CWorks CMMS transforms maintenance management around the globe

Overview Country or Region: Malaysia

Industry: Information Technology

Customer Profile

CWorks Systems Bhd has made its mark

as one of the most popular CMMS

providers in the world. Its CWorks‟ CMMS

solution has been downloaded over half

a million times by users in over 100

countries.

Business Situation

CWorks‟ goal was develop a CMMS

application that was easy to implement

and affordable, enabling more

organizations around the world to

computerize the management of their

maintenance functions.

Solution

The CMMS solution was initially

developed using Visual Basic for

Applications running on Microsoft

Access. It was subsequently upgraded to

run on Microsoft SQL Server and other

database platforms.

Benefits

Speedy implementation

Slashes maintenance costs

Increases asset availability

CMMS without a planner

Increases repeat customers

Support for better decision making

More effective dashboards

Reduced reporting costs

“Our CMMS solution is very fast to implement and

that is our edge. In this day and age, people are just

fed up with long implementation cycles and huge

investments.”

Abdul Rani Achmed Abdullah, CEO, CWorks Systems Bhd

Since it was established in 2001, CWorks Systems Bhd has

become one of the most popular computerized maintenance

management systems (CMMS) providers in the world. As the

founders of CWorks were practitioners in the maintenance

industry, they were keen to develop a CMMS software that was

easy to implement and affordable so that more organizations,

especially small and medium enterprises, could deploy it. The

simplicity and user-friendliness of CWorks‟ CMMS allows

organizations to easily and quickly computerize the

management of their maintenance functions. The time saved on

preventive maintenance and spares management through has

resulted in real cost savings for CWorks users in over 100

countries. CWorks CMMS also allows for easy identification of

repetitive faults and trends that assist maintenance personnel in

their efforts to maximize equipment uptime and reduce

breakdowns.

Situation Relatively low profile in Malaysia, CWorks

Systems Bhd has succeeded in the cut-

throat Internet software arena where many

startups have failed. Since its establishment

in 2001 as a provider of computerized

maintenance management systems

(CMMS), the Serdang-based company has

steadily made its mark as one of the most

popular CMMS providers in the world.

Its free CWorks‟ CMMS has been

downloaded over half a million times by

users in over 100 countries, with the

majority of users from the United States. It

also has over 2,000 paid user sites around

the world. In the extremely competitive

CMMS software space, CWorks has beaten

the odds and is consistently found at the

top list of search engines for CMMS or

maintenance systems. The company‟s out-

of-the-box marketing and Internet-based

strategy has given it an edge in the

competitive global CMMS industry.

Recognizing the potential in matured

markets such as the United States, Canada

and Europe, CWorks established a

subsidiary in Buffalo, New York in 2005. A

Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) status

company listed on Malaysia‟s ACE Market,

CWorks also has a presence in Melbourne,

Australia, as well as a chain of partners in

the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico,

Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the

Philippines.

CWorks was founded by a group of

maintenance and information technology

(IT) practitioners with long years of

experience in maintenance and IT in both

local and multinational organizations. “The

founders of CWorks were practitioners in

the maintenance industry, and we basically

decided to develop a CMMS software that

was easy to implement and affordable so

that more organizations, especially small

and medium enterprises, could deploy it,”

says CWorks CEO and co-founder Abdul

Rani Achmed Abdullah.

“CWorks‟ CMMS is the sensible approach to

maintenance management not only for its

affordability but because it is designed and

implemented by experienced practitioners

who understand the processes and costs

associated with asset maintenance,

operational effectiveness, and the need for

continuous improvement,” adds Abdul

Rani.

He says CWorks saw early on that at the

top end of the market, computerized

maintenance management systems were

the domain of the entrenched Enterprise

Resource Planning (ERP) solution providers.

Typically for these providers, the CMMS

component was a module of their ERP

system and this meant that deploying a

CMMS module often took a long time and

was very costly.

Abdul Rani and his partners saw that

companies, especially in the SME sector,

wanted just a streamlined CMMS that could

be quickly deployed without much fuss and

costly investment.

Solution CWorks then embarked on developing a

CMMS solution which had all the required

features and which could be easily installed

by users without handholding by CWorks.

“We wanted to develop an application that

you can just download and start up quickly

because the earlier solutions were really

part of a huge ERP system that was

complex and often required many months

to deploy,” explains Abdul Rani.

“Since we were involved in the maintenance

business before we founded CWorks, we

had in-depth understanding of the actual

“With CWorks, your

maintenance strategy

can now move from

reactive to proactive

and your percentage

planned versus

unplanned jobs should

increase.”

Abdul Rani Achmed Abdullah, CEO, CWorks

Systems Bhd

processes, and managed to take away a lot

of the unnecessary features that people

want in the typical CMMS software. In other

words, we give them what they need and

not necessarily what they want,” says Abdul

Rani.

The CWorks team also suggested building

the new CMMS solution on the Microsoft

Access database because it was “the

simplest database to work on” and also

because it was very widely used, being part

of the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite.

“So that‟s what we did, we implemented

the CMMS solution on Microsoft Access

and developed the application using Visual

Basic for Applications (VBA),” he adds. In

the intervening years, CWorks upgraded

the software to enable it to run on

Microsoft SQL Server as well as other

database platforms to cater to clients‟

differing requirements.

CWorks CMMS is designed for enterprises

from all tiers, from small, mid to large

organizations, in managing their asset and

equipment maintenance needs. The

application can be deployed on premise as

a standalone solution or as an off premise

Web-based „anywhere and anytime‟

solution. It allows users to easily record

details of the organization‟s assets and

resources as well as the maintenance tasks

assigned. It also automates tasks such as

preventive maintenance, time and meter-

based scheduling; spares holding and

enables re-order and purchase tracking.

CWorks CMMS also provides reports on

plant and facility management to improved

planning, checking and monitoring. With

the wide range of reports available, users

are able to provide proper justification for

budgets and resources.

Abdul Rani says CWorks users are mainly

from English speaking countries with the

majority from North America, UK and

Australia. “We are also getting a lot of

interest from the Middle East with users

from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

and Saudi Arabia. In that sense, we are not

a Malaysian business, we are in the Internet

business and our footprint is global.”

Benefits Speedy implementation

The out-of-the-box feature of CWorks

CMMS, its simplicity and user-friendliness

enables users to get the solution up and

running in double quick time, allowing

organizations to easily and quickly

computerize the management of their

maintenance functions.

CWorks CMMS can typically be

implemented within two weeks in

comparison with other features-heavy

systems or those which are part of an ERP

system which can often take months or

even years to be deployed. “Our CMMS

solution is very fast to implement and that

is our edge,” says Abdul Rani, adding that

increasingly very large corporations such as

national airlines and giant Internet

companies are opting for CWorks CMMS

rather than other cumbersome CMMS

alternatives.

“In this day and age, people are just fed up

with long implementation cycles and huge

investments. They rather pay RM1 and get

RM10 worth of benefits than pay RM100

and get RM20 benefit,” he adds. By helping

organizations to quickly computerize the

management of their maintenance

operations, CWorks allows them to enjoy

the resulting benefits such as improved

productivity, lower costs of operations,

increased asset availability and reductions

in spare parts inventory.

“However by deploying CWorks CMMS, users have discovered that the answer is not in increasing people but in improving time management through good planning and efficient use of scarce manpower.”

Abdul Rani Achmed Abdullah, CEO, CWorks

Systems Bhd

Slashes maintenance costs

As maintenance is one of the largest

operating costs in plants and buildings

today, controlling these costs can help save

substantial funds for a company‟s

operations. “The dilemma faced by many

companies, especially the small and

medium-sized ones, is not that they don‟t

want to save costs but they barely have

sufficient people to keep the plant or

building going, let alone find ways to

improve maintenance,” says Abdul Rani.

However by deploying CWorks CMMS,

users have discovered that the answer is

not in increasing people but in improving

time management through good planning

and efficient use of scarce manpower. For

example, labor cost is reduced through cuts

in overtime due to breakdowns, and

efficient maintenance scheduling. Improved

tracking and management of spare parts

will reduce non-productive time in

searching for right parts and waiting for

parts while use of human resources can be

monitored as maintenance staff‟s activities

are recorded and logged into the CWorks

system.

The time saved on preventive maintenance

and spares management through the

CWorks system has resulted in real cost

savings for the thousands of CWorks users

in over 100 countries.

Increases asset availability

CWorks CMMS allows for easy

identification of repetitive faults and trends

that assist maintenance personnel in their

continuous efforts to maximize equipment

uptime and reduce breakdowns. As the

system generates an array of maintenance

reports and statistics, a wealth of data

including on equipment breakdowns are

captured. “This means that areas where

preventive maintenance is required will be

self evident, and corrective actions can be

identified though the trend reports,”

explains Abdul Rani.

“With CWorks, your maintenance strategy

can now move from reactive to proactive

and your percentage planned versus

unplanned jobs should increase,” he adds.

And through regular and effective

preventive maintenance, the effective

lifetime of an organisation‟s assets and

equipment can be prolonged, he adds.

With the availability of an effective CMMS

system like CWorks, stock holding also

becomes more predictable. This means that

spare parts can be linked to equipment,

thus ensuring obsolete parts are readily

identified. Regular stock review ability

provides efficient spare parts management

and ensures that parts are readily available,

says Abdul Rani.

CMMS without a planner

One of the key ingredients to the

popularity of CWorks‟ CMMS is that it not

only allows small and mid-sized

organizations to quickly implement a

computerized maintenance management

system, the system is also user-friendly

enough to be deployed without the need

for an IT staff or a full-time planning

engineer.

In the case of ice cream maker Coast

Mountain Dairy, which has a small plant in

Chilliwack, British Columbia, it was not large

enough to employ an IT staff to develop its

own CMMS solution nor did it have the

capacity to employ a full-time planning

engineer/technical planner. The 12,000 sq ft

plant only had three maintenance trades

staff including a supervisor.

The ice cream maker chose CWorks‟ CMMS

as its capabilities fit its plant maintenance

needs and limited budget. More

importantly, it could operate the CWorks

CMMS system without the need for

planners, and both skilled and unskilled

operators have no problem inputting data

into the system.

Software for ancient castle

If you think CWorks‟ SMMS solution is used

only for relatively modern buildings or

structures, you will be dead wrong. The

Malaysian company‟s CMMS software is

used at Leeds Castle, an English medieval

castle in Kent dating back to the 12th

century.

Currently used as a conference and tourist

centre, Leeds Castle has a maintenance

staff of 10 tradesmen — two working inside

the castle and eight managing the rest of

the 500-acre estate. Before CWorks, its

facilities management system was as

antiquated as the castle itself with

preventive maintenance being a pure

paper-based system with no tracking or

accountability.

All these have changed with CWorks CMMS

as work requests are now entered directly

on the computer. The ease of entering

information into the database enables

managers to see a full cost and repair

history for every piece of equipment. High-

cost and inefficient equipment are

highlighted for continuous improvement,

while the system shows where maintenance

time is consumed. The wealth of data

captured by CWorks CMMS ensures the

preventive maintenance done for the castle

is highly effective.

The experience at Leeds Castle, and

thousands of other sites around the world,

illustrates that even for a small staff with no

dedicated planner, the right CMMS like

CWorks can prove to be an invaluable tool

to transform maintenance operations and

contribute positively to the bottom line.

Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008,

and Visual Studio 2008 provide a secure

and trusted foundation for creating and

running your most demanding applications.

Combined, the products offer advanced

security technology, developer support for

the latest platforms, improved

management and Web tools, flexible

virtualization technology to optimize your

infrastructure, and access to relevant

information throughout your organization.

For more information about Windows

Server 2008, go to:

www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

For more information about SQL Server

2008, go to:

www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/default.mspx

For more information about Visual Studio

2008, go to:

www.microsoft.com/vstudio.

For More Information For more information about Microsoft

products and services, call the Microsoft

Sales Information Center at (800) 426-

9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft

Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-

2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-

of-hearing can reach Microsoft text

telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800)

892-5234 in the United States or (905)

568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50

United States and Canada, please contact

your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access

information using the World Wide Web,

go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about CWorks

Systems Bhd, call (603) 8656 9041 or visit

the Web site at: www.cworks.com.my

Document published August 2010

Software and Services Microsoft Servers

− Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Microsoft Visual Studio

Technologies

− Microsoft .NET Framework