Financial Institution: Banking on FM Success

Download: Financial Institution: Banking on FM Success Case Study

Since 2003, Mass have collaborated with one of the world’s leading global financial institutions delivering an internet-enabled solution for the management of their property, space, assets and building services.

The solution that Mass developed and tailored to the client’s needs, is ‘Facilitator’. This revolutionary solution provided an innovative, flexible service model approach to the delivery of facilities services.

The relationship developed beyond that of the traditional customer/supplier model, with both organisations achieving considerable benefits as their relationship developed into a partnership that forged wide-ranging changes within their respective businesses. As a result, Mass built on our substantial industrial expertise, and the institutions’ Group Property department found a solution that met their aspirations to go from ‘good to great‘ and to provide world class facility services.

Group Property is responsible for the global operational property assets, valued in excess of £2.5bn. In order to generate maximum efficiency and benefit from this project, the main aims were:

• Implement a Web-based FM system
• Improve the management of space
• Develop an understanding of staff moves
• Optimise security
• Control asset maintenance
• Automate room bookings

Under the leadership of the Group Property Director, the project established new channels of innovative customer service and provided timely and accurate management information for improved cost and value management. It replaced the Bank’s existing array of disparate facilities-based systems and integrated with the Bank’s Computer Aided Design (CAD), Human Resources (HR), Financials and other management systems.

Traditionally, security levels required of FM systems had never been a crucial factor in the development of a solution, but due to compliance with the Bank’s existing systems, the security on this project had to meet the same high standards so as to prevent potential access risks. This required complex testing and modifications to guarantee the safety of the data, Mass re-engineered the project and change management process for large-scale enterprise solutions to enable it to cope with the scale of the implementation.

Such has been the success of the system that it has received International recognition from the ARCHIBUS and FM communities. Software authors, ARCHIBUS Inc. presented the Group Property Director with the ‘Visionary of the Year‘ award in 2005, given to ‘the individual whose vision and ideas exemplify the most innovative, farseeing technical possibilities and strategies for FM automation.‘

Through this partnership, the client has:

• An overview of performance and supplier targets
• Prioritised reactive and PPM activities, optimising resource and cutting costs
• Effective management of over 2million m2 of space
• Real time access, reporting and viewing of tasks uploaded by any one of their 100,000 staff
• An overview of space utilisation where an average of 17,000 reservations are placed each month.

Mass continues to provide ongoing advice on further system developments, technological advances and new applications. The two organisations continue to work together achieve mutual benefit from the relationship.

Background:

The original brief the client provided was for an Internet-enabled solution to cope with the following challenges:

• Over 25,000 reactive logged calls per month
• Around 40,000 PPM activities per month
• 440 employees from 43 supplier organisations to have access to the system, with scope to add more over time
• Over 100,000 employees to have ‘self service‘ access via the Intranet
• Immediate access to job status information and performance against agreed Service Level Agreements
• Close monitoring of failures and remedial actions
• Access to status and other information by requestors
• Ability for the Facilities Centre to distinguish urgent from non-urgent in a timely manner
• Manage 750 move projects per year and the relocation of over 13,500 staff
• Management of 3,300 buildings (2million m2)
• To maximise space utilisation using CAD by polylining properties (areas outlined and measured on the CAD system and linked to the database) allowing building areas (divisions and departments) as well as occupancy details to be identified and linked to the ARCHIBUS database
• A project to map ‘functions’ to specific desks for about 500 properties and linking these to the database.

Following a global tender exercise, the client chose Mass to deliver what would become a powerful and multi-functional solution utilising ARCHIBUS; the world’s number one solution for total infrastructure and facilities management.

The size and complexity of the project meant that a close working relationship between the two organisations was essential at strategic, management and operational levels. The project team at Mass worked with the client in order to define detailed functional specifications that identified the key performance indicators and essential benefits that the end product would deliver.

Solution:

The product evolved organically to include a ‘Function to- Desk’ system, which offered a means of identifying the use of each desk. Alongside this, a ‘Single View of Property‘ system was developed to provide reporting tools to offer timely and accurate management information.

The reports related to Rents and Rates, management disposals and acquisitions and management of vacant space.

In order to succeed, the project was divided into several phases, with several ‘go live‘ dates. This meant that a multi-level training programme was required, in which a large number of staff and external contractors were trained. This aspect of the project spanned from 2003 to 2005 with a total of 312 in-house staff and 213 service supplier staff being trained to a standard that they can now train others.

Comment:

Providing immediate internet-access to users and contractors alike represented a major change in the way that facilities services were delivered at the Bank. Forty-three Facilities Service Centre (FSC) Operatives and Managers based in two Head Offices were responsible for receiving, allocating and managing helpdesk calls from any of the 100,000 plus UK staff, many of which were reported via the Intranet. All helpdesk calls are now logged in the Facilitator system.

A further achievement was the launch of a Special Interest Group for the Banking and Finance Industry in 2006, with the client hosting the inaugural meeting in London. This group continues to meet regularly to share and compare industry knowledge and information, discussing new developments that will benefit all users of the core technology in the sector.

Staff and suppliers alike have continued to be very impressed with the system, with the partnership evolving over time. Suppliers now have access to work requests in which they are involved, ensuring close monitoring of job progress and adherence to SLA’s.

For further information relating to Mass' Facilities Management Software Solutions, please contact our team either by telephone: 0118 977 8560 or via email: info@mass-software.com.