Following the past year, facilities and estates managers face significant challenges with increasing economic and environmental pressures and so it’s more important than ever to know whether service providers are delivering value for money.
One way of ensuring this is through having robust tools in place to measure facilities management performance.
Our dedicated LitmusFM team have years of experience developing SLAs and KPIs that ensure better mutual understanding between the FMs and service providers and that everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals.
However, SLAs and KPIs are only relevant to a given contract and agreement. What about the wider market – how can FMs know if their contract delivers good value compared to others, or not?
Quite often we are approached by FMs interested in re-tendering their outsourced services to find out if the agreement they currently have in place is a “good” one. However, retendering can bring its own issues; is it really worth the effort of a re-tender to just simply know if the grass is greener or not? If there is a genuine problem with the relationship then re-tendering is probably the answer; but if the relationship is strong, the service provider is delivering and the re-tender is driven by a desire to see what the market has to offer it can wreak havoc on morale, focus and create tensions moving forwards.
This is where benchmarking comes in. The use of benchmarks offers a tried-and-true approach to homing in on the efficiency and quality of both combined and individual facilities management services. Benchmarks help make informed decisions; decisions that will encourage stability and strength moving forwards.
Like we’ve said, for many FMs understanding if value for money is being received is hard to understand. But this doesn’t have to be an unknown. There are facilities management consultants with years of experience, data and knowledge and can help ascertain if value is being delivered.
We’re not just talking about cost. Yes, cost plays a significant part, but benchmarking goes much deeper than simply pennies and pounds; detailed benchmark analysis is proving to be critical to the successful management of broader transformational change, including cost management initiatives, re-engineering of business processes and implementing quality control measures.
Benchmarking also focuses on how to better the partnerships already in place. Partnerships that were built before the pandemic, remained throughout the crisis and continue post-crisis. Cultivating long and lasting relationships with service providers brings far greater reward than switching to a new service provider constantly. If both parties work collaboratively and are committed to each other’s success over the long term, it is likely to bring much richer results and innovations.
Another benefit that benchmarking brings is an understanding of what others in the sector are doing. Drawing learnings and comparisons from what others are doing, helps ensure new ways of working are successful and right for an organisation.
It’s also essential that once benchmarking is complete and operations are streamlined, that they continue to be measured and monitored on an ongoing basis so there is confidence that they are delivering. The mantra when undertaking a benchmark project should be: benchmark, negotiate, measure and monitor.
Which is where the SLAs and KPIs can come in – helping to ensure the smooth management of the agreement in the future.
To hear more about our benchmarking services contact us here
The Litmus team