Maintenance and asset management platform Limble recently conducted a survey of more than 200 manufacturing, facilities, and asset-intensive organizations and published a new report, “Better Maintenance Data Longer Asset Life.” The survey was conducted in January and February 2026 and included responses from maintenance managers, directors, supervisors, and operations leaders across small, mid-market, and enterprise organizations.
The report highlights the critical role that disciplined maintenance data capture in a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) plays in fostering cross-functional trust and decision-making across organizations.
According to the report, many organizations are still early in their data maturity journey, with teams still struggling with reactive work, incomplete maintenance histories, disconnected systems, and low trust in the asset data guiding decisions — even as leaders invest heavily in AI and digital transformation.
Over the past several years, maintenance teams have accelerated digital transformation efforts. While CMMS and enterprise asset management (EAM) platforms are more powerful than ever, and integration across ERP, finance, and operations systems is becoming standard, greater visibility has not automatically resulted in greater confidence. In many cases, according to Limble, scaling maintenance and asset management systems has amplified differences in maintenance data quality rather than resolving them.
Limble hopes the report serves as a reality check for manufacturing professionals, grounded in real operational data and peer comparisons, so maintenance and asset leaders can assess where they truly stand.
“Our research made one thing unmistakably clear: high-quality data in your CMMS isn’t just an operational nice-to-have — it’s the foundation of cross-functional trust that turns maintenance from a reactive function into a strategic asset partner,” said Amanda Myers, head of product marketing at Limble. Myers spearheaded the research. “Disciplined capture of CMMS data builds credibility for maintenance teams, reduces disruption for operations and strengthens capital decisions for finance. Which is why modern asset management and maintenance systems should be viewed as more than maintenance tools.”
Good Maintenance Data Builds Trust
Only 20% of organizations reported genuine trust in their asset data across teams. For organizations reporting a high percentage of maintenance work captured in their CMMS data, trust in asset data used for decisions across maintenance, operations, and finance reached 51%. In low-data quality environments, the trust score drops to just 4%.
“When data is unreliable, trust breaks down with it,” Myers added. “Teams second-guess each other, downtime increases, and the operational strain becomes personal with burnout, missed events, and underutilized talent and equipment. If organizations neglect data quality, they’re not eliminating the problem — they’re simply escalating it to the executive level.”
The report found that many organizations are still early in their data maturity journey, as 20% report logging less than half of all of their technician’s work orders into their CMMS.
Weak Maintenance Histories Among Top Performance Problems
According to the respondents, reactive work remains widespread. About 25% of those surveyed cited reactive work or weak maintenance histories as their top asset performance constraints today, and another 20% point to inaccurate/incomplete asset records.
For at least a third of respondents, more than 50% of maintenance work still happens unplanned in their organizations.
The CMMS-EAM Disconnect
More than half of respondents, about 57%, still don’t use an EAM. The vast majority (~87%) said they either have no connection between their CMMS and EAM environments or are unsure whether one exists.
Among organizations with connected systems, improved preventative maintenance compliance is the most frequently cited improvement.
For more information, read “Better Maintenance Data Longer Asset Life.”
