Effective Benchmarking in Facilities Management

Last few years have witnessed significant diversity in terms of how buyers approach Facilities Management (FM). Depending on the approach, today, individual buyers are in different maturity levels and have different processes, different sourcing strategies and different FM goals. The industry has witnessed a range of tools that have been employed to enable continuous improvement of the maturity level of FM sourcing. Benchmarking has been, and is, one of the most important and the most powerful tool used by the buyers. While there are a number of definitions and opinions about benchmarking, it is all about understanding what is best, to adopt the best and become the best. Be it benchmarking of pricing, supplier base, sourcing strategy, KPI or processes, the end goal is to be able to learn from othersï¾Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Æ’?? success/failure to continuously improve and get the best value from FM service provider. Before even beginning to execute benchmarking, it is essential for the stakeholder to completely understand the current FM procurement framework to identify areas of strengths and pain points. Looking at the entire FM cycle as individual key areas can make this phase very easy. While there are various ways to look at the entire cycle, it can broadly be categorized into 5 key areas, namely: Strategy, Sourcing, Operational, Review and Continuous Improvement.