From Legacy Systems to Cloud-First FM: Cutting Cost, Complexity and Risk Without Reducing Capability

Key Metrics

• 1,000+ Platform Users

• 156 Buildings

• 3-person Migration Team

• Monthly Automatic Upgrades

Key Outcomes

• Cost of ownership dramatically reduced: Eliminating on-premise infrastructure, costly manual update cycles, and reliance on third-party IT support has delivered significant and ongoing expenditure savings.

• Seamless migration with minimal disruption: A three-person project team completed a smooth transition from the legacy system to FMI Works cloud - without interrupting daily operations across a large, complex healthcare environment.

• User adoption and onboarding transformed: An intuitive interface and mobile-optimised platform has made onboarding new users straightforward, substantially reducing the volume of support queries across an organisation of 1,000+ users.

• Reactive-only maintenance left behind: With the operational burden of the old system removed, the facilities team has been able to introduce planned maintenance - reducing the work order backlog and lowering overall business risk.

• Executive-level visibility unlocked for the first time: Improved reporting and real-time insights have given the leadership team access to data that was never previously available - enabling more informed, evidence-based strategic decisions.

About the Customer

Our customer is a prominent healthcare provider based in New Zealand, operating across more than 156 sites including hospitals and health clinics. Serving a large and geographically dispersed workforce, the organisation manages a substantial portfolio of assets and work orders daily - making reliable, scalable facilities management a critical operational requirement.

With over 1,000 users depending on the FM platform to log and manage jobs, the organisation needed a solution that could match the pace, complexity, and compliance demands of a busy healthcare environment.

The Challenge

For years, this organisation had operated a legacy on-premise FM system that, while functional, had failed to keep pace with the way modern facilities teams work.  

Field staff had no mobile access - work orders had to be physically collected before heading out, and couldn't be updated until someone returned to a desktop. The interface felt dated, training new users was a significant investment of time and effort, and the gap between the system's capabilities and the expectations of its users had been quietly widening for years.

The real breaking point, however, was financial. Hosting the system on the organisation's own infrastructure - combined with the cost of external IT support for updates - made keeping up with software changes expensive and time-consuming. Version upgrades were routinely deferred in favour of more urgent priorities, leaving the system increasingly outdated and the organisation increasingly exposed.  

With over 1,000 users depending on the platform and mounting pressure from the facilities team for a better solution, the total cost of ownership of the legacy system had become impossible to ignore.

The Solution

After a demonstration of FMI Works, the organisation quickly recognised that the platform could address not just their immediate frustrations, but several long-standing operational challenges simultaneously. Through a structured reverse briefing process, FMI's consultants worked with the team to understand their goals, map their current processes, and identify how the platform could close the gap - uncovering efficiencies the organisation had never previously considered. That collaborative approach quickly established the foundation for an ongoing consulting relationship.

To protect daily operations during the transition, the migration was deliberately kept lean - managed by a core project team of just three people, with close support from FMI's customer success team throughout. The result was a seamless migration completed in a matter of months, with minimal disruption to a large, complex healthcare environment. From go-live, automatic monthly upgrades ensured the organisation would never again fall behind - and the intuitive interface meant that onboarding new users, and supporting existing ones, became a far lighter lift.

"FMI Works fits in with how facilities teams work. Jobs can be actioned and updated on mobiles in the field, rather than tying them to a desktop."
- Customer Success Manager, FMI Works

The Impact

Lower costs, greater control

The shift to FMI Works cloud has delivered an immediate and lasting reduction in the total cost of ownership. Infrastructure hosting, manual update cycles, and reliance on external IT support have all been removed from the equation - replaced by automatic monthly upgrades delivered by FMI.  

The organisation is always on the latest version, always protected from emerging vulnerabilities, and no longer carries the overhead of managing those processes internally. For a large healthcare provider operating across 156 buildings, that shift in cost and control is material.

A team freed up to think strategically

With the operational drag of the old system gone and user adoption no longer a daily challenge, the facilities team has been able to lift its focus from maintenance to management.  

A planned maintenance programme - previously out of reach - is now in place, reducing the backlog of reactive work orders and the business risk that comes with it. Mobile-optimised workflows mean jobs are actioned, updated, and closed in the field, improving communication across the FM team and into the broader organisation. Most significantly, the executive team now has access to reporting and insights that were never available before - giving leadership a clear, evidence-based view of the value facilities management delivers to the business.