Change in the Asset and Facility Management industry is now accelerating at an exponential rate forcing industrial leaders to become business revolutionaries, even disruptors to prosper.
Increasing innovative technologies and the demand for greater business intelligence due to underpinned staffing led many companies to seek out ways to become more efficient and meet management expectations with less resources. The industry also saw the need to use more third-party service providers to reduce work order volumes, but it increased cost factors as bringing in external service providers takes time and this justified the need business intelligence (BI) to offer insights and recommendations for effective provider management.
The recent trends within the Facilities Management (FM) industry saw a greater demand for using analytics over raw performance data for driving business decisions. While data has always been vital to the role of the FM mission, today’s BI makes it push-button easy to automate, analyze, and present it to FM stakeholders. FM teams can keep working while all the data updates on schedule in real time, identifying time and cost-savings, underperforming service providers, and assets needing replacement.
FM experts cited that investing in Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to improve asset lifecycles where physical devices and sensors can be used to communicate with FM teams via the Internet to generate performance data to alert managers of potential breakdowns remotely.
These are also used to provide real-time insights into operations. Specifically, IoT combined with a FM software, like a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS), identifies problems (e.g., uncomfortable office temperatures), and automatically creates and assigns work orders without human touch and tracks them through completion.
Technology can help predict asset failure before it happens. These applications relieve facilities managers of repetitive tasks and alert them to problems resulting in cost optimization. This can be attained by predictive analytics and predictive maintenance software along with cloud[1]connected sensors which were developed to identify and carry out preventive maintenance.
Studies by the U.S Department of Energy revealed that predictive maintenance is highly cost-effective in the long run, saving roughly 8%-12% over preventive maintenance and up to 40% over reactive maintenance.
FM was also seen moving towards higher cost efficiency by mitigating inflation and business disruptions with the advent of the convergence of rising inflation and supply chain disruptions which drove increases in material and
labour costs. The critical need was to adopt new strategies to keep to stricter budgets, ensuring uptime, and capturing efficiencies from the use of technology.
Inflation and related issues like supply chain disruptions along with labour and material cost cannot be reduced overnight. Seven interest rate hikes in 2022 by the U.S. Federal Reserve were announced to curb inflation, but it will take multiple quarters of economic recovery before conditions improve. This trend of closely managing costs and pursuing operational efficiencies will extend well into 2023 and likely beyond.
Traditionally, FM can be defined as the tools and services that support the functionality, safety, and sustainability of buildings, grounds, infrastructure, and real estate but today, it has evolved towards enhancing asset quality lifecycle and asset lifecycle through the use of scalable technology and sustainable measures which not only allow for a more lucrative bottom line but creates a long-term secure environment.
It has been predicted that how well firms embrace technology to flex their data analytics and distribution muscle will determine which will prosper to clinch large market share in the years ahead.
Key global leaders have dug deep to transform the industry’s nature and structure over the coming years with technology and sustainability being vital across the new business model. The belief is this period of reinvention will accelerate rapidly on new opportunities to create alpha companies and restore margins.
Many would think that the Asset and Facility Management industry is capitalised by the west, but there is a key Malaysian player making leaps and strides which has garnered a global presence.
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