SMEs have to be client orientated and supply quality, experience and genuine good service. Again, why not give your local supplier a chance, the national supplier will always welcome you back if it doesn’t work out, but in my 30+ years’ experience, once you have used a local supplier you will avoid the national suppliers.
Peter Morrissey, 
-Time & People, Sydney: Today’s technology changes are making it easier than ever for SMEs to provide services to large multiple location corporations and not just in one single country. The kicker is these large corporations taking up these services, will force some of the larger suppliers to change the way they have done business for the past few decades.
Many of us are now in the same trenches, small and large.
Dave Thomas, Director at Domino Safety Management Ltd, Granada, Spain: Large FM providers with regional offices see the way to go – but the small company with only one or two locations that need servicing usually starts to feel left out. It has no power when it comes to their position in the queue – they can lose an engineer to a louder call even when he is already on site and working.
Importantly, those large FMs do not seem to have all the elements of FM under one roof, either having subordinate companies with their own structure, board of directors and overheads adding to the cost, or entering into agreements with other large specialists to meet the shortfall in their offerings/coverage.
They are not interested in the small businesses, they cannot/will not pay the sums that are profitable to keep the big guys operational. There is nothing to be gained in turnover and profit which is all they are interested in. Many companies are proud of the fact that they only deal with local suppliers, no nationals, putting local money with local workers.
Wendy Sutherland, Owner, Director at Ramsay Todd Ltd, Hertfordshire, UK: The key is understanding what the requirements are and what the nice-to-haves are. If the big companies meet all of the client’s requirements then how many of the niceto- haves can they deliver? It also depends on who runs the procurement process. Big companies have the resources to prepare good tender responses and therefore, achieve better scores, which do not always deliver the best end result.
Ted Selmer, Planner/Estimator at Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, New York: I work with our procurement staff very closely to review all incoming bid packages. Onsite pre-award meetings with all bidders have proved to work well for us. It is about communication and not necessarily lowest bid. The smaller companies can provide great services.
John Hajduk, Associate Director at Penn State University Facilities Engineering Institute State College, Pennsylvania: You may find some bright spots from smaller FM companies but you will also have tragic failures. Perhaps more of a consideration is the incremental organizational effort it takes to manage many small contractors. It is not just more effort from your FM staff but more from supply chain, legal, accounts payable… etc. I would also suspect that you will pay more with the many small contractors approach… basic economics.
Louise Clark, Senior Procurement Manager at Post Office Limited,
London, UK: It is down to the effectiveness and dedication of the account management team; I have dealt with smaller and much larger FM companies and the best results come from the best relationships. If your management team is no good, get rid of them — as a client you should have the confidence to influence who you deal with.
Dave Thomas: The rationale is that going to a large company can buy better support for a better price and better experience. The benefits being that “synergies” can be made; that is, staff reduction at all levels, not just in FM but also in accounts by reducing the 1,000 invoices a month down to one and you can reduce manpower as well.
John Hajduk: If your company is still selfperforming the commodity purchasing, I would suggest considering having your FM firm deal with all the logistics associated with purchasing of low dollar / high volume items (supplier and consumables). If you partner with the right firms, it works well… the problem is that a lot of smaller players do not have the infrastructure of the financing to perform this at all, let alone well. Again… pick the right firm, draft the contract correctly, have a good specification with SLA and consumables.
One of the other problems is that companies hire FM firms but use them like a body shop. They then find themselves managing the FM employees, buying suppliers, and still managing the business that they are paying the FM firm to do.
Jeremy Dicks: In the services industry, it is essential to continually innovate and add value, whilst delivering expertise, dependability and trust. Smaller companies can sometimes be better at this. To win the business, the challenge is how to show the value for money, rather than the buyer just seeing the price.
