How are companies managing facilities? The majority of schools, healthcare, and offices in a 2015 survey do not have a facilities management solution in place. As a result, these organizations are missing out on numerous opportunities to streamline their operations, and proactively monitor and maintain their facility assets, energy usage, sustainability, compliance standards, condition, and cost.
Many organizations are using paper processes, spreadsheets, or nothing at all to manage their facilities, which creates a lack of efficiency and visibility across an organization. Manual paper processes may help keep track of when assets were put into service, but they are severely lacking when it comes to reviewing warranties, maintenance schedule dates, and other important milestones. A facilities management solution can reduce risk by capturing all of the important information in one place, making it a breeze to solve all of these challenges. Many FM solutions even provide a system of user alerts to call attention to, for example, asset maintenance schedules so that equipment can be serviced before it falls below a certain performance level.
Managing facilities in this way often creates errors in data which lead to equipment failure and breakdown. Assets that are out of service, in turn, lead to lost revenue and increased costs, a nasty double whammy. And the survey results back up these error-prone findings, with more than a third of respondents citing “accurate record keeping” as their biggest challenge.
Educational facilities fared the best, with about a third or respondents citing use of a facilities management solution. Offices, on the other hand, fared the worst, with a mere 6% of respondents noting that they used a facilities management solution.
