Facilities management acts as the service system support for all organizations that it serves, providing services such as:
- Industrial cleaning
- Repair & maintenance
- Construction services
- Janitorial services and more.
To ensure success, facilities management operations need to continuously meet the highest standards of service. This can include services such as moving HVAC units in buildings, installing dryers in hotel washrooms, or changing broken bulbs in an apartment complex. Each job requires the highest degree of precision and standardization, ensuring each task is completed to the same quality every time, no matter who is carrying out the job.
Enabling successful large scale facilities management operations often requires deploying additional administrative sources. This further increases the burden on financial and administrative departments to complete paperwork, handle team coordination, and ensure data accuracy.
One way to increase standardization of service and reduce administrative stress on facilities management providers is by using mobile checklists, available within your field service management mobile app. Checklists provide a systematic flow of pointers/reminders for your workforce, so they don’t miss out on anything. Each task from carpet steam cleaning to work desk sanitization and air vents cleaning is added to a checklist, accessible in real-time through the mobile app. A facilities management app with offline capabilities lets you input information even when offline, helping your technician perform their job without worrying about network connectivity.
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of a mobile checklist feature within facilities management software.
Better Managerial Control
As a service manager managing a multitude of projects, it is not often possible to be present at each service location. How do you ensure that each aspect of the job is managed well and that you are not in breach of any service level agreement? The manual way of doing this is by following handbooks or filling out paper forms. This process can be time-intensive for technicians and increases the possibility of data-entry errors, as well as an increased load on administrative staff. Using a mobile checklist is much more efficient as it allows your organization to add data that supports the work order. For example, as soon as a task is completed, your technician can add a picture of the finished task. Adding proof of delivery gives you the surety for your staff’s work, and helps your service quality.
Digitizing the Process to Maintain Job Standardization
Managing a facility is not a one-time job; it is a continuous process performed at regular intervals. For example, your company signs a contract to supply janitorial services for all locations of a department store across the city. Now you must provide the same level of service across all locations, and ensure that each technician provides the same quality of service. Mobile checklists can solve this problem for you. Once you electronically dictate each job’s workflow through checklists, you can ensure that each technician follows the same steps to accomplish the task each time.
Ensure Subcontractors Follow your Service Layout
Working with subcontractors can be tricky, however, if you provide them with the right technology to streamline their jobs, you can reduce the chances of error. Mobile checklists can help you in aligning your company’s service layout with the subcontractor’s working style. A step-by-step breakdown of the work order in the form of a checklist ensures that the subcontractor, though not an official part of your organization, follows your service protocol.
Using a mobile system of managing service tasks gives you the flexibility of hiring more subcontractors without worrying about compromising your service quality.
Nested Questions
Nested questions act as the perfect guide for your service technicians.
Nested questions are conditional follow-up questions or tasks based on answers. For example, the question could be, “Have you installed the hairdryer in the first-floor men’s washroom, yes or no?”. If the answer is yes, the next task might be, “please upload a picture of the dryer”. Alternatively, if the answer is no, the following task might be, “please specify the reason why not”.
Nested questions enable you to guide your technician in the quickest way possible. It is an efficient way of communication as the technician’s required text input is reduced with yes and no questions. It is also an effective form of communication as it helps you ensure the quality of work, and provides more control over the tasks.