IBM Maximo Reviews

We are a telco provider in Pakistan with a customer base of around 75 million. We use this solution for incident management, port management, and problem management across various functions. We use it for process digitization across different areas, mainly within our technology but also outside. We are IBM customers and I'm a system admin. 

The most valuable aspect is the level of flexibility Maximo provides because it is more code-based and more Java-based, so our development team and support partners are able to customize and relatively easily tailor it to our needs.

Coding can be complex when customization is required. It takes quite a bit of time and effort from our development team and it's a downside of this system. I think the product needs to evolve in line with some of the newer products on the market which provide a low-code or no-code environment. In order to upgrade the product, the front end should be drag and drop. To develop any application based on user requirements, the front-end development should be very, very easy, similar to what we have with Jira. Although the backend is very robust, it's very code-oriented, so a lot of time and effort is required. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution is stable and reliable and meets our expectations. 

The solution is highly scalable. We haven't faced any challenge in regard to that.

The technical support has been good overall. Whenever we need support we engage them and their resources and they're able to provide good solutions. We've found that response times can sometimes be slow. 

Neutral

The company previously used HPE and I believe they switched to IBM due to cost-related factors. 

I was not in the company when Maximo was initially rolled out but I believe it's quite complex in comparison to the new cloud-based platforms which are simple to deploy. There was no cloud solution when we initially rolled out so the deployment took a lot of time and effort. In terms of maintenance, the databases need a lot of health and integrity checks. As an on-prem solution, we are responsible for managing that. We have around 750 users. 

Licensing costs for IBM Maximo are now more expensive relative to some of the cloud-based platforms that offer cheaper solutions and are more flexible in terms of fees. I believe it costs around 700 USD for one agent user on Maximo. In addition, we have to pay IBM's local partner in Pakistan some service charges and tax-related fees. There is also an annual cost for support services. We are constantly checking alternatives that offer better flexibility on the technical and cost side. We would switch to another solution if it could meet our needs at a lower cost. 

This is quite a good solution although I'd like to see a product that is easier to customize. On the commercial side, it should offer a more scalable financial model or an enterprise-level arrangement whereby carrier networks are able to adopt it in a much more economical way.

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

The most valuable feature is asset management maintenance as well as asset management overall.

Areas for improvement would be the user interface and support for Arabic. They could also be more customer-oriented.

I've been using this solution for four months.

This solution is stable, we have had no problems with it.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment took between nine and twelve months to complete.

The on-premise license does not need to be renewed, only the EMC, which is 5-8% on the contract value.

This is a really good enterprise solution but check before implementing if you require a solution of this size. I would give this solution a score of nine out of ten.

We are using IBM Maximo as a service desk. It is primarily used for incident management but also covers service request management, asset management, and other areas.

The most powerful features are the database and integration with CMDB.

The interface is not very easy or user-friendly and is in need of improvement.

Compared to products like ServiceNow or Jira, it is very difficult to customize Maximo. For example, a layperson is able to customize ServiceNow or Jira to a certain degree, but that is not possible with IBM Maximo. The customizations are code-based and it requires a programmer to do the work.

The licensing model should be much simpler for an organization like us to add more end-users. As it is now, we have to keep looking back at the available licenses.

Maximo has been in use for more than a decade in our company.

This is a stable product.

The scalability is quite good. We have between 2,000 and 3,000 users in the company. Most of them are end-users, although there are a few administrators who can make changes.

The support is not bad because we have a local support team that is available around the clock. We have a local support contract with one of the service providers that offers complete support for a variety of products.

For cases that the local team is not able to handle, we can open up a ticket with the IBM product team and they respond accordingly. Ultimately, in any case, the support is fine.

The company has been using IBM Maximo since before I joined. My understanding is that they were using solutions by HP, including HP Service Desk. However, I do not know the specific reasons for the switch. All I have been told is that HP was more expensive at the time, but there could be other factors involved.

The initial setup is quite complex and it takes a long time. In particular, in our environment, we are using it quite extensively for event and incident management. These are core areas for us and it is a bit complex.

We are considering moving away from IBM Maximo to Jira. We have evaluated both Jira and ServiceNow, and the interfaces are GUI-based, making them easier to use and easier to customize. In general, they are much easier to change and adapt to the end-user requirements.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Our primary use is logging our help desk requests. It is essential for incident management and request management.

The incident management feature is good because it allows you to keep track of and classify issues. 

I feel that the interface is a little too complicated with a large number of fields to enter. People don't want to enter a lot of information. Rather, they would like to enter the minimum amount of information required to get the work done. Making it more user-friendly may help in this regard.

I have been using IBM Maximo for about two years.

I feel that it is a stable solution.

I have not looked into scalability. Our network team would evaluate scalability if it became an issue. About 60 people are supposed to be using it, although because of the large amount of data entry, I think that many people are just not completing the task.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

I have been looking at Azure as a comparison and I feel that it is a little bit simpler to use.

My advice for anybody who is considering Maximo is that it is very comprehensive, provided you like to fill in a lot of information. It collects a lot of data and a lot of analysis can be done. However, in our experience, we find that people don't want to do it. If they are grouping jobs then they don't want to enter a lot of information. In this case, entering the minimum is better.

This is the biggest problem that we are facing. There is a lot of work to do and following all of the processes and procedures is time-consuming because of the data entry. 

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

We have fully used Maximo for maintenance and inventory and purchasing management to manage cement factory operations and maintenance for more than 11 years. We have implemented Maximo at seven sites and are still adding sites. All our sites are hosted in one environment using multi-organization and multi-site configurations. We integrate Maximo with a financial system (Navision), and we built dashboards on top of the Maximo database using its business intelligence tool. We have upgraded Maximo twice: once from 6.4 to 7.5, and more recently, from 7.5 to 7.6.

It keeps the history of the transactions, so we can anticipate the asset behavior and costs in the future. It enables management to be able to tape the session.

Maximo has been suitable for businesses as it expands and shrinks according to market needs and operational conditions.

• The Preventive Maintenance feature, especially in its inspection routines and KPI abilities, is valuable.
• Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met.
• Maximo is easy to learn.

The standard reports that shipped with the package need to be enriched with more advanced reports, especially for the Inventory Management sections.

Stability is good. We moved to the cloud with no issues.

Maximo's scalability enabled us to extend its usage from one site to be used in multiple sites with little configuration. This also enabled us to benchmark performance, manage inventory levels, inherit reports, and manage process and configuration on old and new sites.

I have my own in-house team who do technical support.

We did not use a solution prior to IBM Maximo.

The initial setup is easy, but I would recommend setting it up at a low level and maturing the solution over time.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Capabilities
• Support
• Reliability
• How will it help the organization's decision-making.
• Running costs and starting costs.

The main use is help desk. But we also use it for asset management, catalog offering, and CNDB.

It's much more reliable, it's much more configurable.

It's reliable, and it's all integrated in the same database.

It's actually a little too much for what we need. It could be good but there are too many conflicts and it's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services.

Other areas for improvement include:

• Enhanced Service Catalog on Mobile
• Agent intelligence
• Better dashboards for KPIs
• Full-service visibility - There are a lot of things that are hard for users to find out. For example, the Service Catalog is not too friendly. You really have to know what you're looking for.

It's quite reliable, but new versions often are not too stable. They bring in enhancements but they break other stuff. We're okay with it but it could be better.

Scalability is very good. It's easily scalable.

We have often set up PMRs and their support is quite good. We have issues that have reappeared in other releases, and things that aren't really supposed to be happening like that. We migrated to a different version, one thing was solved but then a new issue appeared, related to the same module. 

They give good service, but they could be a little more reliable in terms of solving defects and having it work as it should.

We used an old Lotus Notes solution that we implemented ourselves and then we migrated to Maximo. Now, our main client doesn't really like the way Maximo works, at least for them. So that's making us into a new solution.

In terms of selecting a vendor, I don't do the selection. I just evaluate the functional and technical aspects. Regarding pricing and things like that, I'm not the one that will decide. My main concern is that it does what it's supposed to do, does it well, and that the client likes it.

The initial setup was complex but that was 10 years ago. It might have changed since then.

The options we are now considering are JIRA and ServiceNow.

They have a preview site where you can log in as a user and try it for yourself. That is a really good way to get a feel for the solution; better than Youtube or whitepapers and things like that. You have a preview site, you log in, and you can try it.

I would give Maximo a seven out of 10 because it's good, but it's not too user-friendly, and some of the issues we have come across, the impact to us was a little too much to be coming from a big company such as IBM.

It is a software specialized in asset management, but nowadays, it is more than this.

With Maximo, we can manage, organize, and track incidents, claims, jobs, tasks, preventive and corrective maintenance, locations, and assets. Also, we can correlate all these items in order to obtain reports, such as how many incidents per locations, when was the last preventive maintenance in a location, who was the technician that did the job, or what was the spare part that he used, etc.

The main feature of Maximo is the capabilities of recording, tracking, and correlating. These are important items in the management of a company. These capabilities let us organize our work.

The mobile solution has a lot of room for improvement, especially in geopositioning capabilities, tracking capabilities, and configuration capabilities, in order to let the tech operate online and offline.

Maximo is very stable. We really do not have problem with stability.

We were able to scale perfectly.

Technical support is a seven on scale of one to 10.

We did not have a previous solution.

Maximo is a big system, so the initial setup is complex. I would recommend that you implement it in parts according with your most important processes.

Explore internal processes in order to evaluate the correct number of users in each Maximo module, then evaluate the different offers of pricing and licensing.

I did not participate in the evaluation.

My recommendations:

• Before starting, review your internal processes. It is a good opportunity to update them.
• Explore Maximo's add-ons. There are a lot specialized, different industries.
• Implement Maximo in parts.

When we integrated the Maximo DB with the BI tool, we were able to track and manage the inventory levels in much more controllable way, and reduced the inventory levels significantly within one year.

• Preventive maintenance management
• Maintenance management

1. Inventory management, especially:

• item cards – I need to be able to track item balance and history back to a given date
• inventory financial reports need a lot of enhancement
• consignment stock management has an issue – raised with the vendor
• reorder process and define reorder levels
• inventory lead time recommendation, according to transaction history

2. Purchasing management

• Vendor management needs enhancement

3. Maintenance KPIs like OOE , Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) need more enhancement

4. Operating budget management (recently added in version 7.6 ) but it is late in coming.

Sometimes I have had issues with with the web server which we use (IBM WebSphere) but we solved it.

No issues, this software is very efficient regarding scalability.

I would give it an eight out of 10.

The data gathering and data engineering were complex, but once they are done the remaining steps were straightforward.

The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management.

I was not involved in this process at my current company.

1. Defining your business processes is vital for the success of this product.
2. End-user training should be implemented according to your processes.
3. Using Agile methodology fits well with this product, to ensure fast response to business changes.