Are there benefits to outsourcing your FM? Let’s look at some common problems many businesses experience and share some thoughts on how outsourcing adds real benefit to organisations.
Cost savings and compliance
A key driver for many organisations is compliance. They know they need to be compliant and they can’t afford not to be, but they often don’t feel as though they have the skills or time to be on top of this when faced with ever changing rules and regulations. This often means that things can get overlooked causing greater problems in the future. Taking a proactive approach with clients means there are less reactive tasks, repairs can be done there and then saving money. By outsourcing your FM services to professionals this frees up time for you and your business to focus on what you are good at and delivering a great product or service for your own customers.
Another worry is often how to keep track of compliance and have full visibility over your estates? The answer is a CAFM system, this means you can see everything that your FM provider is doing, upcoming works including PPMs and you can log any issues that you need resolving. This ensures you have full control over what’s going on with the added peace of mind that you don’t need to worry too much on a day-to-day basis!
Mitigating Risk
Often businesses will find themselves with multiple providers for different services such as cleaning, electrical maintenance, and grounds maintenance. This can cause problems with staff being unable to keep a track of contractors and not being able to establish strong enough working relationships which can result in a breakdown of communication. However, by appointing one provider to deliver all your services you can really maximise how efficient these services are and how they can work for you as a business. Your FM provider should be integral to your business, working alongside your teams as a partnership.
Reduce the cost of your energy management
We know from speaking to business that sustainability and energy management is very important but that they often lack staff resource and specialist knowledge this prevents companies from achieving their desired results and impact. By allowing professionals to take away this burden businesses could see considerable cost savings and exceed sustainability targets through your hard and soft services right through to property management and health and safety.
Using a FM providers in-depth knowledge of changing trends in the energy sector, in combination with analysis of utility usage, enables clients to get the best rates from utilities providers and only paying for the energy that they use. At Derwent fm we can work alongside you to create an energy policy, gather your baseline data, conduct an energy performance review and then start to find energy saving opportunities.
We believe it’s important to review your assets and replace with sustainable units. Again, these tasks can be time consuming but extremely worthwhile. As a business, Derwent fm can manage your lifecycle replacement programmes, ensuring you are budgeting appropriately for upcoming years, propose energy efficient replacement products and manage the project works.
Impeccable standards & quality
In terms of standards and quality sometimes your business may not have all the expertise needed in house and so outsourcing to companies such as us enhances the quality of your service as we can bring all our expertise and focus to delivery. It is certainly easier to keep up to date with best practice when you are immersed in that industry and this is reflected in the quality FM providers offer their clients.
Improved social responsibility
Some businesses can often be worried that working with external partners and outsourcing their services could impact upon their reputation in some way. However, working with a total facilities management such as Derwent FM could improve your social responsibility.
As an example, we re-invest all our profit to regenerate communities by supporting housing and community initiatives. Our social purpose supports our clients CSR strategies and contributes in a positive way to their impact statements.
Clients can often worry about sustainability and ethical implications along the supply chain. FM providers should ensure that potential new suppliers are responsibly sourced and evaluated to guarantee an ethically aware and sustainable approach to the provision of services and products.
Another example is that we are accredited to ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 – with a robust management system in place to monitor and manage our environmental impact and energy consumption, with a focus on continuous improvement and reducing our carbon footprint year on year.
If you would like to find out more about outsourcing your facilities management, please visit www.derwentfm.com or call 0113 531 1000
