Mike Liddle and I were very proud to be re-presented with the EuroFM Partners Across Borders Award 2008 at the PFM Awards held at the Brewery earlier this week. It’s always a great night and an opportunity to catch up with old friends as well as to network with new, but having such a personal interest in the proceedings made it extra special. (I well remember Edifice winning the marketing award too, back in 2002… it’s frightening how quickly the years go by.)
Anyway, this award was for work we carried out in support of Microsoft’s initiative to harmonise the management and delivery of facilities services across EMEA. The project started more than two years ago, and it’s interesting to see how the market has changed in that time. It’s still evident that a single-source solution across such a diverse geographic area is problematic, but there’s no doubt that the market is maturing quickly and that a host of the major players have aspirations to extend their reach well beyond the domestic market here in the UK. Indeed, many have already made major inroads, although in my view there’s still a long way to go if we’re truly to achieve consistency in terms of service delivery, the advantages of a uniform approach to reporting and information management, and a real benefit from the migration and sharing of best practice.
Another thing that I find particularly interesting is that those who practice within the “traditional” FM sector are finding that the real estate professionals are now muscling in on what is a growing and valuable market. The benefits of a professionally managed real estate portfolio are vast when one takes a pan-European view and big wins are available to those who are ahead of the game. The danger, as I see it, is that with this change comes an inevitable transactional focus; this might be where the headlines are made but – once FM becomes a bi-product of the real driver behind the relationship – the danger is that operational performance will suffer. Once that happens, the cost to a business can be more significant than any headline savings in real estate because, after all, it’s the people within a business who deliver the profit. Keeping FM on the agenda in such a scenario will itself be a challenge, but it’s a challenge that simply has to be overcome.
I suspect that the next couple of years are going to see a number of large-scale, cross-border contracts coming to the market, and the value of these contracts will inevitably shape the strategy of the more aspirational service providers as a greater and greater number seek to get their hands on a piece of the pie. Such a strategy is fraught with difficulty, with a need to focus on supply chain capability, management structure, training & development, system integration, etc – all across national borders… and that’s in addition to the cultural and legal issues that will inevitably arise in any such opportunity.
There’s no doubt that these are interesting times, particularly with a global recession adding fuel to the fire, and I feel fortunate indeed to be playing even a small part in navigating a way through the transition.
The Edifice 