As the global real estate sector continues to expand and grow more competitive, companies are fast approaching various ways to maximize their resources, restructure their workspaces and improve customer engagement.
In response to this, organizations are fast adopting tools that will advance their aspirations for growth. As a result, there is an explosion of interest in smart facilities management solutions.
Statistics show that 52% of CRE leaders globally already plan to implement a shared workspace model such as full-service co-working space and a business incubator for better productivity.
In this article, we explore the ways of choosing automated tools like facility management software and how it could advance your business and shape your work efficiency.
7 Ways Facilities Management Software Can Advance your Business
Traditional real-estate players now are fast exploring ways to deliver modern intuitive experiences and engage with occupants dynamically.
Thus, as a business owner – especially in the real-estate business where mobility and management are important – employing an automated tool like a facilities management software program that allows maximum mobility is crucial.
So, here’s how using a facility management software could reshape your built environment and help you to stay sublime:
Improved Asset tracking and Management
Giving precedence to spreadsheets and manual analysis during asset management and tracking can be tasking and time-consuming, especially for a business with assets in various locations.
An automated facility management system comes in handy in managing different assets in various locations. On a basic level, this system helps to manage scheduling and track bookings. For instance, the system helps with managing bookings of spaces in a particular building to avoid conflicts of double bookings.
Applying this power of technology to rentals and leases gives managers more flexibility over property handling and management of maintenance and contractual responsibilities.
Time and Resource Effectiveness
Time is one of the most vital facets of the productivity of all businesses – regardless of the size.
Facility management involves a great deal of time and resources. An automated system in this variation deals with various time constraints.
These include time taken to train or monitor staff on various duties, emergency maintenance, equipment downtime and other contingencies that could arise.
By helping with timely reminders and automating supervisions, facility managers are able to manage their time and other resources available.
Having a facility management software program helps to drive efficiency by allowing building owners and operators to focus on their core values and functionalities.
Through giving businesses the ability to manage the resources available for the concentration of efforts on improving the integrity of their products and enhancing productivity.
Work Flexibility and Mobility
Predictably, young workforces are changing workplace dynamics to reflect their priorities. Gallup’s ‘How Millennials want to Work and Live” report rates the generation as ‘exceptionally purpose driven’, with the expectation that employers adapt to their standards.
They represent $1 trillion in consumer spending and 73% say they’d spend more to support sustainable products and companies.
These tools promote work flexibility, lower production hours and optimal performance. With the emergence of good small business solutions, businesses of any size – from small to large enterprises – are given the capability to modernize their workspace.
They allow businesses to deal with the demands of growth by automating various tasks. With this, workers now have the advantage of working with agility and making more seamless decisions without the constraints of downtime at workspaces.
Joint Synergy
One of the driving forces of efficient facilities management is the collaborative efforts of the workforce available. Teamwork is dependent on effective communication, access to the right information and shared synergy.
By creating a collaborative workspace for facilities teams, the facilities management system gives technicians and facilities staff the leverage to maximize their expertise flexibly and proactively.
This system provides teams with the ground for communication and combined efforts through communication interfaces and transparency of real-time data for problem context and resolution.
Particularly for multi-site facilities with a large number of operating points and remote locations, the ability to gain unrestricted access to information for timely decision-making is important.
This system of management allows teams at different locations to combine their efforts for better solutions.
Leveraging Existing Automation Systems in Buildings
Most buildings currently operate at an individual building/site level without CREs having visibility across their entire portfolio.
Even within individual buildings, it is currently typical for there to be multiple software and automation systems that are not well integrated and are instead working in silos.
This data which was lying unused and dormant in legacy models, is a goldmine of information and holds the key to the operational performance transparency across portfolios.
Analyzing and interpreting this data using AI and ML not only yields actionable insights but these insights also enable data-driven decision making, empowering CRE owners and FM’s to be in control and drive the optimal performance of their buildings, across functions as diverse as maintenance, energy & sustainability, workforce management and more.
By empowering existing technologies in this fashion including leveraging role of information technology in XaaS, facility management software can help building operators save up to 30% in operating expenses.
The highly repeatable, scalable and predictive model of operations that results, transforms building performance and occupant experience, adding to the value-perception of the properties as modern, service-led facilities.
Better Employee and Customer Engagement
The role of customer experiences and engagement in every business is important. Proper resources management and availability of the tools for optimal product and services quality ensure that customer satisfaction is achieved.
However, as the business grows, depending on the nature of the business, employee/ customer engagement is not exactly easy to achieve.
For instance, managing properties in various locations across the globe can be challenging. Moreover, monitoring the inputs of employees and engaging your clients might not be ideally done.
Applying the services of good facilities management software provides ways of streamlining processes and making it easier to measure all individual inputs against expectations.
With its communication tools, you can anticipate your clients’ specifications and work to meet up with the expectations.
Regulatory Compliance
Regulatory and legal compliance are important to all businesses. However, laws vary with locations. As such, complying with these laws – especially when managing assets in various locations – can be difficult.
Facilities management programs are equipped with the right tools to help companies to test against compliance issues by helping to organize the right information and data to ensure compliance.
Why is Using a Facility Management Software Important?
Keeping with the demands of advancements across multiple sites in a portfolio requires the expertise of additional tools, especially as the global industrial sector grows fiercely competitive.
Using a good facilities management software provides organizations with the tools to improve the collaborative efforts, customer/employee engagement, and control maintenance activities with facilities.
These tools provide enough grounds for making timely and informed decisions by bringing access and control of data to the doorsteps of businesses.
By also taking the place of heavy paperwork, this technology helps companies cut costs and secure volumes of data effectively.
Hence, for optimal performance within the organization, maximizing resources, flexibility, and mobility, employing the unique abilities of a good facility management software program should be a priority.
