According to CBRE, the average increase of facility management costs in 2022 was 7.6%, compared to just 2.5% before the pandemic. Inflation for hard services, intense labor competition for soft services, energy prices volatility, and global conflicts are driving up the costs of facility management year by year. 

This difficult business environment prompts companies to adopt facility management software, which promises to optimize operations and reduce costs. We talked to Anthony Serdula, the leader of A. Anthony. Corp, to figure out how a strategic approach to the implementation of facility management software can help you offset the rising costs and improve the quality of work. 

But first, let’s briefly cover the basics. 

What is facility management software?

Facility management refers to tools, services, and strategies that keep the operations of buildings and infrastructure smooth, predictable, and trouble-free. Facility management encompasses tasks like: 

• Equipment and building maintenance, coordination of cleanings and repairs
• Energy and sustainability management
• Occupancy and space management
• Security and grounds management
• Emergency and disaster mitigation and response

Facility management software aims to remove manual work, simplify keeping of records and assignment of tasks, energy monitoring and maintenance, and more. Effective implementation of facility management software increases profit margins and makes your customers happier. 

Facility management software features

The common features of facility management software include: 

Energy use management

Facility management software tools allow you to track the energy use of your building. This is essential for cutting costs and meeting your sustainability goals.  By providing you with a 360-degree view of the energy use of your buildings, your facility management app gives you an opportunity to spot and eliminate energy waste. 

Energy management features can also reduce manual work. For instance, you can save time and resources by automating utility bill entry. This reduces time spent on repetitive tasks and allows you to focus on analyzing data and devising strategies to optimize energy use. 

Asset management

Assets within the building make it functional and pleasant to use. They also need regular maintenance to work properly. Some assets normally looked for by facility managers include: 

• Facility-related assets. This includes HVAC equipment, common room appliances, lighting, printers, IT equipment, furniture, etc. 
• Employee equipment. This includes mobile devices, uniforms, safety equipment, vehicles, keys, etc. 

Facility asset management software offers a variety of features designed to simplify and streamline asset management. This includes, but is not limited to: 

• Asset tracking. The software keeps information on the assets, their location, condition, and performance. 
• Depreciation tracking. The software keeps initial acquisition dates and records maintenance costs, enabling you to determine when the asset needs to be replaced. 
• Centralization of data. The best facility management software centralizes data on assets from all your facilities in one location, providing you with a 360-degree view of your facilities. 

Predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance helps you identify the signs of possible breakdowns, failures, and unplanned outages before they happen. However, manual predictive maintenance often turns into excessive or unproductive work. The result: wasted material and time resources, as well as deteriorated asset longevity. 

Software for facilities management collects and analyzes real-time data of how your physical assets are used. This allows you to identify the spots for optimizing the performance of each asset and improve overall efficiency. As a result, your facility maintenance app can project future maintenance costs and help you optimize maintenance schedules. 

Building maintenance system software also enables you to create and track maintenance schedules and assign work orders to technicians and facility managers. 

Space management

Space management allows you to track, analyze, and optimize the use of your spaces. Space management features can be diverse and depend on the needs of your business and the type of spaces you manage. 

For example, your facility management tool may provide you with a building layout, models, interactive floor plans, and other details, which can be helpful for managing a manufacturing plant and ensuring the safety of workers. 

On the other hand, if your business involves booking and renting of spaces, you can integrate reservation features in your facilities management platform. These features will allow you to quickly reserve spaces, make changes in reservations, and track occupancy. 

Personnel management

Personnel management features optimize management of personnel working in your facilities. The software can provide you with a comprehensive and easily accessible database of your personnel, their credentials, background, and performance history. 

The software can also help you with contract management, onboarding, and handling of payrolls and benefits. 

Vendor management

Many businesses today rely on external vendors to complete some of the facility management tasks. Vendor management systems can help you measure the performance of external vendors, streamline B2B payments, track your spending, and comply with legal regulations. 

A facilities management system with these features will help you save costs and optimize vendor performance. 

FM software case study: Poly

In 2016, Anthony Serdula reached out to Apiko to develop a B2B facility management solution. The core objective was to streamline and automate the company's internal processes, particularly the management of personnel and external technicians responsible for both scheduled and emergency maintenance tasks.

Apiko developed a tailor-made B2B facility management application designed to facilitate seamless workflows between organizations and service providers. Today, this comprehensive tool allows companies to create work orders, manage invoices, select suppliers, and monitor reports on completed tasks.

To meet the specified requirements, Apiko created several distinct facility workflow solutions tailored for different user roles: a Poly website, which includes a site for administrators, and a Poly mobile app designed for technicians. 

Poly Website features include: 

• Workforce management features. A manager can create, filter, view, and assign, and modify tasks for technicians, contractors, and subcontractors. 
• Statistics. The system analyzes the performance of technicians and contractors, including average duration of work, compliance with deadlines, and other KPIs. 

Poly Accounting features include: 

• Monitoring purchase orders
• Managing invoices and accounting
• Recording equipment utilized by technicians for work orders
• Exporting data to Excel, PDF, and print formats
• Tracking buildings and business unit identifiers
• Conducting detailed spend analytics
• Generating exception reports and alerts

 

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Poly Reporting features include: 

• Accounting module reports. The software provides a range of accounting reporting features. This includes client invoicing, batch invoicing, client payments, supplier payments, supplier invoices, financial (chart of accounts, profit and loss, balance sheet, etc), and banking features (bank reconciliation, transfer funds, bank deposits, etc.). 
  
  
  
  
• Reports for admins. The software collects and analyzes staff activity and creates timesheet reports, spend reports, and recent projects reports. 
  
  
• Site reports. The software reports on completed Work orders, condition of assets, technician stats, KPIs, сontracts (contract expiration reports), and purchase orders.
  
  

Poly Mobile app functionality for technician leads and technicians includes: 

• Creating, view, and searching tasks using an advanced filtering system
• Manually logging time spent on work
• Posting updates within each task to include job-specific information
• Recording consumables used during tasks
• Maintaining records of equipment and tools used in the work
• Delegating tasks (available for technician leads)
• Updating task statuses according to workflow stages (Queue, In Progress, On Hold, Completed, Canceled)
• Accessing basic individual and general performance statistics. 

Developing a facilities management work order system and a maintenance system enabled A.Anthony to, first, optimize internal processes, and, later on, to provide Poly software to other businesses. 

We interviewed Anthony Serdula to get you first-hand business insights on the new developments in facility management. 

Facility management software and innovations: an interview

Anthony, please tell us about your company. What have you started from and what do you specialize in now?

A.Anthony Corp. is a facility management company that focuses on business process and data optimization for large enterprise clients with lots of building locations.

We work with clients to simplify complex process with the goal of creating an environment where the work is reviewable, repeatable and automated. We do this by providing a consultative approach to understanding a client's current situation, collaborate with them on solutions, and then execute on the plan.

What has prompted you to create your own facility management system? Do you remember that day when this idea started to simmer in your head?

I had been in the property management, architecture and real estate business for many years.  I noticed this strange thing that you could get 50 people who wanted to build you a new building, but if you had a broken door knob it was one of the most annoying things to get done. So I decided to focus on small jobs.  

Prior to starting the company, I had a friend that was in the operational excellence consulting business. So I asked him: “Before I start my company, I’d like to hire you so that I approach our service from an operational excellence point of view. I want to be able to fix 2000 door knobs a week with the same quality and level of service that keeps people coming back for more”.  

What I meant was, I knew I would be in a forever cycle of continuous improvement if I wanted to have a long term company. And I needed process, systems and a quality control approach. So that’s what we started to build 20 years ago. We fixed 1 broken door knob to start! And to scale the business, there had to be a technology solution to organize things.

How does your product solve the problems of modern companies?

One of the biggest problems in our industry is the lack of highly skilled personnel.  So quality control is a big issue that is hiding behind many doors. So this is how we approach that problem.  First, we are a product with service.  The reality is in our field, you need people with expert level skills in charge to do this job well. Then it’s a matter of solving for Reviewable | Repeatable | Automated.  

We focus a great deal on creating an environment where we help people do their jobs, regardless of their skills and knowledge. And a key ingredient is a technology platform built by industry experts solving for real world problems. This allows us to create simple process and task driven workflow.

How do you see the future of the facility management?

Our industry is probably the largest most archaic on the planet.  The future will be more transparency, more process, marketplace platforms, data governance, AI, machine learning. I suspect those with superior technology will dominate and those that don’t have it will be niche players. We need some serious innovation in our field, and we’re hoping in a small way to lead that trend.

Anthony, what in your opinion is the right approach to check if there is a need for your product on the market and create something your users will really appreciate?

Everything we do is based on what client’s need.  We look for pain, dysfunction, inefficiency, paper process, silos of information, poor communication and broken process.  And every client is different, yet many have the same issues.  When you help a client fix these things, you deliver value and value is what clients appreciate.

Your platform connects organizations with facility management companies and service providers. How do you think entrepreneurs can bring value to all user segments and attract them to their platform simultaneously?

Creating value for all user segments is about creating a platform effect whereby the participants have access to robust business, can conduct business in a very efficient way including communication, information transfer, contract terms, payments and all the usual business arrangements. Again, the goal would be Reviewable | Repeatable | Automated.  Oh, and don’t forget about curation. Someone has to be there to make sure everyone is being fair and not breaking the rules.

One of the challenges B2B entrepreneurs face today is building a strong business model. What strategies do you use for creating a valuable business model for each of your customer segments?

One of my personal weaknesses is I’m not a big strategy guy.  I tend to lean towards problem-solving and looking for things that need to be fixed.  In our field, I do believe we have the expertise to help almost any client.  But, we also have a limited number of experts.  So I strive to help a field with personnel and quality control issues.  Indirectly, I suppose that is the strategy.  Fix stuff.  People like people who can fix stuff. 

The future of facility management

Technologies are increasingly impacting facility management. Here are some of the trends you need to keep an eye on. 

• Improvement of HVAC technology

It’s no secret that nearly 60% of total energy consumption goes on heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC). That brings a quite round number in a bill. Cutting down the energy consumption is essential from a financial and environmental stand point.

The AI and IoT-powered HVAC equipment are growing in popularity. These technologies enable you to control and interact with your equipment remotely. The systems also send you repair notifications that allows you to optimize energy usage. In rough numbers, you can save up to 20% on energy expenses. 

• IoT

The Internet of Things has entered almost all industries. An intuitive and innovative technology, IoT gets more popular these days. In facility management, these solutions come with three-fold benefit: 

• improvement of resource efficiency (i.e., automation tasks, smart environmental monitoring, sensor-enabled space usage, activity monitoring, etc.)
• reduction of energy consumption and energy bills
• making the workplace more flexible and safe

Data and Decision-Making

Data analytics takes over a critical role in addressing costs and performance. Digital transformation in facility management simplifies and secures data storage, access and sharing. This reduces downtime and speeds up maintenance checks.

Besides, the gathered data from IoT and FM software also shows:

• patterns in the users’ work and where their workplace functions can be improved
• how to drive improvements for the energy usage, as well as inner and outer environment usage
• the trends impacting performance and where you can affect the change. 

Conclusion

Facility management software is becoming essential due to globally growing FM costs and lowering profit margins. At Apiko, we develop facility management mobile apps and desktop solutions that are used by dozens of businesses in a variety of industries. For example, you can check out our article on healthcare workforce management to learn how we optimized hiring and management of healthcare staff. If you have a facility management project in mind, don’t hesitate to contact us today!