KPIs for the Maintenance Industry

Being able to track and analyze your business’ performance and understand which specific values contribute to the success of your maintenance business will help you identify the most important areas to focus on for growth. 

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Knowing and understanding what the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are for your maintenance business is very different from implementing them properly. If you’re struggling to find value in your latest KPIs – ask yourself – what are the current goals of your business? Are you setting up indicators that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely (SMART KPIs)?

Setting the goals for your business, building SMART KPIs around them, and managing them with planned maintenance software will help you measure, track, and achieve what you set out to accomplish for your company. 

The Three Maintenance KPI Categories

Most key performance indicators can be broken down into one of three categories: strategic, operational, and departmental. If implemented correctly these KPIs allow for a business to provide its employees with common goals to work towards. 

Strategic KPIs

Strategic KPIs are most often evaluated by the owners or executives of a company to analyze their previously laid out objectives. They are used to measure the big picture over an extended period and can help you to make decisions about the future of the company. 

Operational KPIs

Operational KPIs are most often used by local managers to analyze how operations are doing in a specific area. They can be tracked daily, monthly, or longer – and are used to determine if the strategic KPIs you’ve implemented need to be altered to reflect the current state of the business. 

Departmental KPIs

Departmental KPIs are specific to the different departments within a company. They are set up with a unique goal that would only make sense for that specific department to have. They can be strategic or operational and should help define what is or isn’t working for a specific team.

For example, your sales team or department should have a KPI to track the number of cold calls and emails they send out in a specific period. This type of KPI wouldn’t work for departments outside of sales.

Subcategories for Maintenance KPIs 

Now that you understand the three main categories that KPIs can fall under, let’s go deeper and learn about subcategories that you might find informative for your maintenance business. 

Financial:

Any indicator that is tied to finance (think profit margin, revenue, and other similar terms). Net profit will generally be the KPI that is used to track the overall health and monetary performance of a company. You can follow any part of your budget that you think may needs adjusting. 

Employee:

Creating a set of KPIs that can be related to all employees in the company will keep you up to date on all staffing details or decisions. Gaining insight on what employees think about the company in relation to how they’re performing can help you create the best maintenance business plan possible. 

Customer Service:

Your technicians are most likely doing the majority of your offline customer service. If they aren’t properly equipped to engage with customers, you could be missing out on new clients through word of mouth. Customer service can make or break a business in the world of online reviews today – monitor this closely!

Performance:

Looking at overall performance, these KPIs help to measure employee productivity (office staff, technicians, management) and can help increase efficiency across all departments. For example, how long it takes for your admin staff to finish a specific task or process, or perhaps looking at the number of errors made by a department on a monthly basis. It could indicate that training is needed

Marketing:

In the maintenance industry, a lot of the leads you generate will come from your marketing team who is producing web and social media content that puts your brand’s best foot forward. Keeping track of new users and building an email list to identify potential clients will allow you to stay in contact with the people who clicked on your webpage and are interested in what you have to offer.

Sales:

If you don’t have a separate sales team, and your technicians are the ones creating additional revenue opportunities – which can often be the case in the maintenance industry – setting targets with sales KPIs can help your technicians bring in more revenue.

You could try tracking a technician’s upsell value per month; for instance, you can monitor how often and how much additional value they can bring in per week. If you notice one technician standing out, ask him what he’s doing while talking to clients and incorporate it into your training strategy.  

If you’re looking for more information on KPIs and selling for the trades – visit our sales guide!

Examples of SMART Key Performance Indicators (Maintenance KPIs)

Creating and maintaining SMART KPIs will not only help you improve your business – but grow and make a repeatable process that helps you compete with the best. Read below for examples of specific SMART KPIs that will help your different teams find and operate successfully. 

SMART KPIs for Business Owners

Efficiency: The overall efficiency of operations is a logical place to start when deciding on KPIs. To measure efficiency – you’ll want to look at metrics like technician overtime hours, maintenance backlog, equipment setup, job site cleanup times, and the number of rework jobs. 

Spending: If you’re looking to boost revenue quickly, setting up KPIs around spending should help you identify financially unbalanced areas or departments of the business. 

Inventory: Digitally tracking inefficiencies across your inventory – whether it’s ordering too many parts or not having enough – will help you keep a proper budget. Inventory KPIs are essential for maintenance service businesses if they want to maximize revenue. Taking a look at these numbers monthly (or even weekly) will help you make sure your inventory is always where it needs to be. 

Asset Uptime vs Downtime: Monitoring your assets and making sure your uptime is within budget constraints and meets service level agreements will save you revenue over time. Being able to get ahead of any potential asset issues will keep your technicians on schedule and customers happy. 

SMART KPIs for Maintenance Technicians

Average First-Time Fix Rate: This KPI allows you to track how often technicians are completing jobs with one visit. If your technicians are constantly having to revisit locations due to poor work quality – you’ll end up with less revenue at the end of your fiscal year. There are many ways to fix this, but it starts by tracking it with a KPI.  

Turnover Rate: How long does a technician last at your company? Are you noticing a high turnover rate? If you don’t have new competition poaching your employees with sign-on offers, you may have to look internally to see why techs are leaving. Make sure exit interviews are conducted by HR to figure out how you can improve your retention rate. 

SMART KPIs for Maintenance Office Staff

Scheduling Frequency: Is your office staff making cold calls? How many of them are converted into customers? Repeat customers? The list goes on and on for the number of things you could track when it comes to scheduling via the office staff. Find what works best for your business by analyzing your top performers and implementing their strategies across your company. 

Time Until First Touch: If your marketing plan has been successful, you should be generating new leads on a regular basis. Track how long it takes your office staff to reach out and how often a new lead becomes a new customer. (Tip: Keep notice of where the leads are coming from to help better focus your marketing funding and efforts).

If you’re looking for even more examples of specific KPIs that you can track, take a look at this article from ClearPoint Strategy for 30 additional trackable metrics.

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The Takeaway on the best maintenance KPIs

Developing and tracking SMART KPIs will help you find success on your maintenance business journey. Remember to keep in mind that key performance indicators are not set in stone, you can change them as your business adjusts or grows. Figuring out what works best will take time and coordination across your company.