The Complete Guide for Facilities Management
Facilities management (FM) is the tools and services that keep the day-to-day operations of buildings and infrastructure operating smoothly, safely, and sustainably. It includes tasks such as maintenance, repairs, space management, planning, health and safety, security, energy management, and more. FM professionals handle a wide range of responsibilities to ensure that buildings and spaces are well-maintained, safe, and functional.
Why Is Facilities Management Important?
Facilities management is a vital piece of allowing a business to operate like a well-oiled machine. It affects aspects of your facility such as:
- Employee productivity
- Energy efficiency
- Cost reduction
- Sustainability
- Technology optimization
- Scalability
- Automation capabilities
- Employee experience
For businesses that own and manage their facilities, strong facilities management allows your employees to be more likely to have the functioning equipment to do their jobs and the safe, comfortable workplace they need.
Your facilities management affects your bottom line more directly, too, allowing you to prevent or delay costly repairs and replacements, keep your energy costs low by maintaining energy efficiency, and more.
For businesses that lease and manage facilities for their tenants or clients, facilities management allows you to uphold your contracts and establish a positive reputation to grow your business.
What Does a Facilities Manager Do?
Facilities managers can go by many titles and may have their responsibilities divided across a whole team. Generally, though, a facilities manager maintains the building, its assets, and its mechanical operations.
This can look different in owner-occupied buildings compared to commercial real estate buildings. If your business owns the building where you operate, your facilities manager oversees all the building’s systems as well as all the mechanical needs inside the building (such as workplace and safety regulations).
If your business leases your facility, on the other hand, your facilities manager will only be responsible for your business’s mechanical needs inside the building. Your landlord’s property manager will manage the building’s systems and exteriors instead.
Facilities managers are responsible for the following tasks daily.
- Sustainability planning
- Preventative maintenance
- Coordinating repairs for building systems and/or equipment
- Creating and enforcing strategies for workplace safety
- Scheduling and completing legally required inspections
- Overseeing facility cleanings
- Planning for disaster mitigation
The work of a facilities manager is varied and complex, making facilities management software a vital tool for facility planning, operational efficiency, and staying on top of your essentials.
What Is Facilities Management Software?
Facilities management (FM) software enables organizations to manage their entire repair and maintenance program from a web-based dashboard. This type of software is designed to help businesses save time and money by properly managing their buildings, assets, and occupants more efficiently and effectively.
With a robust facility management platform, multi-site facility managers can perform a range of functions related to ongoing maintenance and repair, including asset management, commercial contractor sourcing and compliance, work order fulfillment, preventive maintenance scheduling, invoicing, and data analytics.
The right tools allow FM teams to adequately track space usage, analyze spending patterns over time, achieve compliance, increase energy efficiency, and cut costs.
Best Facility Management Software for Efficiency and High Performance
If your business needs a high-efficiency platform for multiple locations, ServiceChannel is your ideal choice. We have the results to prove it. Take Vera Bradley as an example. Within 3 months of implementing ServiceChannel, they achieved a 53% increase in their first-time completion rate.
Here are more reasons why industry leaders trust ServiceChannel.
Comprehensive Facilities Management
ServiceChannel provides a centralized platform that simplifies maintenance, repair, and operational activities. As a result, any facility manager can gain all the information they need for effective facility management in one location.
Data-Driven Decision Making
ServiceChannel provides advanced analytics tools that offer real-time insights into your facility systems. Real-time insights can help you allocate resources more effectively and address potential challenges earlier.
Access to Top-Performing Service Providers
ServiceChannel’s extensive Service Provider Marketplace connects businesses with reliable maintenance teams. Our facility management software contributes to customer satisfaction by promptly and effectively completing maintenance tasks.
Enhanced Operational Efficiency
ServiceChannel’s automation systems consolidate tasks and reduce manual inefficiencies. These facility management features minimize administrative burdens and help facility managers set priorities. When managers have clear visibility into workflows, managing maintenance operations is easier.
“The team has gained the visibility to understand what’s going on with its operations in real-time, as well as history of data to refer back to and use in the future for enhanced planning, budgeting, and forecasting.”
— Craig DeGroat, Maintenance Specialist at TOPS
ServiceChannel demonstrates how facilities management software can significantly improve efficiency and resource allocation. These tools can help your facility maintain consistent work quality across all locations by simplifying processes and providing actionable insights.
However, there are numerous benefits beyond that. The following section highlights some additional benefits of facility management software solutions.
Key Benefits of Facilities Management Software
A robust maintenance software platform will facilitate a range of tasks necessary to ensure 24/7 brand support across all locations while also providing strategic insights into maintenance costs and resource allocation.
Key benefits of facilities management software include streamlined contractor invoicing and payment processing, improved visibility into work order management, better inventory management, and increased access to facilities data.
Repair & Maintenance Management
The primary responsibility of any facilities management team is keeping assets in optimal working condition, which involves proactive scheduling of any needed repairs or equipment maintenance (R&M). The right software makes it easy to submit asset maintenance work orders on the go, track their status, and ensure completion.
Inventory Management
Facilities management software simplifies how businesses track and manage parts and supplies. That’s because it centralizes inventory data and offers clear insights into usage, which supports timely reordering. Plus, your facility may also improve cost savings because these features help you verify that all purchases for parts, supplies, or services are made through vendors pre-approved by your organization.
Parts & Supply Management
Facilities management software provides an easy-to-use mechanism where businesses can buy approved, sourced, and contracted materials. Maintaining control over these purchases helps businesses save money, ensure quality, streamline ordering, and keep track of warranties.
Settlement/Payment Processing
Using facility management software, contractor invoices can be submitted online, validated against contracted rates and applicable sales taxes, coded for G/L processing, and linked with third-party accounting systems.
Facilities management software provides a single platform where a comprehensive record of all equipment and locations, including all work history and maintenance records, can be stored. This simplifies how you manage assets, as well as the tracking of equipment warranties, mandatory inspections, and planned maintenance.
Proposal Management
Most facilities management platforms offer digital RFP management, which allows FMs to easily send a Request for Proposal (RFP) to one or more contractors, monitor RFP status, and quickly accept or sign contracts.
Call Center Access
Facility management software often includes call center access for 24/7 work order submissions by location staff over the phone. This allows for formal follow-up of time-sensitive service requests to ensure timely contractor performance and reassignment if needed.
Contractor Sourcing and Management
Facility teams can access qualified, vetted, and insured contractors and all contractor data, including W-9 forms and insurance information, through a centralized database. This simplifies the contracting process and ensures higher-quality work at a lower cost.
Preventive & Scheduled Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is the key to keeping R&M costs down. With FM software, you can schedule, authorize not-to-exceed (NTE) pricing, and validate all preventive and scheduled facility maintenance events – including mandatory inspections.
Open and Scalable Architecture
Cloud and SaaS-delivered facilities management software works regardless of the underlying IT platform and can easily be adapted to company-wide system updates or changes.
Facilities Management Software Features
Simplified Work Order Management
Location staff can enter facility maintenance service requests directly into the system; work orders are then routed to the appropriate contractor at appropriate pre-approved rates.
Staffing Support
One-on-one support from experienced ServiceChannel staff for ongoing solution upgrades and maintenance, contractor and site-specific location onboarding, and scalability as your organization continues to grow.
Software as a Service (SaaS) Platform
Our continually updated, cloud-based facility management system eliminates costly software installs and upgrades. It removes the burden of supporting additional hardware — all of which dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership.
Spend Analysis
All facilities management spend data and analytics are displayed in real-time in easy-to-read dashboard graphics. View historical data, identify trends and outliers, benchmark against goals and industry standards, and forecast future spending.
Third-Party Integrations
ServiceChannel’s facility management software easily connects to other corporate platforms, such as third-party accounting and payment systems, minimizing data input errors and streamlining payment and audit processes.
Easily Source and Credential Contractors
Enjoy simple, automated processes for maintaining and updating contractor contact and payment information and tracking insurance and certifications. Plus, access our contractor directory to find qualified service providers with the right skills for the specific project.