Getting Your CFO’s Approval For New FM Tech: Lessons from State of FM Ep. 3

Most facilities management leaders assume the hardest part of evaluating a new platform is picking the right CMMS vendor. According to the latest episode of State of FM, that’s not where deals actually stall.

Fexa CMO Jen Schiffman sat down with Director of Product Marketing Beth Mooney and Chief Revenue Officer Bart van Praag to unpack why that internal groundwork matters so much, and what it actually looks like in practice.

Why Do FM Platform Deals Stall Before They Even Start?

Deals rarely stall because of the product itself. More often, they stall because an organization hasn’t done the internal work to prove why change needs to happen now. FM teams feel all kinds of operational pain points daily: emergency repairs, vendor relationships,  a lack of visibility, and so much more. However, the finance team doesn’t approve tasks based on what is painful for or not for the facilities team. Rather, they approve asks that make a strong business case. 

The business case for a new FM platform is hard to ignore. Repair and maintenance costs and utility spend are showing up as real SG&A pressure for large retailers. Refrigerant regulation is adding compliance and capital expenditure risk. Skilled labor is scarcer and more expensive to source. 

When you review all of these concerns, it’s clear that the actual problem isn’t  as simple as, “We need a better CMMS.” The real problem is that the operating model for physical assets itself needs to change.

What’s the Difference Between a Feature List and a Required Capability?

If you’re currently frustrated with your current system, you’re not alone. But again, the finance department isn’t particularly motivated by what’s frustrating. You can make a lengthy list of things you dislike about your current system, but you have to ask yourself, what is the business case? What’s going to make the finance department hear our concerns? 

Finance funds outcomes like control, visibility, risk management, and performance. That’s what you have to communicate. 

If you say to finance, “We need a CMMS with a better dashboard,” that doesn’t carry much weight. But what if you frame the request around what the financial leadership needs: “We need a dashboard that gives us portfolio-level visibility into asset health across every location”? Now that’s an effective funding request. 

When your facilities team has identified the best possible CMMS, what you need is a champion. That’s someone who can advocate for what facilities need in a way that finance divisions understand. 

What Does a Strong Champion Actually Look Like?

The person who can champion your chosen model is like a translator. They can take one problem and explain exactly what it means to everyone in facilities, to site operators, and to finance and operations. Sometimes, they can translate it to all of these stakeholders at once. 

The gap between a weak and strong champion comes down to language:

• A weak champion makes a weak argument, saying, “Our system is outdated, so we should probably start looking at AI,” without any compelling evidence 
• A strong champion says, “Our operating model makes it hard to control the indicators that prove we’re a healthy business–let’s fix that.” 

That strong champion ties facilities performance to something finance already cares about, since the numbers that eventually roll up into the company’s financial statements originate at the location level. 

Good champions aren’t something a sales team stumbles into. They’re built, deliberately and with purpose. 

What’s the Cost of Doing Nothing?

Staying with the status quo is still a decision, and it comes with a price. That price may look different from organization to organization, but we see the same things over and over. R&M costs are rising, labor is harder to find, and regulation is tightening. Standing still means letting these costs go up without any pushback or problem-solving. 

Most buyers assume the difficult conversation is the one they’ll eventually have with a vendor. It isn’t. The harder conversation is actually internal: you have to get cross-functional stakeholders aligned on why change is needed in the first place. 

Before publishing an RFP, a few questions need answers:

• What’s the cost of staying the same?
• What risk is the organization carrying by not changing?
• What capabilities are actually required?
• Who needs to approve the decision?

These are the questions Bart van Praag, Fexa’s Chief Revenue Officer, points to directly in the episode of State of FM. Organizations that get approval tend to know the outcome they’re funding before they ever start evaluating software.

What Should You Actually Ask a Vendor Before You See a Demo?

Once there is an internal understanding of the problems your new FM platform or CMMS needs to solve, conversations with vendors start to look different. 

A potential vendor should help quantify the business problem before showing any software at all. How does their platform connect specific capabilities directly to cost, risk, compliance, or productivity? And what evidence can they point to that proves that adoption actually changes outcomes? That is much more powerful than whether or not the software has one specific feature or another.  

There’s also a caution worth repeating. Be wary of any vendor that says yes to everything. That can be a signal of confidence without substance. 

The work that actually gets a deal approved happens well before any of that: in the internal case, the language a champion learns to speak, and the honest answer to what happens if nothing changes.

Want to join the conversation about how a powerful CMMS can change the game for your organization? 

Watch State of FM Ep. 3 in full, then request a personalized demo when you’re ready to talk.