What are facility management systems and CAFM software?

Wouldn’t you like to remove the need to source new contractors every time you need a repair? Speed up call-outs and maintenance processes. Automate the approval process instead of generating a long email chain to get things done. 

As experts in delivering cloud-based software solutions, we’re going to assess the function of facilities management software, what it does and how it benefits businesses by introducing efficient new operating procedures.

Facility management systems provide online platforms in which businesses can manage all building maintenance, repairs, planning and projects digitally.

Operators use facility management software to book contractors, monitor and control budgets and costs, record and store risk and compliance certification, and automate approval and sign-off procedures across their entire estate. The ease of using a web-based platform means that decision makers can gain greater visibility over ongoing maintenance across their buildings and assets while making admin processes quicker and keeping a closer eye on costs.

Cloud-based facility management software reduces the time spent on many tasks associated with property maintenance such as sourcing and approving contractors, quotes and jobs and processing invoices, tracking warranties and keeping up with legal compliance obligations.

Operators whose estate comprises multiple buildings benefit from standardising processes and streamlining approval procedures to ensure all repair and maintenance jobs are carried out quickly and at a lower cost.

CAFM stands for computer-aided facilities management. It’s a type of facilities management system that coordinates multiple aspects of your physical property’s maintenance requirements.

To use The Access Group’s facility management software as an example, our CAFM system can provide a real-time overview of the maintenance work that is being carried out on your property and calculates its cost at any given time. It also monitors performance across your estate to bring new issues to your team’s attention.

Some CAFM systems also integrate CAD (computer-aided design) drawings of your estate into the software to digitise your space and help you plan the maintenance and use of those spaces more easily.

Facilities management systems help organisations to save time and money by automating manual tasks and creating smoother, more efficient processes for executing the regular maintenance, repairs and callouts associated with business property and equipment.

When it comes to investing in software to optimise business processes, sometimes facilities management can be overlooked – there are other areas that deliver more immediate results for businesses such as an investment in marketing to produce more sales. However, your buildings and equipment make up some of the biggest investments for your operation, often contributing to the day-to-day success of your business over many years. That’s why we help businesses reduce their spending on maintenance and repairs and optimise processes to make everything move a bit faster.

It has become almost inevitable to expect that facilities projects will result in overspending over the original budget, but we would challenge this misconception and aim to bring your costs back in line with your budget. In terms of the current financial climate, this is no minor benefit – all businesses need to reevaluate which parts of their business are creating a lot of costs and rein in their spending wherever possible. In this case, we would ask – what is the cost of doing nothing?

Facilities management software helps organisations in two significant ways:

• Save time – replacing traditionally time-consuming tasks that generate a lot of paperwork with automated processes, online checklists, data analysis to identify pain points within a business and the booking, tracking and paying of external contractors whether for emergency repairs or scheduled maintenance and servicing.
• Save money – pre-approved contractor lists, controlled procurement and authorisation on new equipment and consumables, gaining greater visibility of site-level spending and approvals and identifying the costly repeat fixes that are costing your operation money all help reduce costs across the business.

Find out more about effective facilities management and the returns it brings by downloading the guide here >

Any facilities management system needs to be able to keep up with the demands of your estate. Therefore, the first step in choosing software is to determine what you need it to achieve.

Where are the pain points for your facilities management team? Where are you finding your budget stretched? What kind of jobs keep coming up? Are there any areas that you find yourself regularly sourcing new contractors? The answers to questions like these should guide you towards the kind of features that you need to see in the facilities management system that you eventually choose.

Our guide to the best CAFM software for hospitality goes into these considerations in more depth but, in short, there are three key factors to explore:

• Size. How much do you need your facility management software to do? Large estates will almost certainly benefit from a powerful CAFM system, but operators of small sites and independent businesses may find all the features they need in smaller-scale options.
• Cost. Your facilities management system should save you money, so its cost needs to be in line with what you expect to save. If you’re already spending a lot on property maintenance, an additional investment in powerful CAFM software should save you more than it costs in the long run, but the same might not be true for a smaller business with lower costs.
• Adoption. Your chosen software needs to be something that your existing staff will adopt into their processes. If your facilities team already uses some sort of software, you need to check how your new software overlaps or possibly replaces the earlier system. If you choose a system that clearly has new operational benefits, your staff are more likely to buy in.

When you have weighed up these factors, use your conclusions to influence the software that you buy. Check their features, and where possible see if you can have demos or trials to make sure that the system works in the way your business needs it to.

Access Maintain is the cloud-based facilities management software designed by businesses for businesses, meaning it provides an easy-to-use platform for streamlining facilities management processes to help you save time and money for your operation.

The Access Maintain facility management software has been shown to reduce maintenance costs by at least 10% by making it easier to choose the most cost-effective solution faster.