Signal 1 — the same asset, four tickets, one year
If a specific asset generates four or more helpdesk tickets in a rolling twelve months, the problem is not the incidents; it's the asset. Either it needs planned maintenance, replacement or reclassification to a higher service tier. Four is not a magic number — it's the pattern threshold — but any asset above it deserves a review conversation.
Signal 2 — mean time to repair is climbing
If MTTR on a given asset trends upward over consecutive tickets, the asset is degrading and the reactive model is losing. Move to PPM before the failure mode becomes catastrophic. MTTR climbing is the leading indicator; failure is the lagging one.
Signal 3 — the fix is always the same
If every ticket ends with the same rectification step (belt replaced, filter cleaned, seal renewed), that step is a planned task. Schedule it at the interval that beats the ticket rate, sign off on inspection, and the ticket disappears. This is the highest-value PPM addition most facilities teams miss.
Signal 4 — the ticket lives across two shifts
A ticket that gets handed over shift-to-shift is a ticket that will overrun. Whatever the underlying cause, that asset should not be a surprise the next time — build it into the round, the check, or the PPM cadence.
Signal 5 — the compliance clock is ticking
Certain assets (lifts, fire systems, pressure vessels, F-gas systems) have statutory inspection intervals in UK law. If a helpdesk ticket touches one of these, the response is not to fix and close; it's to fix, close, and re-check the statutory schedule is current. Any deviation is a PPM-schedule change, not a ticket outcome.
Four tickets, rising MTTR, repeating fixes, cross-shift overruns and statutory triggers all say the same thing — move it from helpdesk to PPM. FacilityFlow makes the switch a single field change.