize your asset management approach
Large organizations use EAM software to manage thousands of assets, cut costs, and run more efficiently across sites. The days of managing assets with spreadsheets and paper-based systems are over.
Modern platforms like MaintainX give you full EAM capabilities on mobile devices, so your technicians can work efficiently while leadership gets the visibility they need. This approach aligns with our mission to keep the physical world running through better maintenance technology.
Ready to gain complete visibility into your assets and standardize operations? Sign Up for Free and see how MaintainX transforms your asset management strategy.
EAM FAQs
The key difference is scope and integration. A CMMS focuses on maintenance tasks within individual plants, while EAM software provides enterprise-wide visibility across all facilities. EAM platforms track complete asset lifecycles including financial data, enable standardized procedures across sites, and support enterprise-level capital planning decisions.
Some of the top benefits of an EAM platform include reduced unplanned downtime, longer asset life, lower maintenance costs, optimized inventory, higher technician productivity, stronger compliance and safety, faster audits, better OEE, and cross-team collaboration. Together, these EAM benefits stabilize operations and build a system for continuous improvement.
Implementation varies widely based on organizational complexity and software choice. Traditional on-premise EAM systems take months or years to deploy enterprise-wide. Modern cloud-based platforms enable faster rollouts, with single-site deployment possible in weeks, allowing for phased scaling across your entire operation.
CMMS software typically focuses on managing day-to-day maintenance tasks, like preventive maintenance work orders, asset tracking, and parts. EAM software adds broader asset management tools like financial tracking, lifecycle costing, inventory management, and capital planning. If you manage maintenance only, a CMMS software solution works well. If you're responsible for enterprise-wide asset strategy, consider an EAM.
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