Explore the future of CAFM

Facilities management is an ever-changing landscape and so, is technology. People and companies need to have a continuing drive to educate themselves and understand trends.

CAFM provides a comprehensive, all-in-one facilities software solution designed to deliver the functionality a business needs to run an efficient and compliant facility. As standard, it covers areas such as help desk, project management, asset tracking with Approval Management and intuitive reporting dashboard.

Of course in such a rapidly-developing industry, companies also need to be aware, as far as possible, about how needs and technology are changing so that they can adapt accordingly.

The FM industry is showing growing confidence in the benefits of Computer Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) software, with the percentage of facilities managers reporting using FM software increasing significantly year-on-year. The continued key challenge of budgetary pressure is having a positive impact on the number of businesses adopting CAFM. In an industry that is fighting its way towards the board room, with an increased responsibility for productivity and workforce satisfaction, facilities managers are recognizing that using CAFM creates value through the ability to make better informed management decisions and employing more efficient working practices to increase service quality and output.

Transparency and information management are vital for managing large areas of space, assets and buildings, as well as the many requests of a diverse workforce and contractual SLAs and KPIs. The comprehensive reporting capability of FM software provides facilities managers with access to business critical information, enabling them to retrieve data to aid strategic FM planning whilst ensuring complete audit ability.

 Many organizations are realizing how FM software can be integrated with a wide range of systems, including Accounting software, Human resources tools like Time & Attendance, Inventory & Procurement systems to give the capability to deliver one version of the truth and to create a fully functional enterprise-wide solution.

Similarly mobile technology is becoming more common, both for auditing and business efficiency. Alongside this, there is an increase in requests for access from any device (BYOD) which creates its own issues – a good CAFM solution will be able to handle this request. The advances in the mobile sector are improving FM efficiency everyday by streamlining the entire process and improving communication. As always, the people who are able to adopt the most beneficial technology first will stand to benefit the most in the future.