What Facility Managers are saying after one year of COVID-19
At the end of 2020, after a year of ups and downs, Urbest launched a survey targeting facility managers in order to understand what happened with their facilities and the maintenance of their properties.
At the end of 2020, after a year of ups and downs, Urbest launched a survey targeting facility managers in order to understand what happened with their facilities and the maintenance of their properties.
Nowadays the industry of Facilities Management has a large spectrum of burning needs and requirements. Furthermore, each manager/company is different and so each has their own particularities.
To start, we asked facilities managers which of the following words have the best fit with the nature of their work?
The results show that “Sense of Service” and “Safety” were the two most prominent responses. At Urbest, we believe in a deep sense of service and we are a collaborative platform, and the results above make us happy.
Let's head to the second question: What are your priorities for next year's strategy?
There is a clear and consistent need for meaningful interactions with people. “Happy clients” was the most voted priority for strategy in 2021, combined with safety and a sense of service.
In second place, we can observe a need for measuring performance. Most of us would agree that data is key to a successful business and fortunately, we are in an era where we have a lot of tools, apps and services available to start tracking and measuring the performance of our work.
Ultimately, our survey shows that “better communication” was the least opted answer. Nowadays, there are a lot of apps such as WhatsApp, Signal or even Telegram that allows one to stay connected with other people. On this end, if we can give you a tip, take communication in your offering to the next level and centralise all the conversations, documents and the maintenance tasks in one app. We will be happy to show how you can get from paper/emails/sms to easily structured job requests.
Continuing with the survey, we asked facility managers if they could run their property without their smartphone for a month?
What does this tell us? Smartphones are the link between the physical and digital world. The key is using them properly, benefiting from the advantages of these devices without losing the interaction with people.
Check this article about digitalisation and property management
To sum up the facility managers survey, we asked them if COVID-19 was an opportunity for them to digitalise FM?
The numbers clearly show that even if you are not prepared to jump into digitalisation, facilities management needs it and it is possible. The good news for those who have not embarked on this journey yet is that not much is needed:
- smartphone or laptop
- an Internet connection
- A software that can empower your team, be your partner and bring simplicity and ease of use to your operations. A software that you feel comfortable with and works for you instead of taking too much of your time.
Stay tuned for more facility management reports.
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Hugo Gervais