Top 5 Challenges Faced by Facility Management Companies and How to Overcome Them

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Jonathan Kidd

Most office, commercial and public buildings are maintained by dedicated facility management teams, who work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure the building is safe, clean and meets the requirements of tenants or business owners. The involvement and contribution of a facilities management team should not be underestimated.

To keep the business running smoothly, facilities management teams must overcome numerous hurdles regularly. Anything from a broken door to a catering issue needs to be resolved smoothly and quickly.

Many facility management companies are turning to Business Process Management (BPM) tools to help them stay ahead. According to the Statista report, the predicted value of the BPM market by 2021 has been pegged between $13 billion and $14 billion. There has been an exponential growth of the global market as numerous businesses realise the potential of documenting and managing their processes.

Here are the top 5 challenges faced by facility management companies and how the right BPM tool can help:

1. Managing Work Orders

Often the most challenging process for any facilities management company; work orders arriving regularly, and they’re usually urgent. Various teams and individuals have responsibility for a building so it’s imperative that a work order is received and processed in the most efficient way possible.

With numerous staff to handle, the management of work orders can be tough. Such lack of control makes the entire process collapse. Poorly managed job allocations pose a considerable risk of wasting time, money and workforce resources. There must be complete transparency in the work process so that you can provide an unparalleled and optimised service.

Using a BPM brings more transparency and greater visibility into tasks assigned to teams and individuals. It also helps managers get a clear picture of the step or the stage the process is in any time. Workflow management tools such as Boombirds provide a complete audit trail of every activity performed by users within every customer request, enabling easy tracking and evaluation of the BPM processes.

2. Handling Mobile and Geographically Dispersed Teams

Handling your mobile and geographically dispersed teams that manage facilities for commercial or home environments is indeed challenging. Confusion on job allocation is likely to occur and it can be challenging for mobile team members to keep up to date with the progress of a job.

A BPM tool for facilities management helps you to handle your mobile and geographically dispersed team members efficiently, irrespective of whether they are at their desks or out on the field. Configuring process workflows ingrained with your business’ standard operating procedures ensures processes are followed by your teams.

3. Monitor the Timeline

Maintaining a standardised quality of service in a timely manner creates huge challenges for any facilities management firm. Everything can seem urgent to the client, and keeping them happy is the top goal.

Optimising the workflow, monitoring service requests, ensuring timely completion of tasks and maintaining all the records are all tedious, often manual processes. A complete BPM solution for facilities management helps you optimise your workflow with embedded checklists, documents, images, capture vital information using forms, define checklists for process adherence, troubleshooting documentation and maintain multiple activity logs without any hassle. Manage your facility’s technicians, assets, and inventory effortlessly.

4. Customer Relationship

Satisfying the customer is the primary goal for any business. Handling, organising and responding to service requests are more complicated than anything else and monitoring them from start to finish is tough for any company.

If tracking your workflow is one tricky part, then giving a complete overview of the services delivered to your customers and workforce is another critical issue.

When you’re called by the CEO demanding an update, you might not know the current status of a service request or who is handling it. You might also be in the dark about whether updates have been sent to customers promptly, if deadlines were met or the customer shared feedback.

A Field Services BPM tool comes in handy at this point to enhance the service you and your team provides. It makes sure you handle all the service requests promptly and helps build a strong customer relationship by putting feedback at the centre of your customer’s experience.

BPM allows you to handle all your service requests in a hassle-free manner. It provides a unified view of workflows, conversations, and services. You can also engage in context-sensitive communication through wallboards. Share industry- related information and other important company announcements with your colleagues and customers using wallboards. Get feedback, unbiased customer reactions, and ratings for your services from your customers to improve your service quality and build a strong relationship. 

 

5. Recurring Service Request

Creating, scheduling and managing repetitive tasks can be complicated, and seemingly never-ending processes. You waste time and effort in creating the same job again and again. However, getting the right BPM solution can help you to create recurring service requests effortlessly. You can schedule the same service again and again, using the cloning process. It helps in modifying service requests, saving time in creating a new service request.

There are of course numerous other challenges faced by facility management teams all over the world, but with a smooth, reliable and responsive BPM tool, you are able to focus on the main goal of keeping your client happy, safe in the knowledge that the processes that underpin your business are running as efficiently as possible.

Try Boombirds, an easy-to-use facility management BPM tool to start streamlining your facility management business and delighting your customers!

Also read: Tips to Manage the Business Process in a Facilities Management Company