What are the best ways to ensure your facility management vendor is meeting your expectations?

Enforce a clear vendor management policy: Ensure a formal documentation that informs all teams, leadership and board members of the official vendor management policy. Like any other business function, vendor management processes should be periodically reviewed and updated over time to improve performance, operations, and costs. Assign an internal committee with team members who are SME (subject matter experts) to oversee specific steps of the vendor management process, based on their professional knowledge or expertise. For internal accountability, always include a clear outline in the policy that details official committee roles and what they are responsible for.

Organizations face two (2) challenges, they either self-perform in-house or outsource? When it comes to real estate, outsourcing has become the dominant delivery model across sectors. In a typical agreement, the FM vendor is going to want to be held harmless for any lapses in services that were to be provided and the client is then focused on protecting themselves by addressing the remedies they have in the event the FM vendor does not provide the agreed upon services. The boiler plate language of an FM vendor contract is rarely agreed without modifications and then those are typically related to the legalese. To get that addressed, you will need to add an Addendum.

Choose the right vendors for your business Finding the best suppliers for your business is all about strategic sourcing. Great vendors provide high-quality service at an affordable price that consistently increases your company’s overall performance and competitive edge in the market. That means you should follow a set of standards when it comes to picking vendors, even if you only need a one-time solution. To develop strong vendor partnerships for your business, look for these qualities: 1. Expert. 2. Stability. 3. Due diligence

Monitor and track vendor spend: Maintaining control over business spending is necessary for sustained growth. implement vendor management processes. Spend management software like Spendesk are powerful online solution that helps companies run vendor management more smoothly. Finance teams gain increased visibility and control over company spending with advanced features that enable them to: Track and reconcile every business transaction from one centralized platform. Optimize finances by pinpointing the best cost savings opportunities Manage all SaaS vendors and recurring payments automatically. Prevent and eliminate duplicates and redundant. Create unique payment modes. Easily review vendor details.

Proactively manage and nurture vendor relationships: A large part of vendor management is vendor relationship management. Nurturing supplier relationships is critical to balancing a healthy collaboration that delivers concrete benefits to both businesses. This means exchanging honest feedback and staying flexible throughout the partnership, especially when negotiating prices or dealing with unexpected issues that may arise. To avoid miscommunication, it's imperative to be as transparent and specific as possible when detailing your expectations and needs–and your vendors should do the same. Knowing when to compromise is a high-value skill here, as small concessions can lead to bigger returns in the long run for both businesses.

Measure vendor performance It’s important to define what success looks like from the start of your collaboration, in order to set realistic expectations with your vendors and lay out how performance will be measured. This could be identifying the relevant KPIs (key performance indicators) for your industry or determining what kinds of qualitative results are important to your team. As KPIs are not static, it’s good to periodically review your shared business goals based on market changes or product updates. Having a diverse array of data points and metrics helps you measure the true impact of vendor performance, and comparing these results against vendor spend gives you a better picture of your business ROI.

The Basic FM vendor agreement expectations of “Slash and Burn” and how it is monitored. A client has a number of goals they would like to achieve, one of which is to not lose money while hopefully making money by using an FM vendor. The FM vendor can slash away expenses that are needed for the property, but nevertheless are shown on the balance sheet as reduced expenses for the property. To lease up the vacant space the FM vendor can lease the space at well below market rates plus concessions whereas on the balance sheet the revenue has increased. Looking at the overall picture, the revenue is up and the expenses are down but that may not represent the whole picture.

Evaluating vendor performance with both quantitative and qualitative factors enables you to accurately determine whether vendors are meeting expectations, underperforming, or even over-performing. Conducting in-depth reviews with your vendor also enables you to identify if business needs have changed, or if there are new opportunities to act on together.

Always be straightforward as a supplier and as an operator as I’ve been on both sides, I appreciate honesty we could have a loving relationship because when you have relationships they are everything but be direct and that you’re clear with expectations we are all human, and we can always improve and allow for some time to remedy but be consistent. We all have favorites, but favorites can also get comfortable so be open-minded.

This needs to be communicated from the outset. Site walkabout , clearly defined scope of works , this needs to be reinforced in the SLA ( service level agreement) thereafter manage the service provider, weekly and monthly meetings. Issues that arise should be raised immediately and tracked to completion.

The experienced FM vendor with an experienced Client with a “Win-Win” mentality The Client: For an FM vendor to take on an account and to know what it is getting itself into not only in terms of the obligations of the contract but the expectations of the vendor, it is incumbent upon the client to express to the vendor without ambiguity information that will impact the property such as: The client’s history, culture, their hopeful future market positioning compared to their current market positioning in reference to any anticipated refinance or property sale. Without this knowledge, inadvertent decisions made today can have a catastrophic impact on their future anticipated gains of tomorrow.