Time flies when you’re having fun ⏰🎉 The second and final day of Fiix Forward 2025 was a huge hit, from the engaging morning roundtable discussions to the inaugural closing awards ceremony. Catch the full recap below.

Roundtable discussions give Fiix Forward attendees the opportunity to sit down with other maintenance professionals and Fiix experts to share challenges, brainstorm solutions, and make connections. Hopefully, these are relationships that last long after the conference ends. Each guided discussion focuses on a particular theme in maintenance, and this year the following sessions were offered:

• Everything Mobile: Using Fiix CMMS On the Go
• Growing in Maintenance Maturity
• Help & Support Resources for Fiix Users
• Improving Maintenance with Metrics and KPIs
• Maintaining Regulatory Compliance with Fiix CMMS
• Maintenance Inspiration: Learn from Fellow Fiix Users
• Revolutionizing OT Integrations with FT Optic and Fiix CMMS
• Snap, Scan, Act: Using Image Capture and AI to Improve Maintenance
• Strategies for Reliability Centered Maintenance

Proven Sustainability Strategies for Real Results

“How can we use Fiix to take on intentional sustainability efforts?”

In the first general session of the day, we went green with a broad look at sustainability in maintenance. The session began with a general overview of industry trends by Customer Sustainability expert Tadeo Rodriguez. The first trend Tadeo shared was a focus on quality. According to the 2025 State of Smart Manufacturing Report from Rockwell Automation, quality remains a key use case for AI, and therefore, sustainability. The reason is the simple: Better quality means less rework, better use of raw material, and ultimately, less waste. And of course, reducing waste is one of the key pillars of any sustainability strategy. The second trend is energy efficiency. According to our speakers, energy efficiency remains the best “bang for your buck” (technically, cost per tons of CO2 equivalent) effort, which makes it a great first step for organizations looking to drive sustainability. Tadeo then shared our broad sustainability philosophy, best termed Design for Sustainability and Circularity (DfSC), which considers the entire lifecycle of a product, from sourcing to recyclability. He concluded his portion of the talk with a brief example of PID to MPC control upgrade as a straightforward way to drive efficiency.

Solutions Consultant Gavin Atkins then took the stage to speak about how you can use Fiix CMMS to help improve sustainability outcomes. But first, Gavin explained how you can map the stages of the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) model to specific tools or features in Fiix CMMS, from the work request portal to analytics reports. Turning to one of the most specific ways to use Fiix CMMS for sustainability, a key takeaway is that you can’t improve what you don’t measure. That’s why meter readings are so important for tracking and improving efficiency. By collecting good data, you’ll gain the ability to spot issues, eliminate waste, and prevent breakdowns, and you can capture this data into Fiix CMMS through the asset meter readings tab. Even better, OT integrations to automatically capture machine data—including meter/sensor readings—reduces time spent collecting readings and avoids the potential for error from manual data entry, leading to even better efficiency gains.

By the way—did you know that 10% of electricity costs in US industry goes to compressed air systems? Gavin offered air leaks in a compressed air system as one low hanging fruit for those looking to make easy sustainability improvements.

Check out the Day 2 slide deck for the full presentation and sustainability tips. 

Anchoring Your CMMS Implementation Through Change Management 

“If you have chaos, and you put it in a CMMS, you just automated chaos.”

Charles Rogers is a veritable change management guru. As Senior Implementation Consultant at Fiix, he knows a thing or two about how to make a CMMS implementation stick. This session was definitely not one to miss for new Fiixers and CMMS novices! It was packed with useful advice surrounding the personal, psychological aspects of dealing with change. As you might guess, much of the advice he offered in this talk was applicable to dealing with any kind of change, not just CMMS adoption. Charles explained the difference between change and transition, the uncertainty zone, how to recognize and deal with resistance, why resistance doesn’t automatically mean defiance, and the Kubler-Ross change curve. One of the big takeaways from this session is that we often focus too much on the technical side of change and not enough on the human factor. The transition from where one is to where one needs to be can be psychologically challenging, and resistance is a normal, evolutionary response ingrained in us. So to make it all stick, stop focusing so much on the CMMS and focus more on your people. To gauge your progress, Charles outlined three factors that determine project ROI

• Speed of adoption (how fast are new systems picked up?)
• Ultimate utilization (how many employees buy-in?)
• Proficiency (how well are they using it?)

Charles concluded by breaking down the adaptation process step-by-step through ADKAR: awareness > desire > knowledge > ability > reinforcement.

Note: The slides for this presentation include a Resistance Management Checklist for Project Managers.

Real-World Maintenance Impact with Fiix

“Kids and equipment are pretty similar: They both have breakdowns, they both need preventive care, and they both need downtime.”

While Charles’ talk focused on the human side of CMMS implementations, in this session, solutions experts Jason Afara and Roopali Bagaria broke down the ingredients necessary for a successful technical configuration. They began by categorizing the main focus areas of a CMMS implementation: Asset management, work order management, inventory management, and labor (user) management. 

From this foundation, Jason and Roopali branched out to cover the roles and importance of the Work Request portal, scheduled maintenance, task groups, dashboards, purchasing workflows, and Fiix Audit Trail. But this was no dry catalogue of features—showing their lighter side, they wove the theme of parenting throughout, explaining why maintaining assets is like caring for children and why skills like saying “no” are crucial to both. They shared best practices for using these features, including some real-world examples of what to do and what not to do. Spoiler: “pls fix” is not a good work request and “done” is not a good completion note 😅

Finally, Jason and Roopali explained the how’s and why’s of measurements and standardization for driving CMMS efficiency. They concluded by sharing a fun assortment of real quotes by Fiix CMMS users like you.

The Fiix CMMS Product Roadmap

“Investing in a maintenance ecosystem is the best returning investment a customer can make in their organization.”

The final session of the conference was a one-two punch: First, we explored the broader direction that Rockwell Automation is heading in as a company, and second the specific vision we have for the Fiix CMMS product. Director of Visualization and Asset Management JP Wright kicked us off by outlining the typical industrial production system and where a CMMS fits into that model. Key here was the interconnection between systems across design, operations, logistics, automation, and maintenance, which open up new possibilities in the way we work. A recurring theme in Rockwell’s vision is in fact the theme of Fiix Forward 2025—real results. JP outlined the chief factors to look for when gauging effectiveness and shared some impressive results achieved by Fiix users Perth County Ingredients (54% less reactive work and over $40k/year in saving through better maintenance!).

Next up, Product Manager James Binckly surveyed how Fiix CMMS has delivered results over the past year, followed by what you can look forward to in 2026 and beyond. A key themes in this year’s success was a greater focus on connecting systems through IT & OT integrations to create a true maintenance ecosystem. This includes adding a number of prebuilt connectors for common hardware and software products in industrial environments. Another strong point of progress throughout 2025 were the many updates to Fiix Analytics, with over 20 updates to improve ease of use and functionality. Finally, James spoke on the importance of maintaining a strong platform foundation as we increased our security posture through SOC2 compliance, reduced issue resolution time, and meaningfully improved system performance throughout the year. Looking forward to 2026, James shared a flurry of exciting enhancements coming to Fiix CMMS, but you’ll have to check out the Day 2 slides to see the full list.

Fiix Forward 2025 Awards Ceremony & Closing Remarks

“Real results aren’t just numbers on a slide—they’re proof of what’s possible when people, systems, and processes work together.”

After some closing remarks by our emcees Jason and Roopali, Senior Director of Customer Success Jeff Saunders took the stage to inaugurate the first ever Fiix Forward Awards ceremony! The following awards were given out to some very deserving members of the Fiix community in attendance:

The Trailblazer Award

For a user who has leveraged Fiix in creative or groundbreaking ways to transform maintenance operations.

The Peak Performance Award

For a customer who has achieved outstanding efficiency, reliability, or performance improvements with Fiix CMMS.

The People First Award

For a user who has used Fiix to elevate their team, improve safety, and foster a strong maintenance culture.

The Connector Award

For a user who has consistently shared knowledge and best practices, supported peers in the Fiixers community, and embodied the spirit of Fiix Forward by being fully engaged, curious, and driving for real results.

🥁 Drumroll, please…. Just kidding, you’ll have to wait for our awards ceremony recap post to find out who won!

Fiix Forward 2025 Finale

On the night of Day 2, the whole conference crew met up for some bowling, Italian food, and an open bar at a local joint, State 48. The party rocked on into the night and the bowling got pretty competitive. I loved seeing everyone from high-level execs to hard-working techs carousing and enjoying some hard-earned R&R after the whirlwind of knowledge, new connections, and good memories that was Fiix Forward 2025.

And that’s a wrap! Please, please take a moment to fill out our post-event survey so we can make next year’s event even better.

Ps. Don’t forget to download the slides decks from Day 1 and Day 2.

Pps. Check out the FF25 photo album here!