Thinking about a facility manager, we should correlate this to a professional working into a well organised and efficient environment in line with an old popular “engineer’s quote” which spells: Every Tool Gets Its Place, There is One Place for Every Tool!

Coming from engineers, it clearly talks about a well organised and managed workshop but it can also be easily referred to offices, businesses, sales & marketing and, for sure, facility management.

Studies and researches carried on all around the world have always highlighted the “cost of disorganisation” often caused by any of the following:

• Lack of proper management of human resources unnecessary over-time
• Poor assets and inventory management
• Lack of maintenance scheduling
• Un-readiness to unpredictable issues

If we read the above as a Facility Manager, we can easily refer back to daily happenings which are cursing the smooth flow of our operations and disrupting the efficiency of the service we are providing.

If we look at the “old school” tools, scheduled maintenance, Gantt charts and duty roster are what we are probably relying on to keep up the efficiency of the facility manager in providing his services. However, there is still plenty of room open for the unexpected to happen and cause havoc.

The digital transformation wave, boosted by the pandemic, has forced the majority of us to accelerate the adoption of new software, tools and technologies helping us to transform our daily routines in a digitalised workflow and, Facility Managers are not left behind in this transformational process.

To better understand the challenges operation and facility managers are facing on a daily basis, we have broken-down and grouped the most important in five categories. If the driver of the challenge becomes known, it will be faster and easier to look for and find a viable solution.   

COST CONTROL

Facility Managers, all around the world, are normally under pressure to do more with less.

Budget and its daily control brings them to take a proactive attitude towards:

• Accurate definition and segregation of all types of costs, being them fixed, variable, direct or indirect;
• Inventory tracking and related lead time from suppliers
• Open negotiation with all suppliers on how to reduce their products and services impact on the P&L of the building
• Continuous research for better products and services providers at lower costs
• Regular tracking, at least monthly, of maintenance costs, cash flow and other financial information.
• Technology solutions to invest in order to help in all of the above.

How technology could help in the areas above? It all goes back to the engineers’ motto that we’ve mentioned above. If you know where and how a cost or event is originated then it will be quite easy to set “capturing nets” and collect, organised and present these data in a consolidated manner.   

Available PropTech solutions, such as ServeDeck are setting up a general dashboard from where, our facility manager will be able to read and compare all data from the different departments to make data-driven decision on resources deployment, work scheduling and much more.

An important addition to the above, we recommend a study on how green or eco-friendly changes might help in reducing the costs load and improve the efficiency of the building. Energy saving, waste management and storm water management are just few of the many available touch points for a betterment of the managed building!

MULTITASKING COMMUNICATION & TEAMS COORDINATION

One of the most frequent cause of facility management failure or underperformance of the facility manager is a broken communication channel or the non-sharing of information. In order to make the facility management’s operations running smoothly, a crucial component is an efficient platform where every single piece of information will be always available for the facility manager and all interested parties.

By looking at the high mobility of today’s working scenario, the best approach would be to have a dedicated, digital web/app-based facilities management solution allowing people to report failures, auto-generate reports, collecting data, analyse them and more. This will immediately become an incredibly useful tool to be used in any operational task.

Having a digital solution allowing constructive communication and interaction with the users of the facility, will improve the readiness to response and ultimately allow better efficiency in all the building’s areas making tenants and satisfied while reducing the cost of management.

By definition, a facility manager, and the teams, should be the perfect problem solver.  Adoption of suitable digital solutions, such as ServeDeck, supporting facility and operation management is the only recommended way forward!

TIME IS THE ESSENCE!

This strong reminder is, for sure, very relevant to facility managers fighting every day with reduced workforce, controlled inventory and plenty of unforeseen and disruptive emergencies.

Good time management certainly promotes efficient facility management and results in cost saving in a quite substantial way.

Knowing when resources are needed reduces tremendously the facility managers’ stress while increasing the operations’ efficiency, elevating the satisfaction of the tenants and users of the facility while saving costs in the process.

Sun Tzu in his famous The Art of War, stated that timing is crucial to win a war! The same rule applies when looking at facility management but, with a huge difference; a facility management digital solution, designed with the users’ challenges in mind, provides continuous data on all of the above allowing a perfect use of resources while raising the excellence of the service provided.

HANDLING EMERGENCIES FROM EQUIPMENT FAILURE

In an era of smart city we live in, adoption of IoT devices is a must. Asset and equipment maintenance is a very complex process requiring perfect information flow and fast action.

IoT, when integrated in a facility management system, will help enormously in foreseeing an incoming issue and getting ready for it or even, preventing it!

The facility manager of a non-far away future will sit in his command center from where he will be able to control, coordinate and call to action his teams for the betterment of the building’s use. All this is already available and applicable with web or app-based digital solutions such as ServeDeck which has been helping countless facility managers improve the response time on emergencies caused by the failure of assets in the managed building.

AGING ASSETS & EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE

Facility management recalls the image of a precise swiss clock where, every single gear and screw moves in synchronised and smooth way. As well as the clock, to maintain its precision, needs to be cleaned and oiled on a regular basis, so does a building, or better, all the assets and equipment attached to it.

A timely maintenance of equipment always results in more efficient operations and, once more, reduces the overall costs of facility management. Preventing is better than curing perfectly applies to the above and, when the facility manager adopts the right facility and operation management digital solution, the result will be raising the excellence of the final output!

For many years, ServeDeck has been providing digital solutions for all of the above and, every time, has been listening carefully to its clients to understand their challenges, pain points and cash hemorrhage areas. A fully integrated digital solution designed and developed with clients’ challenges in mind and maintained as more user-friendly as possible, this is what ServeDeck is.

Do Checkout all the different functions and operational solutions ServeDeck has for you, get in touch with us to get a demo of our ready-to-use solution to your challenges!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The opinions expressed in this article are solely of the author, Dr Daniele Gambero.

Dr Gambero has been an expatriate to Malaysia from Italy, since 1998 and has more than 35 years of real estate experience. He is the co-founder and group CEO of REI Group of Companies, the Co-founder of Propenomy.com and the deputy president of the Malaysia Proptech Association.

In the past 10 years Daniele, as international and TEDX speaker, has engaged several hundreds thousand people talking about Property, Economy, Propenomy, Digital Marketing and Motivation. He is also a bestselling author and columnist on several magazines and main stream media. You can reach him directly through his LinkedIn page here