When talking about Facility Management (or FM or infrastructure and service management for the purists), many people confuse integration and outsourcing, although these are two different notions.
While the outsourcing of FM services is easily understood, the notion of integration seems to pose a few problems for several company managers, who go so far as to say that an integrated FM is automatically outsourced, which may be the case naturally, but not necessarily…
By integrated FM, we mean the grouping, coordination and co-ordination of FM infrastructures and services within the same entity, with the same approach and important synergies.
Outsourcing can accelerate this integration by, for example, outsourcing all or most of the services to a single FM provider, but in our opinion this work should first be done in-house. It is very rare for the external service provider to spontaneously propose optimisation to the client, as the latter wishes to retain service volumes and margins…
So how can FM services be best integrated? The examples below provide some ideas:
• Establish a common management approach between property management and FM within the company.
• Opting for an inclusive management style that allows specialists in the field to bring up possible opportunities and synergies.
• Set common objectives and eliminate any potential points of friction between the teams.
• Harmonise the quality of services and performances in terms of both volume and quality (unity of doctrine).
• Create multidisciplinary teams and functions that can act flexibly and quickly (“job enlargement”) and constantly train in new technologies and market approaches.
• Simplify and harmonise processes (from design to implementation and operation).
• Introduce technology wherever possible while reducing the number of interfaces and reports that often serve no purpose in terms of management (not to mention operational reports).
• Etc.
All of this has nothing to do with outsourcing: outsourcing can simply be an additional step for facility management.
Integration finally allows to offer harmonised and logical services to internal and external customers. Integration often provides better opportunities for FM staff and brings great synergies and cost savings. So why not doing it?
Good choice, good thoughts, and good reading.