In a world where accessibility and speed are paramount to many company’s operations, technology has become a cornerstone of the commercial real estate sector. Business Integration Group, Inc. (BIG) provides cutting edge systems and processes used in the management of real estate portfolios. BIG’s Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) delivers strategic insight in every stage of the real estate process.
The IWMS facilitates collaboration and the sharing of resources. The platform provides real time information about properties as well as processes to oversee the management and facilitation of locations around the globe.
BIG’s systems and processes optimize workflow and provide other key benefits to clients, including:
It is vital to carefully select technology that will help the organization, not hinder it with inaccessible or impractical solutions. In addition to the wealth of information it provides, BIG’s Integrated Workplace Management Solution is practical, easy to use and scalable to client’s needs.
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CAFM | Facilities Center | IWMS | Occupancy Center
Corporate Real Estate 2020 is a research and leadership program designed and managed by CoreNet Global members to address the business environment in the future and to collect, package and distribute state-of-the-art best practices, tools, models and case studies to help members prepare to meet future business needs.
To achieve this objective, designated teams across a number of research areas initially developed a draft vision for the industry (i.e. Bold Statements) that serves as a starting point for validation and refinement. The current team areas include:
Technology Tools
Sustainability
Portfolio Optimization and Asset Management
Location Strategy and the Role of Place
Service Delivery and Outsourcing
Enterprise Leadership
Workplace
Partnering with Key Support Functions
The teams are currently interviewing a number of senior industry leaders and will utilize other resources to obtain further insights that will help shape a new vision and offer potential strategies to assist corporate real estate organizations in transforming themselves to meet the challenges ahead as the economy changes and new business models evolve. The teams are currently endeavoring to consolidate their findings and produce programs, reports and other materials by the CoreNet Global Summit in San Diego in April 2012.
Further information on this initiative can be found here.
CAFM
In the June 2011 edition of Buildings magazine, Associate Editor, Janelle Penny, discusses how the use of dashboards—in this case, energy tracking dashboards—provide FM personnel a broad view of their portfolios’ activity ("Dashboards Put FMs in the Driver's Seat"). This bird’s eye view aids building managers in the task of quantifying the progress of facilities-related initiatives. According to Penny, "A dashboard can play many roles, but in a nutshell, the tool allows you to compare usage between campuses, floors, and departments to spot inefficiencies or drive competition…" Furthermore, increased access to IWMS dashboards can help move along building initiatives by demonstrating to occupants their current rates of success and can foster a healthy dose of competition between occupants or company departments in achieving their organization-wide energy consumption/green goals.
In the June 2011 edition of Buildings magazine, Associate Editor, Janelle Penny, discusses how the use of dashboards—in this case, energy tracking dashboards—provide FM personnel a broad view of their portfolios’ activity ("Dashboards Put FMs in the Driver's Seat"). This bird’s eye view aids building managers in the task of quantifying the progress of facilities-related initiatives.
According to Penny, "A dashboard can play many roles, but in a nutshell, the tool allows you to compare usage between campuses, floors, and departments to spot inefficiencies or drive competition…" Furthermore, increased access to IWMS dashboards can help move along building initiatives by demonstrating to occupants their current rates of success and can foster a healthy dose of competition between occupants or company departments in achieving their organization-wide energy consumption/green goals.
It is not only in the world of energy usage tracking where IWMS dashboards can play a major role in achieving FM goals, dashboard tiles can be configured to demonstrate many facilities or real estate-related metrics. Dashboards that monitor critical requests, service provider performance, and overall building activity have become the cornerstone of IWMS technology and look to grow in importance as the integration of smart building solutions and IWMS software continues to advance in both the amount of data that can be presented and multitude ways it can be structured to suit an organizations needs and goals.
CAFM | Facilities Center | IWMS | Occupancy Center | Portfolio Center | Project Management | Sustainability
This blog revisits some strategic and tactical questions that organizations might utilize to determine the state of readiness of their real estate technology platforms. These questions might be broadly answered along three basic parameters…where the “information” is:
To be truly effective real estate technology must not only provide a powerful source of information (i.e. opportunities) and readily accessible answers to the aforementioned questions (and a host of others), but be practical and easy to use across disciplines. At times the choice and selection of technology is made in a somewhat one dimensional fashion and fails to account for all the relevant users and constituencies leading to a gap in obtaining the desired results.
For additional information in this regard, please feel free to explore www.bigcenter.com and/or contact us at contactus@bigcenter.com.
CAFM | Facilities Center | IWMS | Occupancy Center | Portfolio Center | Sustainability | Project Management
For a Facility Professional, growth or contraction of space resulting from changes to supported business units has a significant impact on service provision and resource requirements (e.g. increase in Moves, Adds, Changes, etc.), particularly when supporting disparate geographical facilities.
As depicted in Figure 1, Strategic Space Management technology tools can help Facility Professionals readily identify a) properties that are approaching capacity, b) locations that are in high cost areas and c) under-utilized space.
Potential actions to realize the identified opportunity include reviewing expansion or contraction needs, implementing Alternative Workspace Solutions (AWS), such as work from home or hoteling, and pinpointing portfolio consolidation opportunities.
The savings to be realized in these scenarios include:
CAFM | Facilities Center | Occupancy Center
Continuous improvement, innovation, leadership and teamwork are core focuses of many enterprises. These attributes clearly have an impact on revenue preservation and growth and play a role in attracting and retaining staff.
For a Facility Professional, innovative and fit for purpose technologies enable users to focus on core skills and organizational business drivers. Technology should not be a burden that adds to the administration of a Facility, but a resource that improves productivity, strategic planning, execution and capital allocation.
As depicted in Figure 1 below, workflow and wireless technologies can help a Facilities Professional identify a) duplication of effort (e.g. many hands touching a work order with no value add), b) procedural delays such as approval processes or a need to acquire parts and c) limited information on how work was completed that impacts the ability to do root cause and failure analysis.
Potential actions to realize the identified opportunity include providing instant access to data through real time tools (e.g. automatic dispatch of work, tracking of SLAs against completion etc.), enabling resources to be mobile via wireless devices that improve service delivery and facilitating data accuracy and richer content through closeout upon physical completion of work.
The savings that could be realized in these scenarios are:
CAFM | Facilities Center | IWMS
Scheduling of resources is a critical element in ensuring that Facility teams properly respond to requests, maintain assets against prescribed guidelines, deliver customer satisfaction while also focusing on organizational goals to maximize head count and reduce overtime costs.
For a Facility Professional, resource scheduling technologies provide answers to questions such as who is doing what, where, when and why are they doing it. These technologies are a core component in ensuring that day-to-day tactical work is handled appropriately and in a timely fashion, while also planning for strategically important work that is needed to improve facilities and maintain business operations.
As depicted in Figure 1 below, Resource Scheduling technologies can help a Facilities Professional identify a) trip duplications (e.g. a rise in internal lighting requests against a defined baseline could evidence a need to engage in a re-lamp program or stage resources, b) resource over-allocation and c) highlight redundant work that is being carried out as part of the process.
Potential actions to realize the identified opportunity include scheduling of work (e.g. excessive demand requests can point to a deficiency in planned maintenance activities), proactively staging labor resources (e.g. spreading known work across a measured period while allowing time for priority activities) and eliminating non-value add (e.g. resources are making return trips as required parts are not stocked).
The savings that could be realized in these scenarios from taking appropriate actions are:
The work request process typically drives the performance of all maintenance related activities in a Facility. These processes evolve over time, and can become disparate, inconsistent and burdensome absent regular reviews. In order to maximize allocated resources whilst ensuring customer satisfaction the process should be continually evaluated for improvements.
For a Facility Professional, work order management technologies are a core element of ensuring appropriate and cost justified maintenance across various industries and locations. These technologies can be utilized to properly justify increases in resources, infrastructure investment and aide in the continuous education of employees.
As depicted in Figure 1 below, work management technologies can help a Facilities Professional identify a) inefficiencies in workflow and associated processes such as multiple non-value add touch points, b) under utilization of labor (e.g. a 9-5 Call Center capability that is only operating at 75% of capacity) and c) inconsistency in process (e.g. west coast operations call Facility Manager directly while east coast employees email a central support team).
Potential actions to realize the identified opportunity include investing in enabling technologies for workflow management, optimizing both spend and skills by seeking alternative sources of labor that offer per unit based pricing, and enacting consistent standards (without a consistent process, it is difficult to track performance against a baseline).
The savings and improvements that could be realized in these scenarios are:
Asset Optimization from a facility perspective centers on formulating strategies for capital investment, infrastructure replacement programs and utilization of Preventive, Reliability Centered and Condition Based Maintenance to achieve prescribed goals. Asset based analytical technologies that take into consideration data elements such as asset condition, criticality, useful life, installation, salvage and maintenance costs etc. enable Facility Professionals to determine core strategic imperatives.
As depicted in Figure 1 below, technology can help identify a) useful life and condition metrics of critical assets core to a business operation, b) actual asset condition taking into consideration purpose and use and c) capital replacement costs required to maintain the operation at optimal performance.
Actions that might be considered to capitalize on the identified opportunity include optimization of maintenance procedures to reduce the risk associated with critical asset failure, evaluating alternatives for non-impactful, low cost or easy to replace assets to maximize potential, and investing where needed in core assets.
The saving and improvements that could be realized in these scenarios include:
Continuity of critical core business operations
Reduction and/or deferral of funds required for replacements costs
ROI optimization
Technology delivers insight that enables Facility Professionals to achieve greater efficiencies, cost savings, process improvements and improved customer satisfaction. This blog will focus on six key areas:
We will tackle these areas in six segments over the ensuing weeks demonstrating how a Facility Professional can utilize technology to IDENTIFY opportunities…prepare and take ACTION…resulting in SAVINGS and Productivity Gains (see Figure 1):
In our initial post we’ll address the first area KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), which provide focus, drive behavior and guide practitioners toward achievement of organizational goals. A KPI is a pre-determined measure, which can be quantified, is realistic and achievable, and provides insight into the actual performance of an activity against a set baseline. For a KPI to be useful, it needs to be tied to an overarching target, such as reducing maintenance spend, minimizing costs, improving quality or enhancing customer satisfaction. For a Facility Professional, Business Intelligence technology, such as dashboards, enable quick and accurate access to the state of their facility “nation;” what is occurring now, what has occurred (tactical) and projecting what will occur in the future (strategic).
As depicted in Figure 2 below, a real time technology dashboard can help a Facilities Professional analyze and identify a) anomalies in service (e.g. an engineer’s completion metrics are significantly below target), b) deviations against plan (e.g. measurement of actual results relative to expectations) and c) inconsistent contractual performance (e.g. a particular service provider missing their key performance targets).
Potential actions to realize the identified opportunity include real time adjustment of resources; perhaps the engineer is missing targets this week due to colleagues being out (vacation, sick, etc.). If the targets are consistently being missed, the Facility Professional may consider further training or guidance as the remedy. Finally, if a Service Provider is falling short of target performance, this could necessitate a review of contractual obligations.
The saving and process improvements that could be obtained in the aforementioned scenarios include:
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