Navin Singhania, Chief Information Officer, SMS Integrated Facility Services Pvt Ltd
Praful Gupta, Vice President, Business Development, SMS Integrated Facility Services Pvt Ltd
Navin Singhania, Chief Information Officer and Praful Gupta, Vice President, Business Development, SMS Integrated Facility Services Pvt Ltd reveal how their newly launched, free-for-all Converged Facility Management Platform will transform their company from vendor to trusted business advisor.
While systems ranging from Computerised Maintenance Management Systems to Compliance Validation Software have been in vogue since the 1980s, they have not even scratched the surface of the problem, which is: CRE FM lacks a Single Source of Truth (SSoT). In simple terms, this is defined as ‘all information, in one location, on one platform, relied upon by everyone and managed by the best authority’.
Singhania said, “We were very clear from Day 1 that we did not want to merely build/buy and deploy software. All that would do is convert a manual silo into a digital silo”. He spent six months curating a Converged Facility Management Platform that would serve as a bespoke SSoT for customers, be they simple bank branches or complex manufacturing installations.
“The starting point of our journey was to look at all the use cases in the business and see if we could do it better”, he continued. “Better had to mean something measurable: lesser effort, faster cycle time, lowered operating expenses, higher revenue possibilities and so on.”
Gupta added: “We were clear that we were solving a real business need. We were also convinced that this would unlock value for us as well as our customers. It therefore would be counter-intuitive to ask customers to pay for the SSoT Platform. We took the decision that all our employees, customers (operators and occupants) and suppliers would be on the SSoT as a default service, not a paid one.”
The platform went live this month. Singhania is confident that with 86% field readiness today, the company will have all stakeholders online within this financial year. He is also evaluating how to integrate various regulatory tools so that compliance becomes real-time online.
For example, a facility has deployed certain energy conservation measures on an outcome-based model. Through the platform, the finance team of the end-user can track daily baseline vs daily consumption and hence daily savings in line with Globally Approved International Protocol for Measurements & Verifications.
Added Singhania: “The real value will come once we start analysing the data and advising clients on monetising it. At current levels, we capture nearly 750M+ data points from various buildings across the country. This business is not about making one big improvement but thousands of little improvements that add up to a big number.”
The company is also setting up a Central Network Operations Center (CNOC) at its HO as the nerve centre for monitoring and control. This will enable the account management team and SMEs (e.g. Cleaning, HVAC, Energy Efficiency, Electrical Safety) to sift through data and information and apply the power of analytics to add value to clients.
Some early results suggest double digit improvements in terms of employee productivity, cycle time reduction, operational cost reduction, energy cost reduction and attainment of sustainability goals.