Analyst Reports
Space management is evolving to be more proactive and data driven than ever before. Many organisations are looking for ways to improve their processes to continue to meet their needs and this may mean a transformation of their space management.
To assess the way your space management processes are organised, there are six organisational elements you should look at, all fundamental to organising business processes. Without having the right things in place for these elements and having them well balanced, it will be impossible to get value out of your space management in an efficient and effective way.
1. Strategy
In general, it is important that all the organisational activities are related to ‘the bigger picture’, namely the primary process. Every operational process should support the core business and therefore support the primary value chain. For the primary process an organisation mostly has a strategy in place that defines the actions an organisation intends to take to achieve its long-term goals. Your space management activities should support your organisation in achieving these long-term goals. Therefore, your space management strategy has to be derived from the corporate strategy and aligned with its strategic goals.
2. Process
To get the most value out of business processes it is important that your activities are recognised, structured and aligned.
Documenting and standardising your space management activities helps to achieve a better understanding of the processes behind them and how they should be executed. Once this is in place organisations can think about widening their scope and starting to work on continuous improvements. Regarding your space management activities it is important to determine your space ID first before attempting a broader scope of space activities.
3. Data
Data is useful both as an input and output when it comes to business activities. Data can trigger activities to be started, stopped or adjusted. Therefore it is important for the right data to be available, accessible, kept up to date and reliable. Data can give useful insights into decision making and improvements. When it comes to space management data, the scope can be quite broad. This can range from defining room numbers and names, to allocating space or even measuring real-time space occupancy. It is important to ensure your data is interconnected, so you can get the most out of it. However, start simple, define your space ID first and take small steps to improve.
4. Analysis and Reporting
Having data available is one thing, turning it into useful information and insights is another. To be sure you make the right decisions and to do the right things right, it is important you can trust the information that you get out of your analysis and reports. Besides, you need to align your KPIs with the corporate strategic goals. When it comes to space management, analysis and reporting becomes harder, as the amount of data will only increase. It is important that you are able to easily report on your data from a central position to demonstrate that you are adding value. Storing your data in one database helps you to do this and provides an overview.
5. Automation and Technology
Having the right space data stored at the right time also means it is possible to support the execution of business processes by using automation and technology. Automation involves business applications and office tools, such as an IWMS. Technology is more about hardware solutions and IT-infrastructure components, such as sensors, that are used to support the use of automation and data collection. It helps your organisation to do things more efficiently and effectively and get better insights by introducing, for example, sensor-based data collecting. By measuring real-time space occupancy you can get more valid insight into the actual utilisation of your space. A successful way of doing that is using sensors that measure whether a workspace or meeting room is actually occupied or not.
6. Organisational Readiness
By defining well-thought strategies, processes, and reporting KPIs, and by using automation tools and technologies, you are already doing a good job. However, without support at C-level and the involvement of skilled and capable people who understand your way of working, you will never get the most out of your organisation. That is why organisational readiness is an important organisational element as well. Regarding space management, it is important that your employees are aware of the way activities need to be executed and are trained to use supporting applications, tools and technologies. Besides, you only get the true support of your organisation by asking your employees for feedback on the way they experience the spaces and facilities, and by improving based upon this feedback.
Moreover, your organisation needs to be capable of managing all the automation and technology. This can only be a result of executive awareness of the value of well-organised space management and with the right attention paid to change management when implementing or improving your space management processes.
To help organisations discover the current and desired maturity level of their space management, Planon has developed the ‘Space Management Maturity Model’. Do you want to know what steps you can take to improve and close the gap between the current and desired maturity level of your space management? Please download the model and start today!
