Imagine you work in a circus, making your living by spinning plates. The more plates you spin, the more difficult the work becomes; but the more difficult the work becomes, the more money you make. Next, imagine that your work, your career, your everything, depends on the opinions of the people that come to watch you perform; fail in your task once too often, and those people will abandon you forever.

If you operate in the retail industry, this shouldn’t be too difficult to imagine. The onlookers are of course your customers – the people whose opinion your business lives and dies by – while the spinning plates are your assets; the things that must be managed if your business is to succeed. Keeping track of these assets is a struggle, particularly as your business and your inventory grow.

The plate-spinning analogy might be getting a little stretched, but hopefully, you get the picture. Operating a successful retail business is like giving a performance to a critical and temperamental audience, and when facing such a crowd, you need to give yourself every advantage you can.

A good quality retail CMMS system is really the only way to effectively gain this sort of advantage. Keeping all of your assets clean, safe and well-maintained may be relatively simple for small scale operations, but as your business grows, it can very quickly become a logistical nightmare.

“The software is a great way to keep records. It shows you what’s been done, how much was spent and also tracks labor and parts. Proteus is the backbone of our department. We’re really happy with it. It has clearly played a big role in improving productivity and helping us to take our department to a whole new level of management.

Since implementing Proteus we can effectively plan preventative maintenance and get an overall view of each building and their maintenance needs.  We have been able to track and manage each transaction and the level of effort associated by the use of Proteus.”

–Don Stenson, Facility Manager, Steinhafels Inc.

Let’s start with your carpet and flooring; that needs to be kept well-maintained and in good condition to prevent unhygienic, unpleasant and potentially dangerous conditions for shoppers. Next, let’s move on to your pipes, your HVAC system, your electronics, your windows, the car park, and then to everything else on your premises. Multiply that across your various stores if you are operating a chain, and it soon becomes clear that you need some seriously robust software to keep all those assets in check.

Implementing a good quality piece of retail computerized maintenance management software enables you to input your assets into the inventory and let the software do its work, informing the relevant team when cleaning or maintenance work needs to take place, and giving business owners the ability to gauge the efficiency of the firm’s operation.

For those who either own a retail chain or are involved in its upper management, this is of particular importance. The beauty of a web-based retail CMMS system is that it is accessible from all of your retail locations, so staff members in any location can utilize the system. Reports and data-analysis tasks can then by commissioned from a central location, making you the quarterback, surveying the situation from your many vantage points and marveling at how well everything is going.

All of this translates to a very pleasant retail environment for customers, and – as we all know – happy shoppers’ equal happy retailers.

Retail CMMS