We live in a complex and chaotic environment, where competitive advantage is temporary and continuous improvements are just not enough. Our world is being pushed by a constant drive to show our worth and capability; to prove the contributions that we can make towards driving business, and our ability to distinctly improve a client’s business bottom line.
In our experience in the facilities management space, we’ve found that clients are looking for strategic partners who understand their business as well as their pain points, and who can develop and implement efficient strategies and coherent solutions without breaking the bank. In a world where places, people and profits are connected, for businesses to realise their profits, we must think about how to create spaces to ensure that where they spend the most time will drive their productivity.
Without a doubt, an integrated approach to facilities management will enhance operational efficiencies if aligned with the business’ strategic objectives; but safety, comfort, and friendly spaces are of equal importance, as these elements can enhance productivity.
At Servest, we have taken insights from our 22 years of industry experience and compiled extensive research across various sectors to inform the solutions we provide. This is because we believe that an integrated facilities management model is best placed to optimally extend the operating life of your capital investments and ensure that we support the entities to achieve their strategic business objectives.
The facilities management industry has not been insulated from the weeping changes brought about by increasing digitizing and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In order to remain relevant and ahead of the curve, it is imperative that the facilities management industry embrace these technologies in order to provide its clients with smart customised solutions to enable them to maintain their capital assets in a sustainable manner, enhance physical security and ensure efficient management of energy resources.
The key is to ensure that the intelligent management of capital assets is seamlessly integrated into the maintenance of these assets and adds value to the clients. It is critical that technology is not adopted for the sake of it, but that it is leveraged to improve the bottom line. Effective integrated facilities management should scrutinize the solutions on offer, identify the gaps and develop solutions aligned to the business, to help improve efficiencies and in turn achieve the business strategic objectives.
We know that an investment in technology can be costly, and that’s why it is critical that clients receive a return on their investment.
An effective integrated solutions blueprint should therefore focus on creating workplace experiences that reflect the business culture experience, enable cost optimisation focused on rapid adaptability, enable productivity, risk management through innovation and enhance the brand experience through facilities and environmental sustainability.
Through a single point of control, an integrated facilities management approach focuses on integrating capex and opex, driven by a team with the technical knowledge that enable a performance-focused approach to improve service, efficiencies, the built environment, and customer experience.
An integrated approach to facilities management
At the heart of the debate around facilities management, the big question being asked is whether there is value in outsourcing or not, and whether it provides a more cost-effective solution to managing a business.
Integration provides a clearer answer to these questions, as the integrated model can enhance operational efficiency by presenting a coordinated approach to the facilities management strategy for any business. The integrated model explores the facilities through a whole-view perspective, from the inbuilt environment to the outside.
By integrating people, technology, the place or spaces, one can create comfortable work and play areas. It’s an art, to understand a business’ culture and identity and reflect it through design of the inside and outside. An effective facilities management blueprint should enrich any workspace with solutions designed to fit any business, while maintaining a striking, eco-friendly and natural landscapes, sporting and recreational facilities.
Clients want to live and work in comfortable and safe spaces. This can be achieved by leveraging technology, services and people to create the spaces that our clients want, so that they can focus on their core business, while we focus on ours – providing an experience within the facilities management space.
It has been proven that continuous and consistent management of facilities will prolong any asset’s lifespan. While it may seem more cost effective to cut corners now and find so-called “cheaper” solutions to managing facilities, in the long run this may prove costly.
In today’s challenging economic environment, it is critical to seek integrated facilities management solutions that cut across multiple sectors, and that leverage processes to ensure reduced cost, optimised efficiencies and improved customer service. Working in partnership with clients, practitioners in this space can develop well-thought through solutions that optimise and support customer’s strategic business goals and assist to increase their triple bottom line.
In the end, you need to ascertain whether insourcing facilities management will guarantee your business the achievement of the benefits mentioned above, whilst at the same time delivering on the core mandate of your business. At Servest we have the experience and the know-how to develop solutions that will assist you achieve your triple bottom line objectives, especially if our relationship is strategic.
Integrated Facilities Solutions? Think Servest.
By Xolile Sizani, Group CEO of Servest.
