Grocers and restaurant retailers have more complex maintenance needs than businesses that deal in non-perishable goods, and that means facility managers in this industry must have a transparent view of their equipment management program. However, distributed locations and multiple service provider relationships can make this goal difficult to achieve.
Deciding to use insourced service providers versus outsourced solutions comes down to a simple question: Are you spending your time wisely?
MISCONCEPTION #1: OUTSOURCED SOLUTIONS HEIGHTEN OPERATIONAL BURDENS
When you find yourself spending hours each week contacting service providers and scheduling appointments, it’s a sign of inefficiency. Just as your brain cannot spend all day regulating just one part of your body, you cannot spend all of your time managing service providers. You’ll end up on the phone when you could be performing tasks that grow your business.
By outsourcing maintenance services, you can dedicate more time and resources to staying ahead of your competition, and ultimately lessening operational burdens. An end-to-end facility management partner can reduce your operational burdens by leveraging its extensive network of local service providers to schedule maintenance tasks in a timely, efficient manner. Additionally, a management partner can provide you with reports to benchmark your maintenance program and identify opportunities for process improvements.
MISCONCEPTION #2: OUTSOURCED TECHNICIANS ARE LESS TRACKABLE AND LESS RELIABLE
One reason facility managers may prefer to insource service providers is the ability to track technician movements closely. Stakeholders may worry that outsourced providers will have less oversight and therefore be less accessible. However, mobile technology has actually flipped this paradigm on its head.
When you choose to outsource services with the help of a facility management partner, you can gain the benefit of digital solutions like geofencing, which sends notifications when technicians arrive on-site and when they depart. This automated technology allows facility managers to focus on other tasks while still having access to information about technician whereabouts as needed.
When you work with many disparate service providers across several store locations, there are a few benefits, but many disadvantages. You can choose your favorite service providers for each location and develop close relationships with them over the years. Likewise, insourced maintenance personnel gain in-depth knowledge of company equipment and they can transfer that detailed knowledge to new service providers.
Facilities managers often worry that they’ll lose these important benefits when they outsource maintenance services, but that’s not actually the case. In fact, when you partner with a facilities management provider, you don’t have to say goodbye to your favorite technician. You can continue to work with them while gaining access to other local service providers with track records of trustworthiness and professionalism, increasing your access to reliable services across a larger area.
Plus, you obtain several other key benefits, such as the ability to gain visibility into all service tasks across your organization from a centralized location. Without the help of an outsourced management partner, you’d have to exert incredible effort to compile data from all of the technicians you work with. But when you outsource, you gain actionable data with accurate insights automatically - no extra effort needed on your part. Uniformity across your distributed locations adds value to your organization by giving you a detailed view of your entire maintenance program.
MISCONCEPTION #3: SOFTWARE ALONE IS A SOLUTION
Data is the lifeblood of any maintenance program. Periodic reports on service tasks can give building stakeholders a chance to gain an overview of asset and equipment health throughout their organization. This is especially important for businesses with multiple locations, as it can be difficult to achieve a holistic view of all stores.
Choosing a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a task that requires careful consideration because not all solutions offer the same functionality. Without a solid foundation of actionable data, your entire asset management strategy could suffer. For instance, some CMMS solutions offer visibility into data but lack the tools or resources to make sense of it. When facility managers have to spend hours every week reviewing raw data to find patterns, they lose time that could be better spent elsewhere.
Effective CMMS solutions not only help facility managers visualize data, but also identify underlying trends. A third-party facilities management partner can help to explain the patterns within reports and help stakeholders make process adjustments that better utilize resources, improve asset uptime and control costs.
However, software alone cannot solve every challenge. For example, facility managers still need to source providers and order parts, even when they have a software solution. A management partner solves this by taking up these responsibilities, so managers can focus on more important tasks.
By outsourcing this service, you gain a dedicated partner who will meet with you every quarter - or more frequently, depending on your needs - to discuss maintenance trends and define strategies for moving toward your goals. For more information on how to optimize asset management at your organization, connect with an expert consultant from Vixxo today.
