Challenges:

Investa’s facilities management teams conducted their day-to-day operations through complicated, point solutions that functioned in silos with manual workflows and tracking. They tracked their 150+ vendors across three different databases—one each for payments, on-site safety and work orders. They relied heavily on vendors for systems and data around invoices, quotes and performance metrics.

This presented significant challenges in managing maintenance activities and concierge services at scale, such as:

• Duplication of efforts and human errors resulting from functional silos
• Inefficiencies in work order management from significant manual effort into even finding the right vendor
• Unreliable performance data as it is owned and shared by vendors
• Inability to scale, inflexibility of adding/removing properties from the portfolio
• Poor portfolio-wide visibility from lack of a consolidated view of key metrics around vendor performance, compliance, and SLAs.

To overcome these challenges and set themselves up for an accelerated journey toward their goals, Investa needed a unified solution that can consolidate silos across multiple systems from over ten years of operations.

Facilio’s solution: Connected CMMS for unified, automated operations

In their search for a unified Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), they considered several alternatives. During the negotiation and pilots, they faced two key challenges: The product contracts were typically drawn up for ‘n’ buildings for ‘n’ years, being inflexible about adding or removing them from the portfolio; and Investa’s legacy software, which did not support APIs, was difficult to integrate.

Facilio’s Connected CMMS overcame these challenges and enabled integrated, scalable portfolio operations for Investa within five months of MVP. As part of our solutioning, we:

• Synthesized asset repository and history
• Planned management of maintenance routines, tenant requests and work orders
• Integrated contractor KPIs and SLAs, inspections, incident and compliance management and financial management
• Enabled user-centric apps such as tenant apps, technician apps, etc.

Here are the solution highlights:

Unified operations with integrated functions

Facilio integrates the various functions - management of assets, incidents and audits, as well as relationships with vendors, technicians and tenants - across portfolios. The Connected CMMS serves as the command center, providing complete visibility into the entire portfolio operations. With transparency in the operational workflow, from inventories to purchase orders, facilities management teams now quickly identify bottlenecks and resolve issues.

“We chose Facilio mainly because of its maintenance management capabilities, so we didn’t have to rely on manual records or spreadsheets. This does two things for us.”

System adaptability with customized workflows

Investa had several workflows that were unique to their processes. During the evaluation stage, Facilio demo-ed custom use cases, without much coding, within 2-3 days, gaining Investa’s trust. During the pilot and onboarding, we used Stateflow to capture various processes and automate them.

The Connected CMMS enabled these processes with custom workflows and flexible implementation. It also offered the flexibility to refine/change workflows throughout the implementation, based on stakeholder needs, without disrupting the larger system.

Smooth vendor management

Facilio’s Connected CMMS came with out-of-the-box integration capabilities that allowed seamless data flow between modules. Investa leveraged this to integrate work order management with visitor management. This allowed Investa to track vendor entry and exit, task completion, invoicing, purchase orders, payment cycles and customer feedback all in one place.

Automation of maintenance routines and digitization of processes

Facilio’s Connected CMMS has automated a wide range of activities such as planned maintenance, work order assignment, vendor induction and compliance checks. This has eliminated manual effort and duplication of efforts. However, we were cautious about automation, doing so only where required. For instance, hazard inspections as per local regulations needed manual control, which was left as it was.

Flexible configuration and business model

Facilio allowed easy addition and removal of properties to their portfolio, enabling scale. Our platform approach, combined with productized customizations, allows contract term flexibility. The subscription-based model accommodates upgrades and hassle-free configuration of newer/additional functionalities as well.

Portfolio-wide visibility and real-time actionable insights

Connected CMMS offers a holistic view of portfolio-wide operations (assets, work orders, maintenance activities etc.) and performance (asset lifetime value, costs, technician response time etc).

Based on this visibility, executives are making better decisions around cost optimization and operational improvements. Facilities managers and site owners negotiate better deals based on vendor-specific KPIs and SLAs.

Impact

• Comprehensive overview accessible
• Enhanced satisfaction through superior tenant experience
• Improved vendor compliance and SLA adherence
• Overview of entire portfolio’s performance
• Reduced expenses through efficient service management