Cutting edge

We recently worked with a customer in the care industry whose CAFM project was not meeting its objectives due to a key stakeholder leaving the business. Our professional services team went in to help the business understand and audit their challenges from different user perspectives, engaged with multiple stakeholders and, as a result, reconfigured their system. Training was also delivered to increase awareness of the new system’s benefits and boost overall adoption.

An ongoing partnership between vendor and buyer can help FM leaders drive successful implementations by assisting in the change management approach and lifecycle, developing system proficiency and achieving adoption – long after the software has been installed. The role of consultancy, training and project management should not be underestimated when specifying a project. Technologies such as asset performance management, IoT or predictive analytics may promise to deliver greater levels of business intelligence, FM efficiency or automation, but their impact on a business will depend on strong adoption rates and achieving the successful cultural change necessary to underpin it.

MARK MAGEE
SENIOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, FSI

While the picture this report paints is stark – the UK has one of the lowest productivity levels in Europe – there are a lot of positive opportunities for CAFM. If we rethink what CAFM is and its potential, we can use it to provide a working environment that promotes enthusiasm and employee engagement while constantly adapting and modifying to changing needs.

At its simplest level, FM is the facilitation of a working environment. It’s a million different things that people don’t give a second thought to. FM also has the power to change the working environment in a way that directly impacts on productivity. Workplaces are no longer designed with rows of desks with an emphasis on saving space. They are designed to be conducive to new ways of working and to promote interaction. This is not just traditional FM – making sure there are lights, water and security. It’s about FMs using technology to increase happiness and efficiency at work, as well as that difficult-to-measure but golden ticket – productivity.

What’s positive in this report is how digitised we are as a country. This means organisations can deploy an FM solution easily, and it’s driving our customers’ expectations. It has a major influence on how we develop the user interface of our products and the reporting tools. As a consequence, our technology takes FM functions and makes them accessible with products that are easy to use from an intuitive and engagement perspective. It’s the natural extension of the tech we use every day.

FM should also support what’s happening outside a company’s walls, because we now have remote working and people need to be supported by their organisation’s tech solution. This means the automation of the software is very important and must be seamless. FMs also need to be able to monitor performance and quality at the touch of a button, wherever they are.

But, as the report says, while we have this level of digitisation, we’re being held back, and a lot of this is to do with culture. We need to look at the broader spectrum of services and the quality being delivered, either in-house or through contractors and suppliers. The productivity puzzle is the difficulty of optimising the quality of service while reducing the cost. It needs transformational thinking. Traditionally, FMs haven’t been in the boardroom and haven’t been exposed to the wider population within an organisation, but this is starting to change – and with it, the potential for an increase in productivity, however small, which will have a big impact on the business’s bottom line.

As a result, more and more FMs are taking their mandate, their responsibility, beyond the limits of the physical infrastructure and are looking at innovative ways to differentiate their environment and workspaces, contributing to the culture of the company in the process. They are no longer a service manager but an experience manager. This is about the whole customer experience, from when an employee walks through the door in the morning to their departure at night.

FMs have to understand what services need to be delivered to the workforce in their entirety. Once you understand the requirements of employees, you can translate it into a tech requirement and, most importantly, the business process needs. It sounds simple, but there is a tremendous amount of integration and automated processing going on in the background, which is why we increasingly talk about integrated workplace management solutions (IWMS).

The key to more efficient deployment of FM is responsiveness. Every organisation has vastly different requirements and no two companies operate in the same way. A good FM solution can be adapted or configured easily to meet the environment within which a business is operating.

With the advent of BIM, FM is gaining an even bigger role. Traditionally, the design and construction process took nine years and, at the end, manuals and disks would be thrown at the FM and they would be told to run the building. With the operational phase of a building being 25 to 30 years, there is now more emphasis on making sure FMs are engaged at the beginning of the process.

The speed of tech development, the potential to increase productivity and the impact this has on people’s working lives make it an exciting time in FM. When used correctly, IWMS can provide vital information to support strategic decisions in an organisation. The benefits are now felt by far more people than just the FM team.