The Asset Factor

IT Provider Wins Clients with Cost-Effective Hosted Facilities Management Solution

(July 2009)

Based in Upminster, England, FSI (FM Solutions) offers computer-aided facility management software (CAFM) solutions for midsize and enterprise clients. With growing demand for hosted CAFM solutions in the U.K., it saw a business opportunity to offer affordable solutions to a broader audience. FSI developed a software-plus-services solution called Concept Evolution™, a Web-enabled version of its CAFM technology that integrates with clients’ on-premises human resource, financial, and building management systems for a low monthly fee. Using Concept Evolution, FSI clients gain enterprise-level CAFM functionality without the hardware and software licensing costs. Through the software-plus-services approach, FSI expects to expand its market share, improve service levels, and increase revenue.  

Situation

FSI (FM Solutions) is a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner that has been designing, developing, and implementing Concept™ Computer Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) software solutions since 1990. Facilities management (FM) refers to the management of communal buildings including offices, apartments, hospitals, and colleges. FSI’s products are used by hundreds of clients in Europe, Canada, and the Middle East.

FSI clients range from enterprises such as Harrods and the London Stock Exchange, to FM service providers such as Carillion that manage properties for many hundreds of clients, to smaller organizations that own a single building. FSI clients choose from a wide array of software products that assist in the provision of FM services, including air conditioning, cleaning, electrical maintenance, security, and decorating.

While the company began as a software development firm, over the years it has gained a reputation for responsive client service that sets it apart from competitors. “We have invested heavily in the solution support and consultancy part of our business,” says Compton Darlington, Business Development Director at FSI (FM Solutions). “We work strategically with our clients to customize a full end-to-end solution for the long term.”   

Listening to Clients

FSI had been hearing from more and more clients who wanted to move their FM costs from a capital to an operational expense. Typically, FM is a back-office function that has to compete for IT resources. “FM is often at the end of the queue for IT directors, who see it as less important than other mission-critical systems,” confirms Darlington. “Yet, from an operational point of view, FM is the second highest spend for any organization that owns a facility. Our clients, especially midsize businesses, are starting to think about more cost-effective ways to acquire CAFM software.”

Solution

For FSI, these midsized clients represented an opportunity to try a new approach to providing software and services to clients. Called software-plus-services, this approach reflects an increasing need to combine Internet services with client and server software to deliver more choice and capabilities to clients. “The software-plus-services approach is gaining acceptance in the U.K.,” says Darlington. “Clients want the expediency of hosted services that are capable of integrating with their on-premises systems, but don’t want to give up our client support and consultancy services.”

Moving to Web-based Facilities Management

FSI worked with asset management outsourcing specialist, The Asset Factor, to build a prototype software-plus-services solution. The partners worked together to design and develop a Web-enabled version of FSI Concept technology that eventually became Concept Evolution™.

Concept Evolution marks the first time that FSI Concept technologies can be implemented across an environment of multi-tenanted buildings and a network of third-party service providers and stakeholders to be accessed from the cloud. FSI maintains and supports the solution; however, clients can choose to have it hosted by a third party, thereby avoiding upfront costs for software licenses and hardware. Instead, clients can subscribe to a monthly fee and employees simply use their Web browser to access the solution. Concept Evolution interoperates with clients’ finance and human resources systems to synchronize payroll, purchasing, and invoice data. The solution also interoperates with the on-premises estate property management systems at each building in any clients’ portfolio.

With Concept Evolution, building managers gain 24-hour access to a support desk that relays information to a Web-based, fully-automated, and integrated operational platform. Each call follows a carefully planned sequence of events: once the call is registered by the support desk, Concept Evolution alerts the appropriate contractors using an e-mail message. The contractors open Concept Evolution in the Web browser to pick up the work order. The system gathers all necessary information from the facility’s property management systems and monitors the maintenance performed according to best practices and service level agreements.  Along the way, stakeholders can import information into Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheets, Office Word documents, or .pdf files for further data manipulation. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Cloud-based delivered computer-aided facilities management software.

Gaining a Rapid Development Environment

The development team at FSI wanted to take advantage of built-in Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) to offer a responsive, feature-rich application that executes efficiently in the Web browser. They built Concept Evolution using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 to facilitate Web development with enhanced tools for creating compelling, AJAX-enabled Web applications.

“Since we became a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, we have worked closely with Microsoft to plan our migration to the .NET environment,” says Karl Horner, Technical Director, at FSI (FM Solutions). “With Visual Studio 2005, we moved to a more agile development, which significantly reduced the time to deliver our software-plus-services approach.”

For FSI, the creation of Concept Evolution signaled the beginning of a lucrative new business strategy.

Benefits

“Concept Evolution allows us to take advantage of the growing software-plus-services opportunities in the facilities management market,” confirms Horner. “Now we are in a stronger position than our U.K. competitors and all we had to do was re-architect our existing products. We can pass on the same low barrier to entry to our clients. We expect they’ll be excited about not having to spend large sums of money up front to start benefiting from CAFM.”

With its software-plus-services approach, FSI is poised to expand its market base, open up new revenue streams, reduce costs, and improve client service.

Expands Markets

FSI now has a software delivery approach eminently suited to the diverse needs of its varied client base. Midsize clients can choose hosted services because they are more cost-effective. A large FM service provider that manages hundreds of buildings owned by different clients can choose to use on-premises FSI products for one sector of its portfolio, and subscribe to Concept Evolution for another.

Now that FSI can offer enterprise-scale CAFM capabilities to midsize clients for no up-front fee, the company is breaking the price barrier to expand this market. Concept Evolution clients have worry-free access to a hosted solution that can make a huge difference to its operations—a managed help desk and automated support infrastructure that collects property information in real time. FSI Concept Evolution clients’ call center employees can track job progress in real time and management has a framework to accurately measure performance and improve service.

Horner believes FSI’s new software delivery approach is a door opener for new business because it moves FM from a capital expense to an operational one. “In these tough economic times, software-plus-services is a huge value for all clients,” he says. “Companies are interested because they see how much easier it is to launch a new CAFM project. There’s always more flexibility within operating budgets and they don’t have to dip into capital funds.”

Opens Up New Revenue

FSI is using its new software delivery approach to accentuate its high-quality client support and open up a lucrative new revenue stream. The company’s well established and highly-trained consultancy and support staff can offer a more hands-on approach to support than a traditional host. “Using the software-plus-services approach, we can diversify our managed services wrapped around the hosted offering,” says Darlington. “Support, integration, and customization services will all add new revenue streams.”

Reduces the Cost of Doing Business

With the new delivery approach, FSI can cut the cost of doing business through a scalable, repeatable solution that’s built on an agile development platform. Applications no longer need to be installed on premises for each client, so FSI can reach more clients with Concept Evolution, and with less expense.

“We can put hosted products together for a very low infrastructure cost per user compared to a locally deployed solution, and we are using Microsoft technologies to reduce our development costs,” says Horner. “To reduce licensing costs, we’ll also use the Microsoft Server Provider License Agreement for licensing SQL Server so we can pass that savings on to the client.”

Instead of employing staff to install, configure, and troubleshoot issues on site for clients, FSI can achieve a quantifiable time/cost saving for this benefit because everything is hosted at the data center. “With all the skilled resources and client systems accessible in one place, we can cut our overheads and solve problems more efficiently,” says Darlington.

With the new software delivery approach, FSI can maintain its clients on a more consolidated versioning strategy because it can deploy upgrades and versions to all clients at the same time. The more clients that it has using the latest versions of a product, the fewer versions it has to support. “We can reduce overall support costs and streamline services initially by as much as 20 percent by moving to the software-plus-services approach,” says Darlington. “This is going to be a long-term benefit for us.”

Enriches Client Relationships

FSI can develop stronger relationships with clients not only through more efficient, less expensive software delivery and support options, but also through a deeper, long-term involvement with each business. That’s because the ongoing nature of the subscription model keeps the client at the forefront of FSI’s awareness. “With software-plus-services, we can be more of a business partner to our clients. This opens the door for more managed services opportunities in the long run,” says Darlington.

Deploys Updates Faster

With its new software delivery approach, FSI can quickly design, test, and deploy product updates to all clients. By setting its own agenda for product change management, FSI can avoid the delays it experienced with large clients who had their own change management processes. “As a hosting provider, we can deploy a change into the live environment with quality testing and our clients can start benefitting from it right away,” says Darlington. 

FSI can also deliver a customized solution to a single client more quickly. “Bringing that change to market quickly will cement our reputation for responsive solution support and consultancy,” says Darlington. “Shortening development cycle times by as much as 15 percent means we can move more quickly on to our next project and increase our revenue. Software-plus-services is good for our clients and good for our bottom line.”

Software + Services

Software-plus-services is an industry shift driven by the fast-growing recognition that combining Internet services with client and server software can deliver exciting new opportunities. Microsoft is dedicated to helping individuals and businesses take advantage of these opportunities. By bringing together the best of both software and services, we maximize capabilities, choice, and flexibility for our customers. The broad software-plus-services approach unites multiple industry phenomena including software as a service, service-oriented development, and the Web 2.0 user experience under a common umbrella.

For more information about software-plus-services, go to:
www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about FSI (FM Solutions) Limited products and services, call 44 0 1 708 251900 or visit the Web site at:
www.fsifm.com

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