An Overview of the FM Industry

Facility Management Industry an overview

Facility Management Industry is growing rapidly in India and it contribute to approx. 3.2% of India’s GDP and grow by approx.20% to 25% annually. There are few organized players in this industry and now participation is increasing steadily.

Concept of Facility Management is coined in US and first introduced in Japan around 1985. The industry is classified in Hard and Soft Services. Hard Services include Operations and Maintenance, Engineering etc. while Soft services include Housekeeping, Catering, Parking Management etc.

Facility management is working as support services and help to function core business effectively and smoothly. Their target industry is IT, ITES, BPO, BFSI, Retail, Education, Manufacturing, Engineering and Government sector.

The facility management services are mostly outsourced by business and they have complete control to manage and take decisions which help business to maintain their return on investment and establish long term competition in marketplace.

By outsourcing facility management services the companies enjoy the following advantage

• Focusing on Core Business – The organization focus may be gets diverted from their core activity if they manage support service on their own when they are growing, or wants to grow. The scale of support services is also increase to support the growing core business which can be costly both in terms of finance and managing human resource, so outsourcing support services will help business to stay focus on their activity.
• Cost and Effective Savings - Outsourcing of specialized support services by organization can utilize economies of scale.
• Reducing Overheads - Overhead costs of performing a particular support service function are very high, so outsourcing these services will help to manage these costs easily.
• Operational Control -By outsourcing some or all support services will help to prevent the operational cost spending out of control as these services is managed by skillful people.
• Manpower Flexibility – It will give the advantage to business which required varying nature of manpower as per their requirement. E.g. Building repairs not required by organization on day to day basis and organization can hire the require services as and when require which gives the flexibility in staffing.
• Risk management and Business Continuity – Support service will support the business needs as and when require and it eliminate the risk which may face by the business if it mange by them on their own.
• Develop Internal Staff- Engaging the external expertise through outsourcing will give the chance to internal staff to work with this expertise and learn the new skills. E.g. The organizations, whose core business is developing software, will be more likely to stay up to date and bring innovative ideas into the organization that they can benefit through shadowing.

We can also list out the importance of facility management as follows

• Productivity – Facility management help the productivity of core business activity by providing safe and comfortable work environment.
• Cost Saving – Facility management has wide reach throughout the business hence they can observe and help to prevent unnecessary operational expenses.
• Scalability – Facility management is front line team hence they can ensure the changes go smoothly as organization wants, which helps business to scale as per their plan.
• Sustainability – Facility management undertake more environmental friendly activity under social responsibility which further help to curbing waste, energy efficiency etc.

The Facility Industry is growing speedily and now we also witnessing the new trends in it like IoT based solutions, Data Analytics, Cloud based data collection, remote monitoring and Digital workplace services.

Future of facility management is really fascinating and facility mangers will play more important roles in designing and operation efficiency of business by managing smart buildings and managing complex building management systems.

Globally organization is focusing on sustainability and for achieving these goals organization need more facility management partners to handle it on frontline by managing smart building which has minimal impact on environment. As well as Facility Manger needs to be more skillful in technology to effectively manage these smart building systems.

The Facility Management Companies who adopted the emerging changes in industry will always remain in demand and grow multifold. So, finally we can conclude that the Facility Management Industry help the business to achieve better results and its future is more lucrative as it is estimated that by 2025 facility management industry revenue will touches USD $ 2 trillion reported by Global Market Insight Inc.