Step 1: Take Inventory of Your Restaurant Maintenance System
First, take stock of what your current system looks like to understand your needs. The foundation for restaurant maintenance is work order management. Work orders represent the entire maintenance process, from request submission and scheduling to completion (which involves labor, parts, and paperwork).
What does maintenance look like for your restaurant organization, right now? For instance, if you know that you need your restaurant maintenance software to diagnose certain performance issues, like a growing backlog of work orders, or an unacceptable mean time to repair (MTTR) metric, then you need to prioritize visibility and centralization of data.
Specifically, try to understand where there is a bottleneck or weakness in your system. Here are some of the common areas where maintenance activities break down:
Work orders don’t contain enough detail to set up successful repairs
Maintenance records don’t show full asset histories, so technicians are missing critical information or resources are overspent
Administrative approvals are delayed
Your repair teams, whether internal technicians or external vendors, aren’t tracking important information in a central, accessible place
Spare parts for repairs are consistently either missing or need to be ordered
Both the facilities team and the field techs have to constantly update each other, but each group still seems to be missing key information
Work orders drag on for days or weeks, leaving gaps between dispatches or requiring multiple visits
Step 2: Define What Different Stakeholders Need
With your weaknesses in mind, work to define what each of the stakeholders in your maintenance process needs to be successful.
Here are a few stakeholders to consider in your workflow:
Location-level teams: Restaurant managers need to submit work orders that contain all relevant details for dispatch, but the process needs to be streamlined so that the manager can quickly get back to their core responsibilities.
Facilities maintenance technicians: Your techs need to be set up for success when they are dispatched to a facilities job, with all the information or parts they need to complete a repair the first time. These technicians also need to be able to track their notes, photos, and readings from where they are in the field, adding into a reliable central record that can be referenced in the future.
Central facilities teams or schedulers: Coordinators should have visibility into work order management, making decisions based on priority and using flexible tools to rearrange resources. With a view into live progress, the facilities team can keep an eye on maintenance activities and escalate issues when needed.
Maintenance admins and facilitators: Maintenance oversight, whether that’s tracking work order progress or providing approvals for truck rolls, should come with clear workflows and notifications for individuals. Records with timestamps and a clear audit trail help create clarity across teams.
Other departments: Information about facilities maintenance is used by many different departments in a restaurant organization, such as accounting, HR, development, and executives. Your facilities maintenance system should be connected with other business functions so information can flow smoothly (and reliably) between departments.
Step 3: Define Your Priorities
Finally, with your workflows and team members in mind, decide what functionality is critical in your maintenance software solution. Here are a few key areas to focus on.
Central Intake for Work Orders
The core benefit of a CMMS is centralizing work order management. Instead of using a white board, email, or spreadsheets, work orders are stored within one system where everyone can submit or view information. Each team member is able to document approvals, photos, notes, and other information relevant to equipment and location history.
With all the information in one place, you set your team up for success with the next work order, but also for future maintenance needs. When you capture, route, track, and complete work orders in one location, maintenance records are standardized and you build location and equipment data.
Streamlined Corrective and Preventive Maintenance
Both corrective (reactive) and preventive (proactive) maintenance are important parts of your facilities strategy. Corrective and preventive maintenance may require different workflows, but when both types of maintenance are running smoothly, you will see faster work order turnaround and less overall downtime.
Your CMMS should streamline corrective maintenance through the centralization of information described above, as well as other tools like spare part inventory tracking and AI-powered insights that pull from asset history notes. For preventive maintenance, a software solution can help automate PM scheduling by generating recurring work orders that you can revise as needed, as well as tracking progress.
Reliable Repository for All Facilities Info
Your restaurant maintenance software might center around work orders, but it has more value to offer to your facilities team as a whole. Software like a CMMS can be used to store and track facilities information such as:
Equipment warranty start and end dates, along with terms
Equipment manuals and facility-based troubleshooting guides, to empower location teams and technicians (bonus: link to these resources using QR codes throughout your restaurants!)
Repair spend, compared to the cost of replacement, so you are able to make informed decisions about equipment
Information about leases, vendor contracts, and store-level details
