Meeting a Facilities Management Challenge: Part 1

For this and my next few posts I will highlight a client case history that demonstrates how, faced with a pending merger with another industry leader, the real estate and facilities management (FM) department of a major chemical company needed to solve a complex challenge.

To help pave the way for a successful merger, the company’s senior management called for cost and staff reductions across the enterprise. Compounding this challenge for the FM operation was that it wanted to preserve its loyalty to the department’s employees and maintain high service levels. FM executives saw outsourcing as the solution. The goal was to eliminate staff but keep the people employed with a managed services partner that could assume responsibility for critical FM services and deliver them at lower costs while maintaining service quality.

The key was finding the right partner. Toward this end the company engaged a third-party sourcing firm that analyzed FM processes and crafted a strategy. The plan was to contract with a managed services provider that offered expertise in at least three critical areas:

• A top-quality human resources operation. While outsourcing would meet the need of eliminating staff, an outsourcing partner with the right HR experience could help ensure that employees would be well taken of in terms of training, development and career advancement opportunities.
• The ability to oversee a comprehensive range of related FM categories in an integrated fashion. These services spanned mail, shipping and receiving, warehouse management and internal and commercial print services. Managing all of these services in an integrated way would improve operational efficiency and service quality while reducing costs.
• Experience in quality management methodologies and systems. Leveraging this expertise could help drive continuous performance improvement in the FM operation.

By engaging a provider with these capabilities, the company’s FM operation could meet the demand for reduced costs and headcount while sustaining quality service and giving its FM staff new opportunities. The sourcing firm issued a request-for-proposal (RFP) and ultimately selected Canon Business Process Services (Canon) as the only provider that could meet all of the desired requirements. The RFP process revealed that others competing for the business could offer expertise only in some of the targeted FM areas. This would prevent them from effectively integrating the functions and ultimately providing the cost savings the chemical company wanted. Only Canon had proven experience in all of the services. The chemical company had found the right partner.

In my next post I’ll highlight the solution we implemented. In the meantime, feel free to visit the Facilities and Logistics Management Services page of our website where you’ll find insights on industry trends and best practices. You can also download white papers, case histories and more.