Selecting a facilities management provider can be a life-changing decision for an organisation, and hence it is critical that you get it right. Making the right selection can drive huge change in the organisation, such as providing dramatic and immediate cost savings, creating more efficient systems and procedures, freeing up internal resources and improving health & safety performance.
Outsourcing facilities management enables specialist skills to be deployed more effectively within your organisation. However, facilities management is a very broad spectrum and involves many different disciplines. Finding a facilities management provider who is completely in tune with your operations and business outlook can be difficult, but there are key characteristics you can look for, on top of the obvious metrics such as industry experience and client testimonials.
Start with basic data
Have you got accurate cost data already established before you begin the search? Only with reliable cost data can you fairly and coherently make decisions to compare facilities management providers and track their improvement on your organisation.
Goals and objectives
Facilities management is a support function, not a core area of your organisation, but it is essential to the day-to-day running of your business and certainly influences costs in a big way. So a facilities management provider needs to understand your business, its goals, how KPIs are established and measured and be able to match your ambitions for continual improvement.
Facilities management capabilities
Can the facilities management provider give you total facilities management or do you still need to manage some operations yourself? Every business and premises is different and presents different challenges, and likewise every facilities management provider has a different scope of capabilities. If you still have to provide some resources yourself – for example for cleaning & hygiene, property maintenance, pest control, landscaping and grounds or mechanical & electrical work – then you need to establish whether you are getting sufficient benefit, or value for money. This can be a balance between costs, time and savings and whether certain standards can be maintained, so you need to establish whether you need a fully integrated facilities management provider or not.
Vision and commitment
You will form a close working relationship with your facilities management provider, so they need to be able to grow in alignment with how you want your business to grow. This means they should be comfortable agreeing to long term contracts, should be able to explain clearly how costs can be saved and procedures made more efficient, and they should be able to give you confidence that they have the resources to deliver these promises. Ultimately you need a strong partnership to bring a joint success and that starts with a commitment to be in it for the long haul.
Trust
The ultimate goal for you in outsourcing facilities management is less work for you and your people. This means less management and giving your facilities management provider free rein within the organisation, so they need to understand the culture and the standards you expect. Can they work to these standards? Will they fit in with your people and culture? This will be a big change in management style, so your facilities management provider needs to be professional and disciplined but also have the right personality and approach for the partnership to work. You need to be able to step back and show faith, and so personality has a lot to do with it, because a facilities management provider will be exposed to people from all levels of the organisation, as well as potentially visitors and customers.
Talk to First Response Group today to discuss your facilities management needs.
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