Proactive Budget Management for Better QBRs

A looming QBR can be a burden, or it can be an opportunity to turn an ordinary meeting into a meaningful strategy session. With a great CMMS, your next Quarterly Business Review can be the best one you’ve ever been a part of. 

Effective leaders and decision-makers know that effective budget management is more than just the process of tracking expenses and cutting costs. When you work with service providers, everyone has to be on the same page about the importance of keeping costs down. That importance is often conveyed in the setting of a Quarterly Business Review (QBR). 

One of the best ways to see better QBR outcomes is to ensure that your CMMS is flexible and robust enough to impact your budget. Being proactive in budgeting means getting innovative when it comes to controlling spending. Great facilities management software with a strong CMMS platform will do more than just keep your facilities running more smoothly; it will also create opportunities for cost management through vendor relationships. 

For facilities managers, budget management is about taking a strategic approach to operations. Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) serve as critical checkpoints throughout the year that evaluate the success of your vendor relationships. 

If you want to see better Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), an essential step is to be proactive in your facilities management budgeting.  Strong facilities management software and a great CMMS can help. 

What is a Quarterly Business Review (QBR)?

A Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is a routine check-in between facilities managers and service providers that provides a framework for evaluating where things are going well and where things need to improve. 

In these recurring meetings, the organization (typically the facilities manager and representatives from other divisions) and service provider review: 

• Asset performance based on the provider’s service
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Alignment with business objectives
• Successful implementation of SLAs 
• Corrective action plans for any areas of weak performance
• If necessary, changes in vendor partnerships

Effective QBRs are built on clear, data-driven reporting and insights. This data can be acquired through your CMMS platform, which should give you real-time vendor performance data, trends over time, and SLA success rates. If your facilities management software isn’t a part of your QBR prep, it’s time to make a change. 

Why is proactive budget management essential for a successful QBR?

Without a proactive approach to budget management leading up to your next Quarterly Business Review (QBR),  the meeting can quickly devolve into reactive problem-solving rather than strategic planning. 

Being proactive means you can anticipate problems before they occur

Proactive budget management means identifying potential financial hurdles before they impact operations. When facilities and finance teams work together, that collaboration can change data into actionable insights, which in turn help you prevent unexpected (and costly!) repairs. 

This collaborative approach to expense management enables: 

• Early detection of budget variances 
• Identification of spending anomalies before they become problematic 
• Development of mitigation strategies for potential cost overruns
• Creation of data-backed justifications for budget adjustments

Proactive budgeting builds credibility

QBRs often involve presenting expense management data to stakeholders from various departments, including finance, operations, and executive leadership. Being prepared with comprehensive budget insights demonstrates your competence and builds trust in your work. 

After all, we know that in the facilities management world, you have to do more than just know your stuff. You have to prove that you know your stuff!

In many companies, facilities are viewed as a source of costs, not as a revenue generator. The attitude toward expense management is that you’re just trying to avoid big expenditures, even though facilities managers know that it’s far more complicated than that. 

When you demonstrate your financial acumen during QBRs, you can show how the department contributes to organizational goals through effective budget management and extending the lifespan of major assets. 

How can analyzing past spending trends improve future budget planning?

Historical expense management and budget data are excellent ways to gain valuable insights into your future budget plans. When you analyze trends and patterns from previous quarters, your forecasting becomes more accurate. 

For example, consider the seasonality of certain expenses. Understanding how the changing seasons affect your facilities can help you anticipate costs, rather than react to them.

Facilities expenses often follow cyclical patterns influenced by factors such as:

• Seasonal maintenance requirements 
• Utility cost fluctuations 
• Preventative maintenance schedules 
• End-of-year budget allocations 
• Seasonal demands on HVAC units

When you use a CMMS to track these patterns, facilities managers can anticipate cost fluctuations and adjust budgets accordingly. If you know that your HVAC costs usually spike during extreme weather seasons, you can incorporate that data into your planning. If your upcoming QBR is evaluating your HVAC service provider, this data can set up the conversation to examine: 

• Unnecessary spending during low-priority seasons 
• Response time during high-priority emergent events
• Cost savings based on routine maintenance during the off-season
• Revenue damaged by customer dissatisfaction during asset downtime
• Spending anomalies discovered through expense tracking 

Identifying Outliers and Anomalies

Expense management often involves investigating outliers and statistical anomalies. You can only identify these outliers when you have data on your side. 

Historical spending analysis helps identify unusual expenses that may indicate underlying issues requiring attention. Consider a business that has three facilities in the same geographic area. 

• Location A: Average quarterly maintenance cost: $15,000
• Location B: Average quarterly maintenance cost: $15,500
• Location C: Average quarterly maintenance cost: $24,000

If you were examining each facility in a silo, without comparing it to the others, you may only notice the year-over-year cost of each facility, rather than the significant difference in costs associated with Location C. 

This is your opportunity to investigate further: 

• Is building C older than A and B? 
• Is the equipment older in building C?
• Is the same service provider responsible for all three facilities, or are there differences in how multiple providers are servicing the building? 
• Are there inefficiencies from your on-site team that should be addressed?  
• Are there specialized maintenance needs in location C? 

Bringing these insights to Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) allows for meaningful discussions about root causes and potential solutions rather than simply noting the variance. 

Key spending data to gather before a QBR

When preparing for a QBR, consider the ways that the vendor contributes to your business objectives. To do this, gather the following before the Quarterly Business Review: 

• Cost management: Are the vendor costs competitive? Is the service provider reducing costs by improving your facilities’ efficiency? 
• Operational performance: Consider first-time fix rates, worker order completion time averages, and overall SLA compliance.  
• Feedback review: When you collect feedback from facility teams and other internal stakeholders, you can evaluate whether or not your team is satisfied with the vendor’s services.  
• Upcoming changes & trends: Working with the finance team, identify any upcoming changes in your business portfolio that could impact vendor responsibilities. 
• Collaboration opportunities: What are some ways that the vendor can support your operational goals through collaboration? Examples include documenting asset conditions and reporting maintenance concerns while working on other projects. 

What key financial metrics should facility managers track before a QBR?

Preparing for Quarterly Business Reviews requires monitoring specific financial metrics that provide a comprehensive view of budget performance. These metrics help facilities managers tell a complete story about their department's financial health and justify resource allocation decisions.

By focusing on the right KPIs, you can transform QBRs from routine status updates into strategic planning sessions that drive real value for your organization. Use your facilities management software’s CMMS to track key financial metrics, including: 

• Cost per square foot, broken down by utilities, maintenance, cleaning, and security
• Preventative vs. reactive maintenance spending ratio (
• Average work order costs by location, trade, and vendor 
• Budget variance - planned vs. actual spend by category 
• Maintenance cost as a percentage of asset replacement value 
• First-time completion rates for vendor work orders 
• Response times for emergency maintenance calls 
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance rates 
• Year-over-year spending trends by location and category 
• Asset lifecycle position and remaining useful life estimates 
• Vendor invoice accuracy and approval times 
• Cost of downtime from equipment failures 
• Energy consumption and utility cost trends 
• Deferred maintenance backlog value 
• Return on invested capital for facility improvements 

These metrics provide the foundation for data-driven QBR discussions that move beyond mere cost reporting to strategic decision-making. This kind of budget management can make a huge difference! 

When you put these metrics into context, like comparing them to benchmarks and historical performance, you can demonstrate the value contribution of the facilities department. You can also secure the resources you need to continue doing important work. 

You can also communicate the importance of meeting these KPIs with your service providers and develop improvement plans to address weaker performance areas. 

How does a CMMS help streamline budget forecasting and cost control?

With good implementation, your facilities management software can serve as the foundation for effective budget management. A modern CMMS centralizes data, automates key processes, and helps you forecast expenses. By combining these features, you can transform the ways you control costs. 

A modern CMMS enhances budget management through:

• Real-time budget tracking 
• Automated alerts when  you’re approaching spending thresholds
• Customizable dashboards 
• Automated approval workflows 
• Instant generation of QBR reports and performance metrics 
• Integration with other business systems
• Live vendor scorecards to track performance against KPIs 
• SLA compliance monitoring
• Historical trend analysis
• Streamlined invoice processing

These CMMS features certainly help you with both budgeting and cost control, but they also improve your QBR experience. That’s because these data provide new levels of visibility into the budgeting process. You don’t have to spend hours compiling reports before each QBR. Instead, you can pull data quickly and use it to discover meaningful insights into the performance of your service providers. 

How can Fexa improve financial visibility and support better QBR discussions?

We’ve talked a lot about how a CMMS can improve your QBRs—now let us tell you how Fexa is the best CMMS for this exact purpose! 

Fexa's advanced CMMS platform offers specialized capabilities that enhance budget management. These features have the potential to transform Quarterly Business Reviews from general assessments into data-driven planning sessions. 

Here’s how: 

Customizable budgeting framework

Fexa provides advanced tools that make budget management in facilities seamless. With customizable budgeting tools, you can set budgets according to your specific needs—whether by time period, location, category of work, or market. This kind of granular flexibility ensures that your budget structures align with how your business actually operates. 

Advanced analytics for better decision-making 

Fexa's analytics capabilities include:

• Spend analysis by location, trade, and geographic market
• Historical trending with customizable time periods
• Outlier identification highlighting unusual expenses
• Performance benchmarking across facilities and vendors

The best decisions you can make are informed and empowered by having the most current and accurate data points available. 

Streamlined QBR processes

At Fexa, we’re especially proud of these specialized features that simplify the QBR process: 

• Fexalytics Dashboards, which automatically create benchmarks for vendor performance
• Live Scorecards to keep you informed regarding service providers’ SLAs and KPIs 
• SLA Breach Alerts to notify you whenever SLAs aren’t met
• Post-QBR Action Planning so you can track any assigned tasks and follow up on deadlines 

It’s a lot easier to prepare for QBRs when facilities managers have access to these data points and dashboards! Facilities management software should make your QBRs easier. Check your CMMS capabilities to understand just how much potential lies in great data. 

Fexa can help transform your Quarterly Business Review process through proactive budget management 

If you’re ready to learn how Fexa can improve the operations for multi-site organizations, sign up for a free efficiency audit. One of our facilities maintenance experts will examine your protocols and help you make a simple action plan for immediate improvements.