5 Benefits of Using Mobile Devices to Manage Your Facilities

In this day and age, facility management leaders, like you, have maintenance tasks at so many different parts of your site (or sites) that it can be a headache to keep track of them all. One day you and your team may be stuck fixing the HVAC unit in one building and the next you’re jumping from one location to another to determine the source of a leak. Traveling between locations is crucial in your department, so finding the necessary tools to help you reference and close out maintenance tasks on-the-go from a mobile device is a must.

Why you should go mobile

Implementing a system that allows you to track work orders on a mobile device may help stabilize your hectic schedule, save you time, and improve transparency within your department and throughout your organization. You’ll need a system that allows you to assign, track, and close out maintenance requests anywhere from any device. That way you won’t have to worry about remembering who on your staff needs to fix the air handling unit in building 2, and they won’t forget to close out work orders once they get back to the office. You can do it all in real time and on the job, which keeps you and your team in the loop about fundamental tasks.

Use a mobile maintenance management tool

In a recent article, senior content analyst with Software Advice, Taylor Short, shared how facilities management software like FMX can enable you and your team to look up key details and record activities on-the-go.

Our team followed up with Taylor to discover which key features FMX customers find most important while using the software while on the job:

“Maintenance software reviewers rated FMX highly for its simple-to-understand interface and easy navigation, which help any type of user complete work orders quickly, from any location,” Short said. “Reviewers also praised how the calendar gives workers and managers a view of the week’s work orders at a glance. Overall, users say FMX offers a significant boost to convenience and productivity.”

Let’s look at some of these features in more detail.

Looking up key details

Technicians are often delayed when they go to complete a work order or preventive maintenance (PM) task because they do not have the information they need. For example, there could be missing information in the ticket, they could have forgotten to print off the ticket and bring it with them, or the technician could be a little hazy on the proper procedure for the work order or PM.

FMX can help you track and centralize the information that technicians need to complete their work orders and enable your technicians to access that information from a phone or tablet with work order software. As a result, your technicians should experience fewer delays and interruptions while on the job.

Upload procedure documents and create instruction sets

When you’re assigning work orders to your technicians, you can upload procedure documents, manuals, etc. to various tickets for them to refer to as they are working on the task.

You can also use FMX to create step-by-step instruction sets for common preventive maintenance tasks. Assigned technicians can access these instructions from their mobile device so that they can easily reference the proper procedure for the task. Then they must check off each step before they can close out a task. Alternatively, they can check off a few steps, record their progress, and close out at a later time.

QR barcode scanning

Your technicians can easily access the work orders and PMs they are working on by scanning a QR barcode. FMX automatically generates a QR code for each piece of equipment that you can print and adhere to your equipment. When your technicians scan these QR codes with a mobile device they can pull up all of the information about the piece of equipment, recent and past work orders and PM tasks, and associated inventory with asset and equipment maintenance capabilities.

Look up how past work orders were completed

If a similar work order comes up, your technicians will not have to start from scratch in order to resolve it. Technicians can easily search for and pull up past requests; for example, by scanning the piece of equipment or asset they are working on and viewing its equipment log.

Closing out tickets and recording information

When you have a busy facilities department, it can be hard to remember to close out tickets, record inventory used, and track your labor hours. Many technicians have to complete more than one ticket before they return to the office, and even when they are on their way back, they might have to suddenly turn back around to complete an emergency ticket. With FMX, your technicians can close out tickets right from their mobile device before they forget. They can also immediately record any inventory they used and the amount of time it took them to complete a task.

But don’t take my word for it! Learn more about facilities management software and the benefits your organization can gain today.