Facility management is the function of an organization focused on efficiently and effectively delivering logistics and other support services related to real property and buildings.
Facility management supports the functionality, safety, and sustainability of buildings, grounds, infrastructure, and real estate.
It integrates people, places, and processes within the built environment so that the whole system works together seamlessly to improve people’s quality of life and the core business’s productivity.
| Product | Notable Features |
|---|---|
| UpKeep | Mobile maintenance, alerts |
| Accruent | Insights, audit logs, solutions |
| FM:System | Real-time workplace optimization |
| MRI | Data control, reporting, tasks |
| FacilityForce | Integrated facility solutions |
| Asset Panda | Mobile app, asset tracking |
| eMaint | Spare parts, dashboard, mobile |
| Maxpanda | Cloud-based CMMS, asset mgmt |
| MaintainX | Digital work orders, logs |
| Maintainance Care | Capital planning, energy tracking |
Why is Facility Management Important?
Facility management ensures a safe and comfortable workplace, as everyone needs a secure workplace. Employees feel good, enthusiastic, and productive if the environment is hygienic and safe. Here are some of the reasons why facility management is essential for businesses:
- Managing day-to-day tasks: Facility managers coordinate, organize and manage an organization’s office space. It involves planning with supervisors and contractors to avoid disruption to minimize the impact on office activities. A facility manager provides employees with all the necessary tools and equipment to work well and improve the business’s productivity.
- Strategic planning: Proper strategic planning directs the company for the long term and evaluates progress over time. In the planning role, a facility manager defines its objectives, such as cutting costs and boosting productivity to meet its goals. The strategic plan gives the facility management team an idea of ”where they are now and want to be.”
- Implementing the safety procedures: Facility management conducts risk assessments and implements necessary safety and health procedures to reduce risk at the workplace so that the organization can operate smoothly and prevent any harm to company employees, visitors, and members.
- Maintenance of the building and premises: Building safety, maintenance, and repair are some of the vital facility management tasks. The process prevents any unauthorized access to employees and assets. It is responsible for caring for the particular building and making necessary repairs. Waste disposal and management is also an essential function of this department to maintain cleanliness and hygiene.
Benefits of facility management
#1. Increases the life span of buildings and equipment: Equipment, tools, and other business resources do not last for a lifetime, but from time to time, maintenance of the assets makes them durable. The facility management team ensures this duty; they take care of the assets for better and consistent use.
#2. Space optimization: The organization uses the business space for various purposes, but the facility management team ensures how fully it is being used. They analyze what part of the vacant land is and how it can be used for better results. Managers also adapt to the opposite of the situation, for example: whether the company needs to decide to relocate to another land or whether they need to change the structure of the company for better use.
What is Facility Management Software?
Facility management software is a vital tool for facility managers that helps them to maintain the physical workplace efficiently. The software system allows the organization to manage its entire repair and maintenance program, helping them to save time and money by properly managing their buildings, assets, and resources more efficiently and effectively.
The software keeps updated on all assets and manages a large portfolio of properties by tracking details of building and equipment information, managing repairs and maintenance to keep assets in optimal working condition, providing a means for sourcing parts and material, streamlining work orders and the scheduling of resource, improving customer service and the work request process, optimizing the use of physical space, maximizing the useful life of assets, and much more.
Managing and coordinating a big set of buildings and equipment is challenging. Still, facility management software keeps a real-time communication channel and efficiently utilizes all spaces to maximize company productivity and profitability.
Benefits of Facility Management Software
Following are some of the benefits of facility management software for organizations:
- Property management: Facility management software is responsible for multiple operations at a time; having all information relating to rents, leases, utilities, and more in one place can be a significant time-saver and ensure payment is noticed and rate change is addressed. Having all that information in the same place helps to compare and contrast property information to see where savings can be made.
- Asset tracking and management: Facility management software ensures all the assets run optimally. It helps to create accurate, comprehensive asset registers in a fraction of the time so that engineers can always know where an asset is, its essential specifications, and insight into its performance over time.
- Project management: The software monitors the ongoing project to ensure it meets the deadlines and stays under budget. It gives a straightforward task grid and highlights every milestone of the project’s path to completion, with all associated planned and reactive tasks listed alongside these. So that users can easily verify that work is being completed and proactively determine the reason for any delays.
- Safe environment for employees: Facility management software ensures a safe, comfortable, and efficient workplace for the organization’s employees by managing the temperature, humidity, lighting, and air quality. A comfortable and healthy indoor environment increases the business’s productivity as employees focus on work only other than any distractions.
- Better business decision: Facility management software provides data and insights that help businesses identify areas for improvement and optimization. It includes identifying potential cost savings, increasing understanding of employee performance, planning asset maintenance and repairs, and more.
Here are some of the best facility management software available in the market:
UpKeep
UpKeep is a service-oriented company that makes life easier for facilities and asset management departments and empowers maintenance teams to make better decisions from data-driven insights. The software is designed to make maintenance easier for technicians and managers in your organization.
Features:
- This software increases the transparency for the managers and engineers as they can track the records and manage alerts from their smartphones.
- It reduces equipment downtime by 26% and maintenance costs by time-to-time inspections, which ensures organizations manage the highest safety standards.
- It allows streamlined maintenance requests with the unlimited ability to submit and track unlimited work requests from a mobile device, desktop on a company-specific online portal, or email.
- It provides instant notifications about the work on employees’ smartphones and allows managers to prioritize work so that the essential repairs do before any others.
Pricing💵:
Upkeep offers a 14-day free trial and three paid plans. The starter plan is for beginners, the professional plan is best to meet all your business needs, and the Business Plus plan is available for custom pricing.
Accruent
Accruent helps businesses to drive informed decision-making, operational excellence, and business growth through managing the work order lifecycle, integrating maintenance processes, and automating preventative maintenance processes.
It has a senior and experienced managers team that helped over 10,000 leading organizations in more than 150 countries worldwide.
Features:
- The actionable dashboard and reporting of Accurent of software help the team extract the essential information and KPIs to use this information to Pinpoint preventive maintenance needs, manage KPIs, and optimize processes and performance.
- The software allows searchable work order records and generates audit logs to simplify compliance with industry, geographic, and regulatory audits.
Pricing💵:
The platform offers three software solutions with different pricing plans. Accruent Observe for Energy Management, Accruent EMS FLEX’s professional plan, and the enterprise plan. Accruent Maintenance’s professional plan is also geared towards professionals with a mobile Add-on as well, and a custom pricing for the enterprise plan.
FM:System
FM:Systems transforms the workplace experience and enables the organization to unite employees in exceptional, healthy workplaces that enhance productivity and delight occupants. They provide actionable insights to optimize every facet of your real estate portfolio and ensure your ever-ready workplace is prepared for the unexpected. They have over 1200 customers in over 80 countries worldwide; trust FM.
Features:
- Users can use facilities as strategic assets by managing data and processes across their entire portfolio.
- It is an alternative workplace where users can know what’s happening in your facilities in real time and maximize utilization to save costs in the long run.
- This mobile-based application means facility technology needs to support employees and facilities staff anytime and anywhere.
Pricing💵:
You can contact them or request a demo to understand their pricing plan based on your business needs.
MRI
Founded in 1971, MRI is a leading provider of innovative real estate software applications with flexible and game-changing solutions. It has an open and connected ecosystem that meets the unique needs of real estate businesses, from property-level management and accounting to investment modeling and analytics for the global commercial and residential markets.
Features:
- The CAFM solutions of MRI ensure connectivity that includes Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Internet of Things (IoT) functionality, giving the power and innovation to take control, harness valuable data, and make informed decisions to revolutionize how users want to work.
- It provides highly visual reporting systems in one place to give operations visibility and raise the profile of your Facilities Management operation.
- It allows users to manage available resources and maximize the team’s time through a single platform.
Pricing💵:
You can contact them or request a demo to understand their pricing plan based on your business needs.
FacilityForce
FacilityForce was created to address the ongoing challenges faced by government agencies and commercial organizations today. It is the only software with Facility Resource Planning (FRP), which is IWMS software tightly integrated with your ERP.
It is a detailed solution to drive efficiencies in operations and maintenance, space planning and utilization, strategic planning and capital improvements, real estate and lease management, and energy and utility chargebacks.
Features:
- Facility force allows end-to-end solutions for facilities management that can:
- Map-centric asset management with the embedded power of Esri ArcGIS.
- It tracks the complete costs and performance metrics of your organization.
- Uses standardized tools to streamline processes and exchange data with other systems.
- It handles everything from commissioning and deploying assets to preventive and corrective maintenance, condition assessment and identification of deficiencies, capital planning, improvement projects, and more.
Pricing💵:
You can contact them or request a demo to understand their pricing plan based on your business needs.
Asset Panda
Asset Panda has a team of creative thinkers with the mission of providing the best ridding asset-tracking solutions. The clients of this software can reclaim control of their organization’s assets and invest their substantial cost savings into their people, communities, and passions.
They derive solutions for global challenges with intelligent solutions and outstanding customer service.
Features:
- The software has a mobile app that is compatible with mobile and iOS.
- It supports simple barcode scans for every piece of equipment you can scan from your smartphone.
- Track the history of the assets, and enhance accountability and forecasting for every asset with full audit trails.
- It gives custom notifications to the users to Improve adherence to maintenance schedules by automatically keeping everyone updated.
Pricing💵:
Contact them to get a customized quote for your business needs and requirements.
Emaint
Emaint is a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) with excellent software for work orders, PM scheduling, asset management, spare parts inventory, condition monitoring, etc.
Features:
- Users can easily track the inventory level and what spare parts that equipment needs. So that managers can assign the work to the engineers soon. Users can also manage spare parts, monitor inventory, and improve the meantime to repair.
- The software has a smartphone app that connects with the teams wherever they work, whether on the factory floor, in the field, or offline.
- The dashboard of Emaint is easy to use, where users can discover growth opportunities and demonstrate leadership success.
Pricing💵:
- The software provides three paid pricing plans. The team plan and professional plan can be paid for monthly, while the enterprise plan offers custom pricing.
Also read: The best CMMS Software in 2023.
Maxpanda
Maxpanda is a cloud-based CMMS with multiple organizational tools, such as asset management, inventory management, and preventive management. The software pushes notifications about the accounting package updates and cost flow.
It allows submitting work-related requests through any web browser, and then the request is approved by the admin; after that, it is converted to word order.
Features:
- Work Order Management assigns the task to the engineers per the customer’s need.
- Maxpanda allows uploading all the data using spreadsheets, and users can upload unlimited buildings, locations, assets, parts, and bins in seconds.
- It allows users to easily track assets, including their location, condition, and maintenance history and helps them to make informed decisions about asset replacement and maintenance.
- Maxpanda helps to manage work orders with status, costs, and completion dates that help to maintain the tasks on time and within budget.
Pricing💵:
Maxpanda offers four paid plans with various features, all with a 7-day free trial🥳. The starter plan, enhanced plan, standard plan, and professional plan. It also offers a custom Enterprise plan with custom pricing.
MaintainX
Founded in October 2018 by a San Francisco team, MaintainX is dedicated to providing businesses with the best solution for maintenance and operations. The mobile software digitalizes paper-based procedures, work orders, inspection logs, and audit checklists.
Features:
- Users can create work orders by assigning tasks to the technicians to fulfill maintenance requests for machines, assets, and other equipment.
- It allows the searchable work history with full maintenance logs and audit trails to hold the team accountable.
- The digital software minimizes the paperwork; you can find all your data in a single place.
Pricing💵:
The platform offers four plans: Free, Essential, Premium, and Enterprise (custom pricing).
Maintainance Care
Founded in 2003 by a group of tech enthusiasts as they came together to create a tool to streamline work orders for professionals worldwide. Maintainance Care is a leading software to provide maintenance software facility management solutions in the United States and Canada.
It is designed to streamline work orders, facilitate asset tracking, and keep maintenance teams organized.
Features:
- It allows Capital Planning facilitated by Maintenance Care’s CMMS and involves systematically monitoring assets to determine the optimal timing for repairs or replacements.
- CMMS continuously tracks energy usage, which can be vital to keeping costs down, noticing irregularities, and meeting your efficiency goals.
- A CMMS system work orders are a form filled out online and sent into your queue for evaluation, so it minimizes the paperwork, and users can prioritize and track everything paperless and conveniently for the best efficiency.
Pricing💵:
The platform offers three plans, Free Edition, Word Order Edition, and the Enterprise Edition.
Conclusion
Facility management software offers various benefits to an organization such as cost reduction, asset management, and many more, directly impacting productivity.
Facility management software reduces the burden of managers as now they don’t have to do lengthy paperwork for asset management. You can review the software mentioned in the article and choose one that best suits your business needs.
You can also check the best IT asset management software for your business.