Every unplanned breakdown was scheduled. Nobody wrote down when.
What is a maintenance management system?
One record of every asset, from install to replacement.
A computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) holds one record of every asset you own: what it is, where it is, the work done on it and the maintenance due next. CodeFish builds and connects it for Australian operators running plant, fleets or production lines, who have outgrown paper job cards and a spreadsheet only one person understands. Unlike a calendar of services, it schedules work by hours run and units produced, using data your floor already has. You service machines when they need it, and you know what each one costs to keep running.
Types of maintenance software
Most operators already run two or three of these. The CMMS is the record they all report against.
CMMS
Asset register, work orders and preventive schedules for one site. You plan the week instead of reacting to it.
Enterprise asset management (EAM)
The same record across many sites, plus lifecycle cost and capital planning. You replace assets on evidence, not on age.
Production and run-hour data
Run hours and cycle counts from the floor drive the schedule. See [systems integration](/services/software/systems-integration).
Spare parts and stores
Critical spares held, counted and reordered before the lead time bites. See [warehouse management](/enterprise-integration/wms-warehouse-management-system).
Field service management
Scheduling, dispatch and job capture for technicians on the road. The app has to work with no signal. Buy when the job is standard; build when it is unusual or per-seat licences outgrow owning it.
Plant and fleet maintenance
Servicing by hours and kilometres, with cost per machine. See [construction job management](/business-automation/construction-job-management-software).
What a maintenance system has to do
Six jobs, in the order they have to happen. Each one depends on the one before it.
The asset register
What you own, where it is and what it is made of. Every other feature is a report on this list, so a good register means every report you pull is right.
Work orders
Raised, assigned, completed and recorded, with what was done and what parts went in. Next year's repair-or-replace call is made on this record, not on memory.
Preventive schedules
Maintenance due by date, by hours run or by units produced. Moving from the calendar to actual use is where most of the saving is.
Spare parts
What is held, what is critical, what has a twelve-week lead time. The right part on the shelf keeps a two-hour repair from becoming a two-week outage.
History and cost per asset
What each machine has cost to keep running. It is the number that settles repair-or-replace, on demand instead of after a week of digging.
Capture at the machine
Technicians record work while they do it, on a screen faster than the paper card. The data is current, so the schedule and the costs can be trusted.
Should we buy a CMMS or build one?
Buy the product. Build the connections.
Buy, in most cases, and we will say so. The products are mature, cost little next to the assets they manage, and a register, work orders and a schedule do not need a build. Build or extend when production data should drive the schedule, your assets are unusual, or technicians need a faster capture screen than the product offers. Most often the real build is connecting the CMMS to the rest of the business, so you pay only for the part a product cannot do.
What does maintenance software cost?
Every maintenance project starts the same way: a Rapid Insight Workshop at a fixed $9,000 + GST. CodeFish reviews your asset register, the maintenance actually done, the gap between them and what a day of unplanned downtime costs you. The roadmap says what to buy, what to connect and what to build, and it is yours whether or not you build with us.
What comes next depends on what the workshop finds, and the driver is nearly always the asset register and integration rather than software. Assets have to be identified, tagged and captured, which is fieldwork, and any honest quote includes it. Where a product fits, we quote only the integration. A defined build is fixed-price as an Amplify project, and progressive rollouts across sites run as an Apex partnership, so you only pay for work the business will use.
How a maintenance project runs
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What you own, what condition it is in and what it costs when it stops. Most registers are missing the critical small equipment, because it was never worth a line in the fixed asset ledger. You finish with a register you can plan from.
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Technicians recording work at the machine, on a screen faster than the paper card. It goes first, even though the schedule is what people asked for, because every report after it depends on this data.
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Once run hours and production data are flowing, schedules shift from the calendar to actual use. Servicing stops happening too early on the quiet machines and too late on the hard-worked ones.
How we deliver maintenance work
Web App Development
A custom web app built in Adelaide typically starts with an Ignite prototype at $25K to $50K over four to eight weeks, then an Amplify build from around $100K at a fixed price. Most builds take two to 12 months, include a 12-month warranty, and you own the code.
Rapid Insight Workshop
A Rapid Insight Workshop is two sessions with your key people that map how work really gets done and where time and money are lost. It costs a fixed $9,000 + GST, and about three weeks later you get a prioritised roadmap, a business case and a product specification you keep either way.
Systems Integration
Systems integration typically runs as a fixed-price Amplify build from around $100K, or as an ongoing Apex partnership from $15K a month. It suits operations businesses running five or more systems: we connect your ERP, CRM, warehouse and field systems so nobody retypes data.
Maintenance questions we get asked
With a walk around, and it is a bigger job than the software selection. Assets get identified, tagged and captured with their condition — fieldwork, not development. Anyone who quotes you a maintenance project without this line has quoted a system you will not be able to use.
Only if it is faster than the paper card, and on a phone rather than a terminal in an office. The test is whether a job can be closed out at the machine in under a minute with gloves on. Systems that fail this get fed at the end of the week from memory, and that data is not worth having.
The capture app has to work offline and sync later, and that is decided at the start rather than added afterwards. Plant rooms, basements and remote sites rarely have coverage. An app that needs a connection stops at the workshop door.
For a small number of critical, expensive, well-instrumented assets, sometimes. For most mid-market operators it is a distraction from the larger saving, which is moving from calendar-based to usage-based servicing using data you already have. Get run hours driving the schedule before considering sensors and models.
That is the connection worth building. Run hours and cycle counts from the floor drive usage-based schedules, and downtime recorded in production should match downtime recorded in maintenance. Where those two disagree, both numbers get argued with instead of acted on.
No. The ERP holds the money and the fixed asset ledger, and the finance team rarely wants to change it. The CMMS sits beside it and feeds it parts consumption, costs and purchase requests through an integration rather than a replacement.
Cost of downtime, not maintenance efficiency. What an hour of unplanned stoppage costs on your worst line, multiplied by the hours you had last year, is the number. Efficiency arguments about technician utilisation are true and far less persuasive to a board.
You do — the code, the data and the documentation. Asset history is what you rely on for warranty claims, audits and insurance, so it needs to outlive both the software and whoever built it.
Most custom CMMS builds start around $100,000 as a fixed-price Amplify project, scaling with sites, assets and integrations. Ongoing development can run as an Apex partnership from $15,000 a month instead. The figure for your plant is set in a $9,000 + GST Rapid Insight Workshop, so you know the number before committing to a build.
Typically 2 to 12 months as an Amplify build, with the first site using it well before the last. The Rapid Insight Workshop comes first and delivers a roadmap and business case about three weeks later. Getting the asset register into shape is often the longest single task, and it is your team's knowledge that drives it.
Often, yes. If your maintenance follows standard work orders and planned schedules, a product will fit and the licence is cheaper than a build at small scale. Per-user fees continue every year, though, and custom wins when your process forces workarounds or needs to connect tightly to production. A custom build has no per-user licence and you own the code.
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