With the rise of smart building technology, many departments are again working in silos and implementing one-off IoT initiatives to solve a single issue, instead of looking at the bigger picture. This blog post explains how an agnostic approach to smart building technologies and integration helps to build a future-proof, scalable FM and RE landscape.
I have been working with Planon for 22 years, starting as an implementation consultant and then a business consultant. And for the last three years I have been responsible for building the global partner network at Planon. Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work with countless organisations – across multiple industries – to help them improve how they manage their real estate and facilities operations and adapt to the changing technology landscape we’ve seen over the last two decades.
One thing I have noticed along the way is that many organisations – local, global, small, medium, and enterprise – still underestimate the power of a platform like Planon Universe. Their search for real estate and facility management software usually starts and ends with addressing a single departmental need. This means that often an organisation’s facilities team, maintenance team, or space management team starts an improvement project without working with each other and goes out to bid for a single software solution with the goal of only solving that one issue. In today’s technology landscape, there are point solutions for almost anything that usually look very nice and are considered affordable. However, purchasing a different software solution for every department and every new requirement is not scalable, efficient, nor cost effective.
In fact, for many years, it was my job to help organisations reduce their redundant software applications once they realised a siloed point solution strategy was not working for them. Recognising this can sometimes be difficult as larger organisations rarely have a complete overview of all the processes involved in the RE and FM practice, and in many cases the purchase of IT is not centrally managed. In addition, many of the clients I worked with were international companies trying to gain better insight into these processes on a global scale. It was very rewarding to help these organisations reduce their redundant systems and connect their processes – getting better insights into financial data, space usage and satisfaction around contracts and SLAs.
Today, organisations are facing another hurdle in their IT landscape strategies. With the rise of smart building technology, many departments are again working in silos and implementing one-off IoT initiatives to solve a single issue, instead of looking at the bigger picture. Think about all the new sensor technologies entering the market. They bring exciting possibilities to the table, but in order to achieve lasting business value, departments find they will need expensive (custom) integrations in order to allow all these products to exchange data and achieve optimal functionality.
At Planon, we see that customers are eager to make use of new and attractive software solutions. Just imagine if all these new technologies across a wide diversity of buildings could seamlessly integrate with one central software platform. That is why, at Planon, we take an agnostic approach to smart building technologies and integration. We work with our customers and partners to intelligently connect new technologies with our Planon Universe platform, so that our growing Planon community can always realise additional business value.
For example, we have partnered with Schneider Electric and released Planon Connect for Building Advisor, a connector to Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ Building Advisor platform, which provides 24/7 continuous monitoring of an organisation’s building systems and identifies faults in building equipment. When connected to Planon software, those building diagnostics can run through a series of automatic rules to send alerts and actionable insights to the correct team. Now Schneider Electric customers can benefit from Planon’s solutions, and Planon customers can connect with and benefit from Schneider’s solution. If you are interested in learning more about this partnership as well as understanding new benefits that these integrations can bring to your organisation, I recommend you to watch our webinar, ‘Turning Smart Building Diagnostics into Smart Actions with IWMS.’
I mean it when I say that I have the best job at Planon. Together with my team, we are on top of all the new developments in the market. And we are continuously improving our product and network of solutions for the entire Planon community. Fantastic!
