Many industries have changed dramatically in the past few years with the advent of technology, including facilities management (FM). In fact, recent research by Frost & Sullivan (a research and consulting organisation) showed that the global outsourced FM market will reach around $1 trillion in the next six years. The interesting thing is that they attributed much of this growth to the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data, as these allow FM companies to offer a much wider range of services than before.

As a team of CAD designers, we are used to adapting to changes in technology, but we appreciate that other industries aren’t. So how can adapting to the changes in technology affect FM for the better?

Extension of Service Offerings

The services offered by many companies within the FM sector have expanded dramatically within the last few years and continue to do so. Tasks such as catering, cleaning, the front of house and security operations are now covered, which means that they are now becoming even more central to the success of a business – especially when it comes to sustainability. Technology has played a considerable role in allowing FM companies to expand their service offerings, as it brings a lot of data and information into one central place where it can be used to control the environment and be monitored in real time.

Greater Efficiency

Technology has also benefitted many FM companies by helping them to reduce the cost of facilities management activities. It has done this through tasks such as the digitisation of paper-based processes to improve productivity and the automatic monitoring of temperature and humidity, which removes the need for employees to check them manually. Technology can help the FM industry to become more effective and efficient, which should lead to a reduction in costs. These cost savings can then be passed onto their clients, and management will have more money in the budget to do other things.

Retention of Existing Customers

Another recent survey by Deloitte showed that 71% of people left FM providers and took the service in-house due to poor service. The use of technology can help FM companies to retain their customers by allowing them to provide a better service and therefore increase customer satisfaction. This is because technological solutions can be used for monitoring purposes, which means that if any issues occur management can be quickly alerted, and deal with problems efficiently before they escalate into real issues.

Winning New Customers

As we have said above, the FM market is a fast-growing one which means that competition is fierce – this also means that there is a constant downward push on prices. Technology not only allows FM firms to be more competitive when they are pricing their services – due to the efficiency savings as outlined above – but also allows them to differentiate themselves from competitors by being the first to use new technology, for example.

Although technology can bring many benefits to an FM company, this does come with a word of warning. Many FM firms will not already have the skills internally to use such technology successfully, and so will need to work hard to attract the staff to be able to do this. FM firms need to commit to onboarding the technology as well, as many FM companies admit to still using paper-based checklists.

If you are a facilities management company looking to outsource your BIM concerns, then please get in touch with The CAD Room today. You can talk to our friendly team on 0161 427 0348 or send us an email to office@thecadroom.com