Bring stakeholder information into a common reporting solution
I’ve been around the FM Services Market for more than 15 years as both a supplier and a customer of FM Services. During that time, Technology has shifted from the office planning board through to PC based planning and application systems covering a plethora of services. This ranges from maintenance and compliance right through to front of house and customer interfaces via PDA and a host of mobile devices.
Indeed, the trend sets to continue. In a recent publication from the FMA (Australia), 66% of respondents placed the need to integrate FM technology within the top 5 opportunity areas between now and 2017. The shift to cloud computing (which lowers capital outlay), will push FM Service Providers and End Users to challenge the way technology is used to capture, plan, verify and improve the way assets are managed throughout their lifecycle.
Despite the large integration of technology, it’s surprising how many Contract Managers still dump everything into spreadsheets for Customer Reporting. Indeed, in a recent survey we conducted, the vast majority still take data from the underlying CAFM system and modify for their customer’s bespoke requirements. Sadly, many aggregated performance measures are not compatible with the way data is structured in the source database.
As a result of the “dump to Excel”, stakeholders create their own versions of events and there is minimal correlation between corresponding periods or service dealings. It then becomes impossible to provide any useful performance analytics without macro-fuelled manipulation of spreadsheets. Then there’s the issue of access? How often have we gone to great lengths to convince our IT department to give customers access to their own data, only to then offer them files that could equally be sent via email or even worse locked as read-only files. Access to data almost becomes a contract tick-box rather than a proactive means of demonstrating and improving performance.
We recently took on this challenge with a major Integrated FM service provider. Part of the task was to provide a live reporting layer across their native CAFM system to provide intelligence across their customer base. However, the major benefits would come if we could enable Contract Managers to upload customer-specific measures and KPIs from which the organisation and their customers can track monthly performance. This included information such as meter readings, continuous improvement trackers and training logs. It even included an on-line 32-measure IFM scorecard based on customer feedback!
Using simple technology, any stakeholder (internal or Customer) can now access, perform dynamic analysis and distribute CAFM data and bespoke performance information without ever leaving the application. This one-stop portal can be accessed on virtually any mobile device and provide security as expected from an Enterprise solution.
A simple yet truly integrated Contract Managers Toolkit…………
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