How to Make the Most of Your Facility Management Software Investment

The first few months following your facility management software implementation are critical, as they potentially determine whether or not you reap the full benefit of your investment. To make sure you’re maximizing your ROI, here are five post-implementation steps to follow.

Maximize Your Investment In Facility Management Software

Involve the Right People

Ensuring the success of any technology-related initiative starts with having the right people on board. In this particular instance, the right people are leaders from the HR, IT and facilities teams.

Your HR personnel are keepers of important employee information, the IT department manages your entire tech stack and the facilities team is the owner of your software selection. Without complete buy-in and coordination from all three departments, it’s impossible to maximize your facility management software investment. It’s also crucial to have the support of your executive team, as they can demonstrate to the rest of the workforce how the investment was chosen because it benefits the company as a whole.

To encourage participation, incorporate processes that involve all of the teams and be sure to highlight where each benefit’s from the software — for example, new employee onboarding.

Train Your Employees

Once you have your HR, IT and facility management leaders on board, you need to make sure they know how to not just use the software but leverage its complete feature set. The adoption and utilization rates are directly correlated to how well team members understand what the software can do — and more specifically, what it can do for them.

Schedule department-specific training sessions that highlight features, tools, and data that will be most useful to both the team as a unit as well as individual team members. What the HR team considers high-priority may not be exactly the same as what the IT team thinks is most important. And if you don’t tailor your training to explore how the software best meets the needs of these departments, you risk low adoption and utilization.

Work with Your Implementation Manager

Implementing facility management software is a hefty undertaking, which means you need to utilize all the resources at your disposal. One of the most valuable of these resources is your implementation manager (IM).

Your designated IM will have plenty of experience and insight into best practices, which means he or she can help you adjust existing processes and workflows to effectively incorporate the use of facility management software.

If you’ve partnered with the right facility management software provider, your IM will be as committed to optimizing your workplace as you are.

Leverage Available Integrations

Facility management software is a powerful solution on its own. But what makes it truly remarkable are the numerous integrations users have available to them.

Here are just a few of the types of platforms you can integrate with your facility management software to make it even more impactful:

• Energy Optimization: Track, manage and improve your energy consumption
• Internet of Things (IoT): Collect real-time workforce and workplace activity data
• Digital Signage: Provide employees with important information throughout the workplace
• Occupancy Planning: Understand current space needs and forecast future requirements
• Lease Administration: Get full visibility into asset and real estate leases
• Project Management: Optimize resource management and planning

Utilize Dashboards

Your facility management software comes with an impressive suite of tools, including analytics dashboards.

A dashboard consolidates multiple individual reports into a single, integrated view. With dashboards, you can run reports from several modules simultaneously, visualize data in various formats and compare different related data points to identify patterns.

Dashboards give you on-demand access to real-time data that can help you make better decisions about things like space and asset utilization and lease management. They empower you to take full advantage of the huge volume of data in your facility management software and create a more efficient, productive workplace.

Implementing facility management software can be a major game-changer for your organization. Be confident that you’re using it to its full capability by following these five recommendations.