Keeping Repair and Maintenance Costs in Check as a Growing Business

As you grow your business, existing facilities management programs can’t always keep up  — you’re spending too much time and budget on repairs, downtime is affecting your sales, you don’t have a big enough facilities team, or you just don’t know where to start when looking for service providers. That’s why it’s important to create a facilities management program: a holistic approach to managing and maintaining your infrastructure and assets that includes areas of focus like operations, sustainability, property maintenance, and repair and maintenance (R&M). Without a solid, scalable facilities management program in place, your R&M spend can quickly spiral out of control.

Facilities management costs are elevated as it is: Companies saw increases across electrical equipment, food services, HVAC maintenance, and more in 2023, while another study found 62% of businesses reported upticks in maintenance expenses that exceeded the inflation rate. When you then take into account the snowball effect that can happen without proper preventive maintenance, you’re faced with budget-busting repairs and replacements down the line — not to mention the operational costs associated with increased downtime.

When your assets aren’t maintained correctly, it not only negatively impacts your bottom line, but the health of your entire business. You’re unable to operate at peak performance and are left scrambling to keep up with customer demand, while managing reduced team morale and productivity. In short, your opportunity for growth is severely limited.

To optimize your facilities management programs with regular, high-quality repair and maintenance, adopt a forward-thinking strategy, like outsourcing the daily facilities grind to a trusted partner. It could be key to keeping your growing business on track.

Uncovering Cost Challenges

Beyond economic factors that increase materials and labor expenses across the board, there are several R&M challenges that contribute to rising costs for ambitious businesses:

• Lack of visibility and control
  
  As you scale — especially when you launch new locations, product lines, or functionalities — the number of assets you rely on multiplies, adding volume and complexity to your R&M program and reducing visibility.
  
  Between accommodating different maintenance schedules, tracking lifecycle and performance, and accurately predicting related expenses, it’s increasingly difficult to manage all your assets at once and tightly control your spend. These costs are further compounded by the unpredictable nature of emergency asset repairs.

• Limited budget and resources
  
  Product development, real estate and construction, and advertising often take the spotlight when it comes to capital investment for scaling business, leaving less room in the budget for R&M.
  
  When you don’t have the means to grow your facilities headcount, you may be forced to put off the essential care that can prevent pricey breakdowns in the future. That all but guarantees impaired or ineffective assets that compromise your time, energy, and bottom line.

• Finding capable service providers
  
  Service provider fees and quality can vary wildly, and it can be difficult to find vendors that meet specific business needs — not to mention reliable data about their work. If you’re entering a new market, it’s twice as hard.
  
  Most businesses end up turning to subjective, review-based sources like Yelp or Google that don’t always offer trustworthy information. When you do connect with a potential provider, you often don’t get transparent pricing information. So, if you want to conserve cost, you have to go through a time-consuming research and hiring process.

• Balancing maintenance and profitability
  
  No matter the size of your business, it can feel like a tightrope walk to keep assets running efficiently while prioritizing growth.
  
  Too much focus on reactive maintenance when something goes wrong can lead to urgent, last-minute repairs with an exorbitant price tag. Too much focus on preventive maintenance, like frequent upkeep appointments, can lead to overages on nonessential care. Without a clear plan in place, overspending is usually an inevitable reality. 

A Scalable Strategy: How Outsourcing with the Right Facilities Partner Can Help

With the many challenges of finding the right service providers, your instinct may be to turn to in-house solutions, including:

• Attempting to handle simple repairs and routine maintenance yourself
• Negotiating better contracts with existing service providers
• Researching sustainable alternatives for low-performing or energy-draining assets

However, this approach often requires extra time and staff you can’t afford. Additionally, the growing volume and complexity of your asset management needs means simple solutions are out of reach.

That’s why more businesses are turning to a collaborative outsourcing partner for the daily operations of their facilities, who can help tackle all of these challenges at scale while bringing costs down.

A facilities management partner like ServiceChannel takes the busywork and stress off of your plate by managing daily operations, your provider networks, and preventing downtime. This partnership includes:

• Reduced administrative burden for you and your front line teams: Instead of having to create and then chase down every work order yourself, leave it to an outsourced team on call 24/7. They can help keep your operations running on time and at a low cost, without adding extra headcount.
• Expense management as your business scales: It takes countless hours to track every single provider invoice and payment. The right outsourcing partner will review proposals and validate invoices on your behalf, so you pay only for the right work done the right way.
• Getting top service providers added to your network: Leverage an outsourcing partner with a Service Provider Marketplace that provides objective performance metrics, and tap into a provider network with top performers. Depending on trade, you can see up to 30% lower invoice costs, 80% faster speed, and 40% higher quality work.
• Real-time visibility over your performance: Your outsourcing partner takes daily admin off your plate, but you still have full ownership over your data. You’ll be able to access data on spend and location, along with asset performance — all from a cloud-based single source of truth. Added visibility empowers you to make smarter decisions as you grow your business.

Collaborating with the right facilities partner ensures your business has the agility to scale to new locations and offerings while still operating at peak performance — and keeping costs in check.

Learn more about how a facilities management partner like ServiceChannel Managed can help you seamlessly scale your facilities program alongside your business.