Iwmsnews.com is a website dedicated to Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS). Especially over the last decade I have come across quite a few selection procedures for these kinds of systems.
In approximately 70% of all selection procedures, customers actually have implemented the IWMS of which some have proven to be very successful whereas others were not. This unfortunately also implicates that 30% of all selected IWMS software never gets implemented. (This will be the topic of my next post)
To me successful implementations of an IWMS have always been very rewarding in terms of customer satisfaction and personal fulfillment. However, these perfect implementations are not a common thing within our arena due to various reasons.
When thinking about optimizing IWMS most people only think about optimizing the software however, you can also optimize your IWMS implementation by using a couple of very simple techniques. If you want to optimize your IWMS implementation evaluation is the key word.
1. Evaluate your organization
Most IWMS implementations will take from 6 months to a year and in that period strange this can occur. Mergers and acquisitions are daily business and can put your IWMS implementation in a whole new perspective. Areas which weren’t interesting or not successful might become important overnight.
To improve your IWMS ensure that you evaluate the organization as a whole. Be prepared for strategy that might impact your implementation.
2. Evaluate your organizational unit
Facilities Management and Corporate Real Estate departments are also merging, centralizing, decentralizing and split again as much as the organization as a whole does.
This potentially implicates a significant change for your IWMS administration team. Are the people that initially participated in the project still around? And what do you think of their knowledge?
To improve your IWMS implementation you have to ensure that knowledge about the implementation is easily accessible to the organization without being dependent on the individual team members of the project.
3. Evaluate your mission
Most FM/RE Departments have a mission statement about how they want to be perceived by the rest of the organization. In general FM and RE departments want to deliver the highest standard of services for the lowest possible costs.
In some cases however, mission statements change because of mergers, acquisitions or market developments.
E.g. the green building movement has become quite popular over the last three years whereas a couple of years ago it wasn’t a theme at all. To me you can only optimize your IWMS if you comply with your organizations mission statement and extrapolate that to yours.
4. Evaluate your goals
There is quite some popular literature about software implementation. All authors however seem to agree about goals. Without measurable goals you can never draw conclusions about your IWMS implementation therefore it’s imperative that you evaluate the initial goals of the implementation.
Questions to be used could include:
Were the goals that you’ve identified during the implementation realistic? Or not? And to what extend were your goals met?
Evaluating goals will give you clear indication were additional successes can be achieved or your IWMS implementation can be improved.
5. Evaluate the planning
Planning always plays an important role in every project management methodology. Evaluating your planning can tell you a lot about the quality of the implementation.
Did you meet your planned ‘go-live-date’? Or was the project delayed? Was the planning realistic? What caused your planning to fail?
By asking yourself these questions you’ve already started to optimize your IWMS implementation. Since most Integrated Workplace Management Systems have an organizational lifecycle which exceeds 5 years, it is extremely likely that there will be more implementation projects and you can use your knowledge to your advantage.
6. Evaluate your budget
During the selection procedure of your IWMS of choice you have probably filed a budget request that was approved by your management.
In most cases vendors submit proposals that they have priced towards your budget. After your organization has selected the vendor of choice you are sometimes confronted with consultancy costs that exceed the budget by far.
Does this sound familiar to you? It happens everywhere. A common idiom is that in the IWMS arena some vendors promise twice and perform half.
From a budget perspective it is extremely important to know if your project is on track or if it will exceed the budget. Manage your budget yourself; don’t let the vendor manage it as the vendor will take all (and more).
7. Evaluate the vendors staff
You have selected an IWMS vendor to provide your Integrated Workplace Management System. The Software Selection Team of your organization has done its Due Diligence and agreed to purchase from the vendor.
After the implementation of the software, evaluation of the performance of the vendor is essential. Questions you can use for your evaluation include:
Did the vendor meet the SLA’s? How satisfied were different stakeholders with the vendors’ performance (IT with the technical installation consultant of the vendor, Project Team Members with their counterparts, support staff of the vendor, etc.) What skill level does the staff have?
A thorough evaluation of the vendors’ staff can help you optimize your implementation in the next phase of the process.
8. Evaluate the functional solution
You have bought an Integrated Workplace Management System to either reduce costs or improve efficiency from a high level perspective. However, in their daily operations employees have to be able to work with that system.
If you frequently evaluate the functional solution you ensure that people can actually work with the system. Can people with fewer skills than you still operate the system? Does it cover all functional requirements that were in the RFP? What is missing and why?
Answers to these questions can give you insight in how your functional requirements are covered without being too complicated. As a rule of thumb I would advice that user friendliness is more important than functionality. (As long as the functionality is not critical)
9. Evaluate the key processes
Mergers and acquisitions have been mentioned a couple of times in this post and they play an important role in the dynamics of Facility Management and Real Estate. Not only on a company level but also on departmental level mergers is everyday business.
These dynamics also have significant impact on the key processes of your organization. E.g. after the merger of two departments your department needs to support more services. Another example could be that after an evaluation period of three months the initial key processes seem to be not so important due to analyzing the number of service requests.
Gaining insights about your key processes allows you to improve your implementation by allowing reducing of non-performing processes.
10. Evaluate the technical solution
When you buy an IWMS it will be embedded in your IT Infrastructure and the system will affect a lot of organizational units for a long time.
Even though you have seen test results from the vendor, did some stress testing yourself and perhaps have even done a pilot installation, disaster strikes hard where you least expect it.
Be sure to frequently monitor technical performance and pay special attention to the backup procedures which can save the day when you face technical disaster.
11. Evaluate the integrations
In most IWMS implementations integrations with ERP, Purchasing or HR systems are required. Although it is difficult to give some technical evaluation criteria (as it differs from platform to platform) some evaluations can provide you with useful information.
What you should think of when evaluating the integrations is:
- Documentation (did the vendor write quality documentation?)
- Source code of the integration (do you own the source code of the integration or is it proprietary software?)
- Updates of integrations (Do you have to rebuild your integrations again for each upgrade? Or is the integration upgradeable?)
12. Evaluate the internal customer satisfaction
One way of retrieving useful information for improvement of your IWMS is evaluation of the internal customer satisfaction.
Your internal customers (employees) need to be able to operate the system; they frequently encounter the vendors’ staff and experience the IWMS to the fullest.
Your internal customers can provide you with insights that you would never discover. E.g. Project team members indicate that they are not satisfied with a consultant. Replacing that particular consultant with another might prove to be very useful for your project.
By attaching customer satisfaction surveys at service completion you can retrieve a wealth of information about your IWMS implementation. This information can be used to improve your IWMS implementation.
13. Evaluate the external customer satisfaction
In addition to internal customers most organizations have external contractors in their premises. Evaluating the satisfaction of these contractors and other external personnel might result in different insights than the internal customers of an organization.
14. Evaluate thoroughly
In most IWMS selection procedures I have been involved in, organizations have done a thorough job in setting up an evaluation procedure before selecting a vendor however, for the “after evaluation” this is mostly not the case.
To me, the only way to optimize your IWMS implementation is to thoroughly evaluate on all bullet points mentioned above. A thorough evaluation will provide you with insights that will prove to be very valuable.
Not only does the evaluation indicate where you have failed, but more importantly it gives you the opportunity to improve your IWMS implementation while enabling your organization to benefit even more from it.
Steven, indeed continious evaluation is a critical aspect in optimizing IWMS implementations because businesses and processes are changing constantly. I definitely advice to share experiences and learn from other companies as well. And have the courage to change when costs and benefits are out of balance. Regarding your remark on budget: indeed some vendors burn lots of financial resources without adding promised value. As IWMS maturity grows (f.e by IWMSNEWS !)and customers become more and more aware about this, I think it’s a matter of time. Simply change and act independent. We see a worldwide growth in this IWMS replacement market.
Steven, I would also recommend to evaluate the ROI for the IWMS implementation. I see many selections never becoming an implementation due to weak business cases. Other IWMS implementations are being stopped because project members are unable to provide answers when asked about the quantifiable benefits of the IWMS implementation. Some project teams are also unable to go back to the “well” for more budget because they are unable to justify additional cost.
I would also evaluate an annual report and determine how the IWMS implementation aligns with the broader strategy of the organization. It will help project teams create a unified message why their IWMS implementation is important for their organization.
Bernard, Jos,
Thank you so much for your wonderful comments. In addition to that Bernard you have raised the ante here with such a quality post. Hopefully there will be more in the near feature.
Steven