What does it take to service different facilities – ranging from giant corporate offices to tiny provincial sales offices – of a single client across 55 locations? Nilesh Kanakraj, Senior Vice President, OneSIS breaks down his organisation’s approach with a real-life example.
Client needs
The client used to work with multiple service providers for multiple services across multiple locations, and was looking for a single service provider able to offer multiple services at all locations. With offices across the country, we were able to offer not only the services that they wanted, but also additional ones like AMC management.
They also wanted better account management, governance and compliance, and sought someone who had the bandwidth to deliver this across locations. We brought in a key account manager who would be able to manage their account, and introduced technology which made reporting more system-dependent rather than people-dependent.
Apart from the corporate office in Bangalore, most of the other facilities were smaller offices of up to 2,000 square feet. Some of these facilities had just one or two FM personnel; absenteeism could result in loss of business continuity. With 330 offices across India, we put backup plans in place to ensure there is never any service lapse.
Delivering supplies to far flung areas is not as easy as fulfilling the requirements of Tier I city clients. Our supply chain is strong enough to ensure that the services we deliver in Jammu are of the same level as what we deliver in Bangalore.
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Seamless transition
Whenever we take on a client, a dedicated transition team – which is a back office team – takes the lead. Each client will have a dedicated transition SPOC, HR resource, training resource etc. Soon after the contract is signed, we have a kickoff meeting with a client, where the transition team is introduced, and commitments made by the sales team are conveyed to the operations team so that everyone is on the same page. We design a transition calendar – for a period of 30 to 60 days – depending on the size and complexity of the contract.
Since we have offices across all client locations, there is also a back-end team present at each site, which liaises with the client at the local level. There are daily reviews with the client, and a mobilisation and transition tracker is monitored.
In this case, the transition period lasted for about 45 days, during which SOPs were set up, processes were in place and the right technology was procured. At the end of this period, we had a sign-off meeting with the client, deeming the transition complete; that is when the operations team took over completely.
Long-term contract
We have entered into a long-term contract of 3+2 years with this client. We gave them a glide path savings model where if the cost for Year 1 is x, the cost for Year 2 is x minus y, Year 3 is x minus z and so on; this offers progressive savings. We also introduced digitisation and technology to improve efficiency and increase productivity.
We have contracts with our suppliers at an organisational level. When a client chooses IFM, economies of scale come in, and we are able to obtain best pricing in terms of volumes, the benefits of which we pass on to the client.
Client dashboard
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Financials: Budget vs actuals for energy costs, water costs etc.
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AMC tracking: AMC due/completed.
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Risk and compliance management: Building or elevator licences up for renewal
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Month-on-month/year-on-year spends/savings: Each location head has data for that location, and the head of administration in Bangalore has access to data from all locations.
Man-tech solutions
Before we came in, each client site needed 24×7 manual guarding, with two guards working 12-hour shifts, although offices are open only from 9 am to 7 pm. After discussion with the client about which offices were non-critical, we withdrew security guards from those offices for the night shift, and replaced them with a remote alarm monitoring system.
This system raises alarms in case of any tampering, intrusion, smoke, fire or other contingencies. Our command centre in New Delhi monitors these, and alerts the emergency response team present in the respective location. We can promise a response time of 25 minutes for every client location. By relying on this technology, we were able to cut costs by 30-40%.
By introducing access control and increasing the number of CCTV cameras (with a control room at the client’s location), we were able to reduce the number of guards needed for patrolling.
IoT solutions
For the washrooms, each one needed to be cleaned every half an hour or one hour, for which dedicated manpower was needed. Instead, we installed a smart washroom system to calculate footfalls in each washroom, and channel resources for cleaning only as and when needed.