FSM vs CMMS: do you need both?

If your technicians travel to sites and the work they do is maintenance on assets you are accountable for, you need both. Field service management schedules and dispatches the people. A CMMS records the assets, their maintenance history and their compliance status. Buy them separately and you maintain two asset lists, two work order queues and a manual reconciliation between them.

What field service management does

FSM answers "who is going where, when, and did the job get done". Job creation, technician scheduling by skill and location, route and dispatch, mobile execution with photos and signatures, SLA tracking, customer sites and contracts.

What a CMMS does

A CMMS answers "what do we own, what condition is it in, and what has been done to it". Asset registers and hierarchies, preventive maintenance schedules by time or meter reading, work order history per asset, parts and spares inventory, inspection checklists and compliance records.

How to tell which one you need

Your Operational Need	System Required
Your technicians visit customer sites to do jobs you invoice for	FSM is primary
You maintain assets you own or are contracted to maintain	CMMS is primary
Both of the above	You need both
You need asset history to influence who gets dispatched and when	You need both in one system

What it costs to run them as two systems

PM schedules that generate work orders in one system and get executed in another.

Technicians working from a dispatch app that does not show the asset's service history.

Duplicate asset records.

A monthly reconciliation nobody owns.

Two licences per user.

Who this applies to

Who FieldEx is for	Who FieldEx is not for
Fits operators with roughly 10 to 500 technicians and several thousand assets & more across more than one site Built for operational teams that have outgrown spreadsheets and WhatsApp Ideal for businesses seeking powerful control without the friction of an enterprise CMMS implementation	If you run a 1 to 9 person trade business and just need quoting, invoicing and online booking, you don't need FieldEx – you need something simpler like Jobber or Housecall Pro. If you’re a global enterprise running a formal procurement process against IBM Maximo or SAP, FieldEx will not clear your requirements matrix. If your work is project-based construction rather than recurring service and maintenance against assets, FieldEx is the wrong shape.

Who FieldEx is for

Who FieldEx is not for

Fits operators with roughly 10 to 500 technicians and several thousand assets & more across more than one site
Built for operational teams that have outgrown spreadsheets and WhatsApp
Ideal for businesses seeking powerful control without the friction of an enterprise CMMS implementation

If you run a 1 to 9 person trade business and just need quoting, invoicing and online booking, you don't need FieldEx – you need something simpler like Jobber or Housecall Pro.
If you’re a global enterprise running a formal procurement process against IBM Maximo or SAP, FieldEx will not clear your requirements matrix.
If your work is project-based construction rather than recurring service and maintenance against assets, FieldEx is the wrong shape.

How FieldEx does both

FieldEx was built as a single system across both. The same asset record drives the preventive maintenance schedule, the work order and the technician's mobile job, so the service history accumulates as a by-product of the work getting done rather than as a separate data-entry task.
Managers and schedulers work in the web console; technicians work in the mobile app.
Plans start at $10 per user per month billed annually.

Support

Frequently asked questions

Everything you need to know about the product and billing.

Can a CMMS replace an FSM?

Only if your technicians never leave your own sites. Once you dispatch to customer locations you need scheduling, routing and SLA tracking a CMMS does not provide.

Can an FSM replace a CMMS?

Only if you do not own the assets being worked on. Without an asset register and PM scheduling you cannot prove compliance or prevent failures.

Is a hybrid platform weaker at both?

It depends whether it was built as one system or bolted together. FieldEx runs one asset record and one work order object across both functions rather than syncing two products.

What size of team needs both?

Teams with roughly 10 to 500 technicians and several thousand assets across multiple sites need both – large enough that spreadsheets fail, small enough that a separate enterprise CMMS implementation is not justified.

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