Something in your building always needs a part. A conveyor belt wears through, an HVAC compressor fails, a forklift needs new tires, and the cleaning crew runs out of supplies. None of these items end up in the product you sell, yet every one of them keeps your operation running. This category of purchasing is called MRO, and managing it well is harder than most teams expect.

This guide explains what MRO is, why managing it matters, and what happens when it slips. Then it walks through the software categories that help, names specific platforms for inventory management and indirect purchasing, and offers a framework to help you decide what your manufacturing business actually needs.

Key takeaways:

• MRO accounts for 5–10% of a manufacturer's cost of goods sold but generates 70–80% of all procurement transactions.
• MRO software falls into two families: inventory and maintenance tools (CMMS/EAM) that track what you have, and indirect purchasing platforms that control how you buy.
• Most teams get better results pairing one tool from each family rather than forcing a single system to do both jobs.
• For the purchasing and spend side, Order.co centralizes MRO buying across 40,000+ vendors with AI-powered sourcing and pre-coded invoices.
• The right choice depends on your biggest gap: inventory visibility, asset complexity, or purchasing control.

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What is MRO?

MRO stands for maintenance, repair, and operations (sometimes "operating supplies"). It covers the goods and services a business buys to keep facilities and equipment running, rather than the raw materials that go into a finished product.

Common MRO categories include:

• Maintenance items: Lubricants, filters, belts, and bearings
• Repair parts: Motors, pumps, valves, and machine components
• Operating supplies: Safety gear, cleaning products, and janitorial consumables
• Tools and equipment: Hand tools, ladders, and testing instruments

MRO is a subset of indirect procurement, the broad category of spend that supports operations without becoming part of what you sell. That distinction matters because indirect spend, MRO included, is notoriously hard to see and control.

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Why MRO matters for manufacturing teams

MRO looks small on a line-item basis and large in aggregate. It often accounts for just 5-10% of a manufacturer's cost of goods sold, yet it generates 70-80% of all procurement transactions. That combination of low dollar value per order and enormous transaction volume is exactly where cost leakage hides.

The bigger risk is what MRO protects: uptime. A missing $40 bearing can stop a line that earns thousands of dollars an hour. Unplanned downtime costs the world's 500 largest companies roughly $1.4 trillion a year, equal to 11% of their total revenues. Much of that lost time traces back to a part that wasn't available when a technician needed it.

Managing MRO well does three things for your operation:

• Protects uptime by keeping critical spares available before failures happen
• Controls cost by consolidating suppliers and steering purchases to negotiated pricing
• Restores visibility so finance and operations can see what's committed, ordered, and invoiced

Get those right, and MRO shifts from a scramble to a well-oiled machine.

What happens when MRO isn't managed well

Poorly managed MRO fails in predictable ways. The pattern usually starts with fragmented data and ends with expensive surprises.

Fragmentation is the root problem. The same physical part often appears under different item numbers across different systems, so spend that looks like three small purchases is really one part bought three ways. When data is that scattered, no spend analysis can be trusted, and category management stalls before it starts.

From there, the consequences add up:

• When a critical part runs out, teams pay 30-60% above planned pricing for rush shipping.
• To avoid stockouts, teams over-order. Roughly 15-25% of MRO inventory sits as surplus or dead stock.
• The average organization now works with dozens of MRO suppliers, and fragmentation is rising. The average company works with 92 MRO suppliers, up 18% from the prior year.
• Without a controlled buying path, employees order from whatever vendor is convenient, often on personal or corporate cards, which erases visibility and negotiating power.

Budget pressure makes all of this harder to ignore. When budgets tighten, the waste buried in MRO becomes a target.

How software helps manufacturers manage MRO

Software attacks MRO problems from two angles: it tells you what you have, and it controls how you buy. Manual tracking with spreadsheets and email breaks down as transaction volume grows, and MRO runs on high volume.

The right tools deliver a few concrete improvements:

• Real-time inventory tracking so teams know stock levels before a part runs out
• Automated reordering that triggers purchases at set thresholds instead of after a stockout
• Spend visibility that maps every purchase to a category, supplier, and budget
• Compliance at the point of purchase ensures buying follows approved vendors and pricing

Here's the part many manufacturing teams miss: no single tool does all of this well. MRO software splits into two broad families that solve different problems.

Inventory and maintenance software answers "what parts do we have, and what needs service?" These are inventory management systems, computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), and enterprise asset management (EAM) platforms. They track stock levels, schedule preventive maintenance, and manage work orders.

Indirect purchasing software answers "how do we buy MRO items in a controlled, cost-efficient way?" These platforms consolidate suppliers, enforce approval policies, and centralize invoices to simplify and standardize MRO procurement.

Many teams need one of each. A maintenance team might run a CMMS to schedule work and track spares, while finance runs a procurement platform to control how those spares get purchased. As you read the options below, notice which problem each one solves.

MRO software for manufacturing teams: 6 options to consider

The platforms below cover both families. Some manage inventory and maintenance; others manage purchasing and spend. Match the tool to the gap you're trying to close.

Best for indirect purchasing and spend control: Order.co

Order.co centralizes MRO and indirect purchasing in a single AI-powered marketplace, giving finance and operations one controlled place to buy everything that keeps facilities running. Instead of handling purchases across email, corporate cards, and dozens of vendor portals, manufacturing teams buy from a unified catalog where every product is pre-approved and pre-priced.

That model closes the gaps that make MRO expensive. Order.co's unified catalog consolidates online and offline suppliers into one approved system, so buyers see only the products and vendors you've cleared. On the finance side, line items are verified and coded before a purchase happens, so there's no manual 3-way matching to slow down month-end close. Embedded net terms and B2B Buy Now, Pay Later give teams flexibility on payment timing without adding another tool.

Key features:

• Unified catalog of pre-approved products and vendors
• AI-powered sourcing across a network of 40,000+ vendors
• Centralized billing with pre-coded, line-level invoice data
• Approval workflows that route automatically based on your rules

Considerations: Order.co does not manage maintenance schedules, work orders, or asset tracking. It handles the buying and payment side of MRO, not the maintenance side. If you need work-order dispatching or equipment condition monitoring, you'll need a separate CMMS or EAM platform alongside it.

Best for enterprise asset management: IBM Maximo

IBM Maximo is an enterprise asset management platform built for large, asset-intensive operations. It manages the full asset lifecycle, from work orders and preventive maintenance to spare-parts inventory and compliance reporting, and it scales to tens of thousands of assets across multiple sites.

Maximo suits organizations that treat maintenance as a core discipline and need deep analytics, condition monitoring, and industry-specific configurations. That power comes with complexity: implementations are substantial projects, and the platform typically fits enterprises with dedicated reliability teams rather than lean shops.

Key features:

• Full asset lifecycle and work-order management
• Predictive and condition-based maintenance
• Multi-site deployment at enterprise scale
• Deep analytics and compliance tooling

Considerations: The interface has a learning curve, and the platform requires dedicated admin staff with specialized knowledge. Mid-sized teams without a reliability engineering function typically find the complexity exceeds their actual needs.

Best for mid-market maintenance teams: Fiix

Fiix is a cloud CMMS aimed at mid-market maintenance teams that want work-order and asset management without an enterprise-scale rollout. Owned by Rockwell Automation, it connects maintenance scheduling with parts inventory and integrates with production systems.

Fiix tracks assets, schedules preventive maintenance, and manages MRO spare-parts inventory so technicians know what's on hand. It lands between lightweight tools and full EAM platforms, which makes it a practical fit for growing operations that have outgrown spreadsheets but don't need Maximo.

Key features:

• Work-order and preventive-maintenance scheduling
• Spare-parts inventory tracking tied to assets
• Integrations with production and business systems
• Analytics for maintenance performance

Considerations: Fiix's mobile app lags behind its desktop experience, so field technicians may hit feature gaps on their phones. Teams that rely heavily on mobile access should test the app before committing.

Best for mobile-first maintenance: UpKeep

UpKeep is a mobile-first CMMS designed for frontline technicians who manage work from phones and tablets rather than a desktop. It handles work orders, inspections, preventive maintenance, and parts tracking, with an interface built for teams that spend their day on the floor.

Because it's approachable, UpKeep tends to drive high adoption among maintenance crews. Its MRO inventory features work as part of the maintenance workflow, which is ideal if you want parts tracking tied directly to work orders, though it's less specialized than a standalone inventory system.

Key features:

• Mobile app for work orders and inspections
• Preventive-maintenance scheduling
• Parts and inventory tracking inside the maintenance workflow
• Condition monitoring through connected sensors

Considerations: UpKeep gates features by plan tier. Preventive maintenance templates, offline mode, and custom dashboards all require higher-priced plans.

Best for standalone MRO inventory tracking: Sortly

Sortly is an inventory management app focused on tracking parts, supplies, and equipment with barcode and QR-code scanning. It's lighter than a CMMS, which makes it a fit for teams whose main gap is knowing what's in the storeroom, not scheduling complex maintenance.

Sortly organizes MRO items with custom fields, photos, and multi-location tracking, and it sends low-stock alerts before a part runs out. Teams that don't need full work-order dispatching often find a dedicated inventory tool simpler and faster to deploy than a maintenance suite.

Key features:

• Barcode and QR-code inventory scanning
• Custom fields, photos, and item histories
• Multi-location stock tracking
• Low-stock and reorder alerts

Considerations: Sortly has no native integrations with ERP, accounting, or POS systems, so data stays siloed unless you build a custom API connection. Built-in reporting is basic, and there's no work-order or maintenance-scheduling functionality. Teams that need inventory data to flow into other business systems will find the lack of integrations limiting.

Best for SAP-based operations: SAP EAM

SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) manages maintenance, spare parts, and asset performance natively inside the SAP ecosystem. For organizations already running SAP for finance and supply chain, native integration means MRO data flows without building custom connectors.

SAP EAM supports preventive and predictive maintenance, spare-parts planning, and asset performance analytics at enterprise scale. The trade-off mirrors other enterprise systems: it delivers depth for large operations but carries the cost and implementation weight to match.

Key features:

• Native integration with SAP finance and supply chain
• Preventive and predictive maintenance
• Spare-parts planning and inventory management
• Enterprise-scale asset performance analytics

Considerations: SAP EAM typically depends on SAP-certified consultants for implementation and workflow changes. Organizations not already running SAP will face a steep integration project.

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Framework for choosing MRO software

Picking the right software starts with focusing on the specific issue(s) you're trying to resolve. Work through these questions to help you shortlist a platform:

• Which problem is bigger: visibility or control? If your pain is not knowing what parts you have or when equipment needs service, start with an inventory or maintenance tool. If your pain is rogue spend or invoice overload, start with an indirect purchasing platform. Many teams eventually run both.
• How complex is your asset base? A few dozen assets in one facility point toward a lightweight CMMS or a standalone inventory app. Thousands of assets across multiple sites justify an EAM like Maximo or SAP EAM.
• Where does your team actually work? Field-heavy maintenance crews need mobile-first tools with high adoption. Finance and operations teams focused on spend need a platform that centralizes buying and automates reconciliation.
• What does it need to connect to? Confirm the software integrates with your ERP or accounting system. Integration is what keeps you from re-keying data by hand.
• Who owns the outcome? Maintenance-led initiatives tend to prioritize CMMS and EAM tools. Finance-led and operations-led initiatives tend to prioritize procurement and spend control. Align the tool with the team accountable for results.

Use this to sort candidates into "inventory and maintenance" versus "purchasing and spend," then pick the strongest option in each category you need. A maintenance team and a finance team often land on two complementary tools rather than one compromise.

Bring order to MRO purchasing with Order.co

Inventory and maintenance tools tell you what you have and what needs fixing. But knowing you need a part doesn't control how it gets bought, and that's where MRO spend leaks through emergency orders, off-contract vendors, and invoice overload.

Order.co closes that gap. Manufacturing teams purchase from a catalog of pre-approved products and vendors, approvals route themselves based on rules you set once, and every line item arrives pre-coded for your books. AI surfaces better pricing in the background, while centralized payments simplify invoice management. Finance closes faster because there's nothing to chase.

Ready to see where your MRO spend is leaking? Schedule a demo to see how Order.co brings control and visibility to indirect purchasing.

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