Case Studies

Streamlining Shopping Centre Management

A high profile shot of a busy shopping centre

About the Client

This property investment and development group is a family-run Australian business, who recently implemented FMI Works to manage the retail properties in their portfolio.

The four shopping centres, located across Melbourne, are home to dozens of leading retailers, and see thousands of shoppers pass through every day. With multiple properties across a geographically dispersed region, the group’s facilities team have to keep track of a lot of moving parts.

In 2021, the group purchased a new shopping centre, and their journey with FMI began.

The challenge

Following the acquisition of a new shopping centre, the group brought on board the centre’s Operations Manager, to leverage their expertise in FM across the group’s entire retail portfolio.

For the Operations Manager, this now meant going from managing one centre, to four, plus some commercial property assets. While they were up for the challenge, they knew that the existing manual processes would pose a significant challenge.  

The existing process for managing work orders was a very manual one. Requests were submitted, triaged, actioned and updated all through email. Work was submitted to contractors via email, so accreditations and insurances had to be validated each time.

As work was managed through email, the client was also faced with a single point of failure. If the operations manager was off sick, or on leave, work would essentially stop, due to a lack of visibility in the business.

These manual processes meant it was difficult for the client to keep on top of reactive and preventative maintenance. When big projects came up, some day to day works had to be sacrificed to create the required bandwidth.

The journey

Within a few weeks of signing up, the client was already up and running with the system. The short onboarding phase, and smooth go-live were enabled by our customer success team, who provided a well-defined, structured onboarding plan and practical support with set up and data preparation.

On working with our team, their Operations Manager stated “I’ve got no complaints, if there wasn’t a fix straight away, there was always a work around, and the team has been fantastic.”  

After just a few months of using the system, the client has seen their initial challenges become a thing of the past, and are looking to level up to engaging in preventative and planned maintenance.  

Outcomes

Since implementing FMI Works, this property group have managed to get on top of what was once an insurmountable number of work orders. Through bringing the entire process into a centralised system, a lot of the hours lost to manual processes have been recovered, which is creating additional opportunities.

“Before using the system I would have to sit down and go through a heap of emails to pull out different jobs and then go off and speak to the contractors” said the Operations Manager. “Now, everything is in one place, and I can send work out straight from the system”.  

“Having everything in once place, reminders and when things are due, saves me from having to set calendar reminders, or go through my calendar to work out when things are due and when things need to happen” they continued.

 

Through leveraging the automation available in the system, the Operations Manager has found themselves with hours back in their day, to concentrate on more impactful work. Prior to using FMI, big projects posed a significant challenge. Now, major works can be planned, without worrying about the day to day.

With 20 different contractors leveraging the system, the client is reaping the rewards in terms of overall visibility. The team can now see what is happening, and when, across multiple sites, whenever and wherever they need to.

This visibility has also reduced their overall risk exposure. When using email or spreadsheets to manage works, they were faced with a single point of failure. If their Operations Manager was to fall ill, or take leave, the handover process was arduous, to ensure work wasn’t delayed, or completely paused.

Now with FMI Works, the whole team now able to see all active jobs, the assigned contractors and their status’.

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