Compare Facilities Management Software to Improve Building Maintenance, Track Property Assets & Manage Workplaces

Facilities management is a function that encompasses multiple disciplines, tasks, and duties to ensure the functionality, availability, safety, and efficiency of a built environment. The process of facilities management includes:

• Space management and optimising floor layouts
• Energy management and tracking
• Equipment maintenance
• Real estate management
• Contractor management
• Occupancy and employee management

The objective of facilities management is to improve building efficiency and support core business growth. This duty is entrusted to a facility manager.

The role of a facility manager is to establish a safe and productive workplace for occupants. This is achieved by effectively managing a building’s hard and soft facility management services.

Hard facility management services are related to the physical aspect of a property. That includes tasks like structural and equipment maintenance.

Soft facility management services impact the working environment. Including processes such as space management, safety protocols, and cleaning services.

Computer-aided Facilities Management Software (CAFM Software) enables facility managers and landlords to effectively manage their building processes from one centralised system. A typical facility management solution will provide the tools necessary to reduce property costs and improve efficiency throughout a built environment. With CAFM software, you’re able to:

• Track and manage building assets
• Store and sort occupant data
• Build preventative maintenance schedules
• Monitor spare parts inventory
• Organise and store outsourcing personnel data
• Digitalise payments and invoices

Choosing the best CAFM software is subjective and depends on what features you require from a facility management tool. It’s also important to remember that what may be the best CAFM system for one organisation, may not be the best choice for your facility processes. Factors to consider when finding the best CAFM software for your building include:

• Size of the property
• Maintenance requirements
• Spending budget
• Outsourced tasks
• Stakeholder input
• Workplace personnel (cleaners, electricians, plumbers, technicians, etc.)

Although there are similarities between Computer-aided Facilities Management software and a Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS), there are also critical differences between the two when deploying them in the facility management industry.

A CAFM system is implemented to assist facility managers with automating various facility management tasks. This includes:

• Perform cost control audits
• Manage and organise a real-time asset register
• Hire contractors
• Outsource facility processes
• Track the status of work orders
• Collect and digitalise occupant data

A CMMS, on the other hand, has a more narrow focus on providing tools for the management of maintenance within a building. Tools include:

• Work order management
• Build preventative maintenance schedules
• Provide maintenance reports for technicians
• Track machine and equipment matinee history

Whatever your industry, type or size, effective space management and planning is key for a successful facilities management solution. As a facilities manager, not only are you expected to utilise the space within your built environment, but you also need to manage each physical space’s inventory. Including tracking, maintaining and carrying out maintenance when necessary.

Space management and planning should be a vital part of your facilities management software. It will allow you to attract and retain occupants, improve space efficiency, reduce vacant space, and save on operational costs.

Traditionally, there are three main components of space management planning. Of which, all three are most effectively achieved with a facilities management software tool. These are:

Recording Insightful Space Management Data

By recording space management data, with the help of IoT devices such as energy trackers, you’re able to have an overview of how space is utilised in each property. Two main sources of essential data are the usage of space and the operational costs for each physical space.

Accessing and Collecting Real-Time Data

By implementing a facility system that incorporates the usage of real-time data, you’re able to record accurate data of each of your physical spaces as it happens. This allows for quicker and more efficient move management, as well as accurate tracking to enhance space utilisation.

Planning for Effective Space Utilisation

Most crucially, through the real-time and space management data your system has collected, you’re then able to efficiently utilise the space within your facility. Not only does this aim to reduce your operational costs, but by choosing to utilise the space you already have, it can also help to reduce the need for further capital investment.

An essential aim for the successful management of a facility is to ensure that businesses are creating a safe and comfortable environment for their occupants. This is achieved through effective property and building maintenance techniques.

With an effective building maintenance plan in place, businesses can:

• Improve the safety of occupants
• Save money on urgent repair and replacement costs
• Reduce energy consumption
• Extend equipment and infrastructure lifespan

Typical building maintenance processes range from conducting M&E surveys and cleaning bathrooms to waste management and landscaping. Whether deploying a facilities management tool for offices, hospitals, universities, or residential properties, the building maintenance tasks remain the same.

To succeed with a building maintenance plan, it’s important that businesses have access to the necessary tools and features. Most of which can be found in modern cloud-based facilities management solutions, including:

• Planned preventive maintenance (PPM)
• Asset management
• Energy performance analysis
• Safety protocols
• Work order management
• Space management

The implementation of a facilities management tool can benefit a number of different industries, particularly the hospitality and real taste market sector. Whether you’re looking to prolong equipment usage through better asset management, utilise your space management and planning, or improve building and ground maintenance; CAFM can be an effective tool.

For example, here’re four sectors (schools, healthcare, parks and recreation, and churches) that can benefit from the use of a facilities management platform:

Implementing CAFM Software in Schools

Being budget conscious and having to meet the continuous demands of Ofsted, schools will benefit from using some form of a facilities management tool. Not only can a facilities solution maintain and manage the upkeep of school properties, but also the ground too. It’s a great way to identify minor concerns that can be rectified as well before they escalate into costly repairs and sufficient downtime of essential equipment. Other benefits include:

• Adhering to building safety compliances and fire safety regulations and practices
• Keeping external and internal buildings and grounds clean with outsourced cleaning services (either supplied by the school, district, or MAT)
• Providing maintenance for heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems
• Planning for maintenance outside of school hours to avoid disruption to staff and students
• Providing useful and accurate reports to help with planning and budgeting for future maintenance expenditures

Implementing Facilities Management Software in Hospitals and Healthcare

The role of a facilities manager and their team within the healthcare industry is to keep non-clinical services running smoothly in order to help staff focus on delivering exceptional patient care. As well as ensuring hospitals meet standard requirements, a large part of facilities management in healthcare is cleaning. This is either from an outsourced group or a dedicated team of cleaning staff. Other important areas of facilities management in healthcare include:

• Infection prevention through sterilised cleaning
• Catering
• Building maintenance
• Security
• Reception hosting
• Car park management
• Laundry management
• Waste management (including chemical and medical waste)

Implementing CAFM Software in Parks and Recreation

Typically employed by councils and private investors in the UK, facility management tools are essentially required to provide ongoing maintenance to meet health and safety regulations. This provides facility managers to conduct maintenance plans, produce cost estimates, and maintain natural resources. All in a bid to enhance the lives of residents in the town, city, or community. Indoor and outdoor parks and recreation facilities can include:

• Recreation areas
• Sports fields and courts
• Playgrounds
• Dog parks
• Communal swimming pools
• Parking grounds
• Local restrooms
• Amphitheatres

Implementing Facilities Management Software in Churches

In churches and other religious facilities, keeping maintenance costs to a minimum is vital. It’s also important to keep in mind that any management, maintenance or facilities team will be volunteers who are looking to give back to the ministry. There are a number of reasons why churches would need a facility management tool, including:

• Effective cleaning volunteers to prepare churches for events such as weddings and Sunday service
• Team and project management to align volunteers with the correct jobs
• All-year-round landscape and ground maintenance

In a small business, responsibility for facilities may rest with office managers or a designated team member. But, what about moving to the next stage of growth? Acquiring customers or increasing year-on-year revenues require careful planning and well-devised processes. By using the right tools to manage facility processes, small businesses can break even quicker and accelerate growth.

So, which tools are best? Well, that depends on the current stage of a business. Small businesses should consider:

• What budgets are available?
• How complex are business operations and processes?
• How fast do they need to turn things around?
• Are they able to work with several third-party suppliers?

Key benefits of CAFM for small businesses include:

Delegating Duties to Focus on Business Operations

Whether you’re a small business of under 20 employees or under 5 employees, there’s a lot of work that needs to go into effectively managing and maintaining facilities. And, most of the time, all of these responsibilities fall to one or two people. But, with a CAFM tool, managers are able to delegate duties to other staff or outsourced teams. This produces an organised structure within the workplace and promotes a more coordinated effort to help the business grow.

Reducing Downtime of Business-Critical Assets

Some facilities management solutions are coupled with an asset management tool, which is valuable for keeping business-critical assets working at an optimal level and avoiding unplanned downtime.

Storing Data Regarding Outsourced Facilities Management Teams

As most small businesses employ only a handful of staff, the need to outsource certain maintenance and management tasks is unavoidable. This can include anything from cleaning services and building maintenance, to waste management and catering. By having a facilities management tool, you’re able to store all data regarding tasks that have been outsourced. These include outsourced personnel details, maintenance schedules, and support channels.

When using a cloud-based or web-based facilities management solution, you’re able to access all facility data via a mobile device. This could be your smartphone, tablet, laptop or other specific hardware. The ability to do so grants you and other teams members access to data when on the move and in the field. This is particularly handy if you need instant access to the system but are not within a distance of your work desktop.

With a mobile solution, you can access data such as maintenance schedules, contact numbers of outsourced personnel, space utilisation, and energy-use statistics. Effectively giving you the ability to analyse information and make decisions straight from your pocket.

As well as being accessible from anywhere with a service signal, cloud-based facility solutions can have many other benefits, too. Including:

Setting Restricted Permissions

As not all staff and personnel need access to the same data, cloud-based mobile solutions allow you to set what is accessible and what isn’t. For example, maintenance workers may need access to the building’s floor plans but not the financial documents that are intended for your accountant.

Disaster-Proof Security

With an on-premise system, the possibility of a server crash or natural disasters such as floods or fires can severely damage your data. But, with a cloud-based option, your data is routinely backed-up in real-time. This means when a technical issue does occur you have peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and accessible on all devices.

Accessible at All Times

The great thing about a cloud-based system is that it is accessible all the time. By being always-on, it means data is cached and updated immediately. For example, if you make a change to a specific file but accidentally close the application, that change will be automatically saved and you can pick up where you left off.

By choosing to outsource facilities management processes (outsourced FM), you’re transferring the decision-making to third-party outsiders. When outsourced effectively, this can lead to better efficiency around the workplace and a general improvement of skills within the organisation.

Historically, facility processes have been kept in-house with many businesses choosing to hire their own staff for specific jobs. But, as technology has improved, the ease and efficiency of outsourced FM have become a beneficial option. Especially with the use of computer-aided facilities management software (CAFM).

Outsourcing FM processes with a CAFM can benefit businesses in a number of different ways. Including:

Saving Time and Money

Taking staff training and operating costs into consideration, in-house facility management can be an expensive outgoing. Although outsourcing would require payments, these would be considerably lower in comparison.

Staying Flexible With Staff

Particular facility management processes are only required on a seasonal or cyclical basis, such as building and ground maintenance. So, instead of hiring staff and keeping them around just in case, processes such as these can be outsourced.

Providing an Increase in Service Quality

Outsourcing your processes and jobs to an experienced facilities management service provider will guarantee that the job gets done as intended. This experience proves crucial to making sure only the best maintenance staff and engineers are kept on the premises.

As technology and tools continue to develop, the functional gaps between asset management and facilities management software have narrowed. But, though similar in a few aspects, there are still many differences that set the two apart when it comes to day-to-day operations.

Core Functions of Asset Management Software

The main function of an asset management system is to track, measure and analyse the complete value that is provided by all assets throughout the company – both tangible and intangible. The typical functions of an asset manager, include:

• Maximising ROI of assets
• Improving maintenance efficiency
• Tracking asset lifecycle from acquisition to disposal
• To achieve profitability objectives by minimising expenditure

Core Functions of CAFM Software

Although a focus on assets in crucial for a facility manager, their priority is to improve productivity and efficiency within the workplace. While also handling workplace needs and demands. Typical functions of a facility manager, include:

• Optimising the work environment
• To utilise all assets that support the business’s operations
• Focusing on end-user needs throughout the workplace
• To effectively manage corporate social responsibility initiatives

What Is Churn?

Most facility managers will have experienced and dealt with the relocation of occupants within the workplace; also known as churn. But, without the use of an effective computer-aided facilities management tool, many FMs are unaware of their exact churn rate and the expenses that come with it.

A building’s churn rate is presented as a percentage to indicate the total amount of employees or occupants that have moved workspace. For example, if 300 occupants move workstations in an office building that has a total of 1000 people, that building’s churn rate is 30%.

Although businesses may strive for a lower churn rate resulting in fewer bottom-line expenses, there can be some benefits to having a higher churn rate. One advantage is being able to implement the latest workspace trends, such as effective move management through hot-desking.

Currently, the median churn rate for Corporate America organisations is 45%. But some facilities tend to experience percentage rates much higher than this, such as 100% to 200%. On the other hand, there are many facilities that experience low churn rates. Although this may seem ideal, it usually means there are moves taking place that aren’t tracked or FMs aren’t aware of.

Depending on your focus as either a dynamic workplace setting or a more stable business with long-term goals, poor management of your facility’s churn rate can be costly. For instance:

• You’re unaware if you have a high or low churn rate percentage
• You are damaging your chances of implementing positive and progressive changes in the workplace
• You’re unaware of the huge expenses associated with occupants moving from one location to another

What Are the Costs of Churn In a Facility?

Whether an employee has relocated due to a companywide restructuring or because of business downsizing, the costs incurred can be huge.

These types of costs can also depend on the different elements and types of churn. For example, box moves (occupants moving to existing workstations in the facility) average a cost of $160 per move. Whereas furniture moves (reconfiguration of existing furniture or the addition of new fixings) average a cost of $729 per move.

One ‘soft cost’ that can damage a business’s bottom line as a result of churn is downtime. This occurs when an employee has relocated to the premises but is without the necessary tools to continue working. Such as waiting for the right data and network cabling to be operational.

As well as ‘soft costs’, the relocating process will incur expensive ‘hard costs’. Such as:

• Labour rates
• Extra materials needed
• Wall constructions
• Technician support for cabling

How Can CAFM Software Reduce Churn Expenses?

A computer-aided facilities management tool is packed full of features and functionality to help FMs and executives gain a greater understanding of their expenses. This includes identifying how much re-locating employees is costing and understanding the business’s total churn rate percentage.

With the right FM solution, you’ll be able to:

• Gain a holistic view of all spaces and amenities such as workstations and data cabling outputs
• Manage and track assets to reduce wait time and easily locate equipment or furniture as they move between workstations
• Schedule and plan for moves in the building
• Outsource maintenance tasks to reliable technicians
• Increase efficiency of move management and space planning through applications such as CAD and BIM

Moden CAFM software offers many benefits to an FM manager, including allowing the integration of multiple third-party applications. These can be email programs, data storage, fleet management tools, Building Information Modeling (BIM) services and Computer-aided Design (CAD) applications.

Having the option to use third-party tools with a newly installed FM solution can be beneficial in a number of ways, including:

• Offering more tools for accurate data collection and analytics
• Saving costs by not disregarding previous tool purchases
• Being able to keep using tools that are already familiar with employees
• Keeping a familiar workflow of orders and processes

Two applications that are beneficial to an FM manager are CAD and BIM services. These tools are used frequently throughout the facilities industry and provide greater efficiency for data and maintenance management when used with a CAFM solution.

How Do CAD and 3D Modelling Tools Benefit FM Managers

Computer-aided Design and 3D modelling tools are used to assist architects and other professionals in the design of buildings and space. These applications provide a variety of imagery and simulations, allowing a large amount of a building’s technical data to be stored.

As well as architects, a CAD system can be a useful tool for an FM manager as well. With access, they’re able to:

• View premises layout plans
• Produce scenario modelling
• See blueprints for occupation designs
• Track cabling control
• View floor plans
• See building and property information for better maintenance control

How Do BIM Services Benefit FM Managers?

Contrary to popular belief, knowledge of CAD or other 3D modelling tools aren’t required in order to use BIM. Now a mandatory requirement for public sector projects, Business Information Modelling is a process of using computer models to help design, construct and maintain a building.

By integrating a BIM system with your CAFM tool, FM managers are able to reap benefits such as:

• Reducing costs at the delivery and operational stages of a building
• Improving efficiency in communications and work orders throughout departments
• Accessing asset profiles for each modelling object to gain greater maintenance insight
• Gain awareness of asset and equipment location
• Improve the health and safety of occupants with predicted scenarios
• Being involved in the early stages of space planning