Challenges Faced by Facility Managers and How to Overcome Them
Facility management is a diverse field. It has evolved greatly over the years and today it is much beyond brick and mortar. Managing and maintaining a facility is no longer about performing a few routine jobs around the facility all day. The modern-day facility managers have to strategize and plan things in advance to improve productivity, reduce costs and enhance the experience of the tenants, residents and visitors. Today’s facility managers are gradually learning to embrace technology to create a better tomorrow and experience for everyone connected to a facility. The facility managers are the decision makers today.
There are always new and different constraints and challenges in the world of facility management. This means that facility managers are always required to be up to date and embrace the new paradigms of technology. It is very important for them to identify issues at an early stage and work towards overcoming them in the most efficient possible way. Let us take a look at some of the biggest challenges that facility managers face so that you are able to take the best decisions for your organization:
Managing any kind of failure successfully
The more efficiently a facility manager is able to repair broken equipment, the better client experience will your organization be able to provide since clients are always complaining about failure repair times. No one can have their operation speed surrendered owing to a broken equipment and this piles the pressure on a facility manager. This is why investing in a maintenance and management system that will centralize all information and monitor the daily operations along with making communications faster will help facility managers keep track of repair times with the SLAs. This is something that facility management companies should be concentrating on right at this moment if they want to at all keep up with the competition around.
Managing the expectations
When we speak of client demands, as a facility manager you must be aware that managing their expectations is a challenge in itself. If your service quality exceeds the expectation of your clients, it implies that the service provided was excellent and the experience was a pleasant one. It is therefore extremely important for facility managers to be aware of the outcomes of the expectations that their clients have from them. They also need to track how their communication is influencing this expectation. This will help them to provide everything in their capacity that can be consisted as a positive and pleasant client experience.
Controlling the costs
There is a constant pressure on facility managers to do more work with less so that they are able to reduce the expenditures of the organization and deal with the various budget constraints. Although, finding resourceful measures to reduce costs and at the same time maintaining efficiency is definitely not a mean feat but there are actually a lot of ways in which a facility manager can do this. They can start with improving the inventory management. Negotiating prices with the suppliers and performing energy audits to find out the possible energy ways that can be eliminated with the help of technology is also a great way in which facility managers will be able to save money in the long run.
Managing Time
The question that most facility managers ask themselves is how does the schedule look? Most of the times, a facility manager is required to juggle between answering calls, writing mails, attending meetings, attending suppliers, performing audits or even attending shows and fairs to grow as a professional. All of this combined with a lot of unplanned events taking place every day, it is not easy for facility managers to manage time efficiently on a regular basis. This also is another issue where technology can come to your rescue. A facility management software or a CMMS helps you manage and prioritize tasks as well as manage a large number of facilities and clients easily. A facility management app allows facility managers get instant access to crucial facilities information like floor plans, shut offs, As-Builts, emergency procedures, equipment manuals and a lot more on their mobile devices. This quick and easy access to information helps them make decisions on advance and manage time and also be prepared to face any failure or emergency in advance.
Investing in the right technology
As we have mentioned earlier, technology is an integral part in the life of facility managers of the modern times. However, it is also important to understand that investing in and inventing the right technology is important to overcome most of the challenges in the world of facility management. Facility managers should be able to make the most of technology in order to reduce costs and improve the overall quality of their user experience and service. Identifying the right technology is therefore crucial to the success of a facility manager.
Overcoming all these challenges is a lot easier than it actually looks like. All it needs for a facility manager is to make the right decisions at the right time and keep user experience the topmost priority.