Product Spotlight: One by SMS Assist, a revolutionary software for facilities management

One by SMS Assist™ is used every day to manage the facilities at more than 200,000 locations across North America—from retail stores and restaurants to banks and even single-family homes. While facilities managers and service providers use the platform daily to create, manage, and analyze work orders, few have been granted a look behind the scenes at what distinguishes this platform. We'll explore more in depth what makes this software for facilities management special, how it can be used, and what is next.

What is One by SMS Assist?

One by SMS Assist is a CMMS platform for executing property maintenance activities on more than 200,000 sites across the U.S. and Canada. Connected to this platform are more than 20,000 service providers who perform maintenance services on these properties—everything from HVAC, electrical, plumbing, lawn care, snow removal, and dozens of other trades.

This cloud-based software for facilities management platform acts as a single source of truth: It’s available 24/7 and is continuously updated so all stakeholders (including internal SMS Assist operations specialists) see the same facts as to the status of work orders and can move them progressively through their life cycle.

The platform includes several web portals and mobile apps tailored to the needs of diverse users, such as store and branch managers, residents inhabiting homes, technicians in the field, and SMS Assist representatives. One by SMS Assist keeps everyone in sync and helps all stakeholders communicate seamlessly within the platform.

What makes the One by SMS Assist platform unique?

One by SMS Assist is the most flexible and usable software for facilities management in the industry because it has benefited from all of the experience that SMS Assist has acquired from more than 20 years of providing property management services. As a result, this CMMS platform is able to learn through multiple property management work orders to ensure it meets the needs of actual practitioners in the industry—those who are responsible for ensuring the maintenance of more than 200,000 sites across North America.

Over the past several years, this CMMS platform transitioned into a microservices architecture that supports a high degree of configurability. Because in-house operations specialists, customer service representatives, and subject matter experts use the platform daily, the system consistently receives feedback from the client and provider sides. Consequently, the software is able to easily meet the needs of unique segments, such as health care, logistics, and quick-service restaurants.

Built around human-centered design

Human-centered design is a methodology for great product development. It begins by understanding who is using the technology, making sure that it caters to their needs, their assumptions, and their motivations, so they can have the most natural and intuitive experience while interacting with the CMMS platform.

Interface experts, user experience architects, and researchers developed this software for facilities maintenance. These teams usually work on large-scale consumer mobile apps, but at SMS Assist where great design is essential to making cutting-edge technology, these designers work with scrum teams that comprise product managers, developers, and operations specialists to create a human-centered product. Together, they engage users ranging from branch managers, residents, technicians, and customer service representatives to discover how to best apply technology to make the complex world of property maintenance much simpler.

Human-centered design is so important to the facilities maintenance industry because people that use these technologies often have other pressing maintenance issues on their mind. A technician on the roof of a restaurant fixing an HVAC system does not want to be struggling with a mobile app that’s difficult to use. They want to be able to get their job done and get off that hot roof very quickly. Those conditions might impair their ability to use the technology and needs to be taken into account when designing the software. The goal is to reduce the learning curve for end users by making an intuitive, easy-to-use software for facilities maintenance that can align with needs and expectations.

Technology will continue to influence facilities maintenance

The facilities maintenance industry is a centuries-old industry, but it is rapidly adopting leading-edge technologies like artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. SMS Assist has been preparing for this by strengthening the data structure supporting the platform, making it accessible to different learning algorithms. This can deliver enhanced automation, increased intelligence, and better outcomes for stakeholders—customers, service providers, and SMS Assist operators.

The larger opportunity is to capture data in such a way that every new work order that is initiated and executed has the opportunity to deliver more value. By gathering data from every work order and using advanced AI to automate tasks and predict maintenance, the platform drives insights and efficiencies throughout the entire process.

As technologies evolve, it'll become more common for the Internet of Things devices to be integrated into software for facilities maintenance. CMMS systems such as One by SMS Assist will be able to trigger work orders on the basis of changing circumstances in the field, even without human intervention. This will lay the groundwork for facilities maintenance work to be done in a much more seamless and cost-effective way than it is today.

A well-functioning maintenance strategy is essential to the success of any modern-day facilities portfolio. To make sure your facilities maintenance strategy is meeting your needs, request a demo to learn more about how our programs can help you.