The world of facilities management software can seem like a complicated alphabet soup of four-letter acronyms. CAFM, CMMS, and IWMS serve different, but overlapping purposes. However, all can add value to your organization. Here is a look at them all, and the benefits of each to help you manage your commercial real estate portfolio.
CAFM - Computer Aided Facility Management
When many users look for facilities management software, they end up with a CAFM package. Primarily designed as a space management tool, CAFM can help you attack occupancy costs as a whole. Typically, CAFM tracks your space and the assets in it. By combining space planning with asset tracking, you get a fuller sense of how your space is being used. After all, a room without employees isn't always an empty room -- sometimes it's a work area that serves as a hub of an office. Knowing that it holds a copy machine can help you differentiate those spaces from the wasted ones.
CAFM typically stops at tracking spaces and assets, though. What it cannot do is help you to take care of them or to know what you should do with them above and beyond managing their use.
CMMS - Computerized Maintenance Management System
A CMMS overlaps with CAFM facilities management software in that it frequently has a module to track physical equipment. However, instead of tracking it from a space planning perspective, CMMS helps you manage the process of taking care of your company's high value assets. This way, maintenance schedules get followed, potentially extending the life of those assets and reducing the risk of breakdowns. Within the world of facilities management, CMMS can help manage major building systems like elevators or air conditioning units.
A CMMS is frequently part of a large piece of software known as an Enterprise Asset Management tool. EAMs go beyond physical assets, looking at everything that a company owns or controls. This can include buildings and financial holdings.
IWMS -- Integrated Workplace Management System
The IWMS is the jack-of-all-trades of facilities management software. An IWMS will usually integrate CAFM-style space tracking and CMMS-style maintenance tracking with a suite of other real estate-related applications. An IWMS can track lease schedules and benchmark portfolios across a range of different metrics.
A CAFM can help you ensure that your space isn't wasted while a CMMS helps you ensure that your space's systems work. Using an IWMS as your facilities management software protects you against losing control of your space while also helping you manage every aspect of your occupancy costs.
Which Is Best?
After doing a careful comparison, many organizations choose to go the IWMS route for their facilities management software solution because it offers the most corporate real estate functionality in a single package. REoptimizer® offers the most impactful IWMS (and CAFM / CMMS) features in an easy-to-use and easy-to-install application.
Get a Demo of REoptimizer® to learn more about how we can help you lower your occupancy costs and increase the efficiency of your entire corporate real estate portfolio.
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