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

Though I liked it a lot, I think it was lagging a lot. It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

The solution is expensive and is quite difficult within this space. There's a lot of non-enterprise level asset management systems out there are able that are less expensive.  We're doing it for a hundred dollars per user, per month. With IBM Maximo and especially now Application Suite, that's a bit more difficult as it's grown beyond just asset management. It's now more of an asset performance management system. It's fallen a bit into a different category and has the ability for users to utilize more modern machine learning algorithms, AI-based algorithms on their asset data. From a pricing structured perspective, the list prices are out there. However, if you find the right integrator, then the list prices go down quite a bit.

I've got a pretty good view of the roadmap for the next three years. For us, it looks really exciting. It took IBM a while to get their act together and to merge the new paradigm from Kubernetes, et cetera. There were deployment methods in their Maximo roadmap. From what I can see things like visual inspection, machine learning-based image recognition, et cetera, are all quite exciting spaces and it's quite leading edge. We went a bit from being a glorified works management system, with a lot of capabilities, however, it was quite legacy orientated as in, based on older technology.

I'm in a technology that has been around for 20 years. We're now moving into a stage where it's more bleeding edge. Using all the passwords is now applicable. It's quite a transformation that's happening now. I couldn't really say that I'm missing this or that. The only thing I'd say, and this is coming from a technical person, is that I hope that the change management needed to modify the system is better suited to the customer's needs. It's not allowing us to use the development pipelines and things like that.

Pricing, purchasing, invoicing areas, and mobility are some areas in the solution that needs improvement. The most important aspect that needs improvement in the solution is mobility.

Although you can create notifications with Maximo, the configuration and options could be improved.

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. 

IBM Maximo can improve the financial support and financial application, to make it more similar to an ERP as opposed to an EAM. Overall they can improve the financial processes.

The solution has been around for a long time, 20 or 30 years. They have improved the interface but unfortunately, it requires a lot of computing power. All the servers, the desktops, are very stable but they are not sufficiently robust for the graphical interface. The new version of IBM Maximo is a little too fancy. As a result, the system is a little slow because of the lack of power. Simplifying the user interface would make life easier for everyone. They need to find a balance where the solution is updated but performance is not affected

The new UI is great but it means customers not only need to upgrade to the new version but also upgrade older laptops and that's not what they want. If they would offer two versions, one with a simplified interface, that would be helpful. 

It could use some alignment regarding some standards and the tracking of the IT assets. Even though they have all of the information (i.e. where are the assets, who owns the asset, etc.), they were not mapping it to different cyber standards.

Maximo is quite a big product, so maybe we don't even know everything that is possible. I see the presentations of new things to come, and I don't see a concern. Whatever a customer needs is pretty much covered.

The pricing model of the solution has room for improvement as well as the after-sales support.

There are always ways to improve and make things better. It is what I've grown accustomed to. I am taking advantage of everything Maximo has to offer. I'm making use of whatever I can, and if I need to do anything else, I write a custom code.

Every company has specific needs, and you can't generalize for everyone. That is how my work is. I'm working specifically for the company, and when they require something else in addition, that is when I do the customization. Sometimes it could be a Java class, other times it could be an automation script, and it could be just the configuration, it just depends.

IBM Maximo is similar to an ARP. Because it's so massive, you can easily get lost using the application. You need to focus on training the partners and channeling the structure in order to enhance the user experience for the final customers. Deploying IBM Maximo can be really exhausting because, as I mentioned earlier, it's as big as an ARP.

Most of the time, the people working in those environments (even if they don't know how to read data, etc) are trained to focus on maintaining elements and solutions. You cannot give them 25,000 screens with 25 teams and expect them to do everything, even if that would give you plenty of information for further analysis. We're talking about the best asset management solution in the world, so this needs to be taken into practice somehow.

I think the biggest problem is that the application is too big. The solution has plenty of different capabilities, but a lot of the time their partners are not capable enough when it comes to deploying it for their customers; they'll simply just deduce the best they need to. In terms of size, Maximo is a beast, a monster, it's not IBM's fault, I have nothing bad to say about them.

However, there are a few problems that are IBM's fault, but not directly their fault as the solutions are not deployed directly by IBM, they're deployed by the public network. In the end, the partners are the ones working with the final customer, the final customer is the one who inherits that lack of user experience. I think it's more of the partner's fault than IBM's.

Being able to talk to people and understand what they need and adapt their solution in terms of what they need would enhance IBM Maximo. Integrating software, such as Cortana and Google Now would also make the solution more intelligent and easy-to-use. I would also like to see an option to integrate with a new generation architectural modeling solution of your choice, as that would be a good way to enhance the personal experience. People today, are accustomed to seeing graphs and details, so that would go directly to the final user base — directly to the customer. 

In regards to the difficulty of use, I think it would be beneficial to have a lightweight solution for smaller companies. Also, better material capabilities relating to prediction would be a good adjustment, because currently, Maximo controls both the corrective maintenance and preventative maintenance; they even control configuration-based maintenance with integration with larger systems, and management systems as well, but maybe they could even go further. The cloud could solve that issue, including any capability issues as well. To be clear, it's already included, but it should be integrated. 

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.

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

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.

Revision management of file attachments.

This solution could improve by integrating or embedding finances, charts of accounts, and invoicing.

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.

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.

Industry specific solutions are always a game changer.

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.