Smart Automation Yields Significant ROI for Facilities Management Software

Speedy Compliant Smart Automation Yields Cost Containment Without Compromising Quality

Is Cost Containment and Savings Top of Mind for You?

Getting to real sustainable cost containment and savings for facilities managers and their business colleagues requires a comprehensive approach to assessing return on investment for the systems and partnerships a business has in place.  Speed matters.  Speed, quality, and accountability gained through implementing a modern CMMS to replace manual processes or antiquated software solutions have been shown to yield as much as 250%+ ROI in the first year with one of our customers.  While some CMMS solutions focus entirely on squeezing your vendors to save money, these are not sustainable solutions and can often compromise quality significantly.

In fact, speed and velocity are the new currency for surviving and thriving in today’s world for businesses across all functions and smart automation can speed up your facilities management and maintenance!

Speed, Compliance, and Quality Drive ROI for Facilities Management Software in Support of Reactive Maintenance.

Going fast means a lot of things for facilities managers.  The most obvious is often attributed to having effective and efficient processes to react and mitigate a range of issues from minor to significant that arise in the course of business for a facility location.  Measuring this type of reactive response can be assessed via a number of metrics, and some of the more obvious measure time.  For example, two common metrics are Total Duration (Work order initiated to closed) and Travel Time to Site (How much of the time between initiating a dispatch and having the technician or technicians required to mitigate the issue arrive and start the work).

Going Beyond Just Fast for Real ROI for Facilities Management Software

Faster resolution is generally better – in this case, the speedier the resolution process the more likely any potential negative impact on the business is reduced.  But to get to true return on investment, there are other factors where speed, velocity, and efficiency come into play around assessing the return on investment of a CMMS solution.

Just a few examples of questions you should ask when assessing your solution options for achieving the best return on investment in support of reactive maintenance include:

Support for Quick Initiation of Work Effort for Mitigation.

• Does the solution provide a user-friendly way for the in-store personnel to report the issue?
• Is the interface and experience tailored to the roles of each user, such as store managers who only use the system on occasion??
• Is automation built in for completion of key fields like location, address, phone numbers, etc based on the user login credentials?
• Are there alternatives like voice response options to initiate work directly from cell phones while on the floor?
• Are there checks and balances in place to assure that duplicate work orders are not initiated by different individuals identifying the issue
• Are there troubleshooting checklists to avoid the spend if the individual is able to resolve the issue themselves?

Support for Compliance and Automation that Leverage Business Logic to Save TIme and Deliver Consistent Results.

• Does the system have built-in business logic that supports automated dispatch based on predetermined factors such as trade, urgency, location, and NTE pricing when acceptable to the business?
• Will the problem resolution require additional trades (example: toilet overflow might require a plumber and janitorial to support clean up)? Can both trades be initiated concurrently and the overall resolution tracked as a single incident for reporting downtime and costs?
• Are there clear checklists and expectations communicated to the technician in support of key business requirements?  (More on Smart Communications here) Examples could be things like dress codes or hygiene (this is top of mind today as companies deal with the global pandemic and varying rules from location to location across their fleet of stores) or even clarity on decision authority as problems are being triaged and estimates for completion formulated.

Support for Asset Management.

• If asset-related, does the system support Asset Management features so that the ticket can be populated with make/model to enable the technician to come prepared with typical spare parts?
• Does the asset management data allow the technician to quickly assess previous incidents to determine if there have been signs of degradation – is this a repeat problem? 
• Does your system allow you to track all spending from the asset level, and any attribute for reference to make quicker decisions on repair vs. replace? 

Support and Processes in Place to Assure Compliant Work Completion.

• Does the system incorporate compliance checks that must be completed prior to closing out a work order?
• Are there compliance and audit requirements that can be required prior to the submission of invoices?
• Can the system flag issues such as non-compliance with NTE pricing or SLA agreements and automatically route them to the appropriate parties for resolution prior to allowing for invoicing based on role-based permissions?
• Is there a capability to survey in-store resources for satisfaction and quality assessments following completion of work?

All of these features shave minutes or even hours off of the overall time to resolution – assuring minimal downtime and minimal impact on customer experience based on the issue.  Furthermore, through the relationships of business logic and automated processes enabled by modern CMMS solutions, companies are able to reduce manual cycles to the extent that they can manage more locations without hiring additional resources.  The FM teams focus their energy on the exceptions that need additional levels of judgment and project management while the more routine items are handled with little waste of time and resources.

Translations Into Real ROI Vary by Business, But We’ve Seen 250%+ In Year One.

Translating these efficiencies into measurable ROI varies by business type, but if you can imagine that a Facilities Professional costs between $80K – $120K year on average, saving even 5 hours a week of time over the course of 52 weeks saves $15K / year of their time that can be reallocated to more valuable and strategic work.  In specific customer analysis, we have been able to identify as much as a 250% – 400% ROI in a single year for users that are not leveraging any software solution and moving to a Fexa solution.

We would love the opportunity to do a full assessment of your specific ROI potential by upgrading to a modern CMMS like Fexa. Sign up for a demo and consult with us!