The second step to measure and improve your maintenance team's performance is to analyze your data. Data analysis can help you identify the root causes of your maintenance issues, the areas of improvement, and the best practices. For instance, with your CMMS data, you can compare actual performance to targets and benchmarks, identify the most frequent or costly failures or defects, evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of preventive maintenance programs, assess asset, part and labor utilization and availability, and detect any gaps, errors or inconsistencies in data entry or documentation. Your CMMS can also be used to perform various types of data analysis such as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive or prescriptive. Additionally, you can use it to visualize your data in charts, graphs or maps for easier understanding and communication.