Three ways banks can do more with their facilities maintenance technology platforms

Rapid development in technology platforms have dramatically changed the way facilities and property managers conduct maintenance. Today’s work order management systems—with more automation, more data, and more real-time feedback—provide greater visibility, flexibility, and opportunity to know more about assets, spending patterns, and overall strategies.

These developments have proven to be critically important for banks and other financial service organizations that compete for customers based on brand trust while ensuring they have insights into what they are spending down to the service and location. With customers more informed and selective of where they’ll invest their money, they are expecting more from their in-person banking customer experience.

This need for brand loyalty makes a facilities program—and the technology used to support it—a valuable resources in creating market differentiation. Investing in the right facilities technology is an investment in the fundamentals of the customer experience.

For banks and other retail financial institutions looking to elevate their customer experience while still maintaining control over spend, these are three ways to use a work order management system to increase efficiency out of a facilities maintenance program.

Use dedicated facilities maintenance support teams

Leveraging dedicated support teams for technology ensures specialized expertise, timely assistance, proactive maintenance, tailored solutions, and long-term partnerships. These benefits contribute to smoother operations, increased productivity, enhanced system reliability, and better overall technological performance, ultimately driving business success. At minimum, you should strive to be covered along the following critical lines.

Technology: Keeping work order management systems are up to date helps to ensure data are current, accurate, and complete. This creates more accurate reports that reflect the most important trends at specific locations, allowing for more informed maintenance decisions.

Expert triage: Dealing with unique conditions require significant resources and spend. Access to subject experts can help guide through a process to reduce cost and time. Without an expert on hand, there is a greater risk of simply managing in the direction of excess spending.

After-hours support: Things can break at any time, but when a facilities emergency arises outside of working hours having the right processes and personnel in place ensures that problems don’t lead to long-term disruptions. If a pipe breaks in the middle of the night, a security guard should be able to call a dedicated line and have emergency maintenance on the way.

Capture, organize, and take action on work order data

Any given work order can offer hundreds of individual data points. Putting processes in place to capture, track, and organize that data can offer valuable insights into what is needed at specific branch locations. This helps to avoid unnecessary technician visits, provides insights into equipment that is nearing end of life, and provides greater visibility into spend. Having a dedicated team to analyze the data can help achieve the following:

• Prioritize high-need and high-traffic locations to avoid unnecessary costs.
• Set meaningful and achievable performance benchmarks.
• Better match providers to work that fit their unique strengths.

Develop an effective bench of service providers

Smart vendor management is essential to a high-performance facilities maintenance program. Without a deep provider network and a strong plan for coverage at each branch, there is a higher potential that certain needs will begin to fall through the cracks. As a result, old issues and new disruptions—along with unnecessary costs—will begin to pile up. Over time, customers may begin to notice these issues, and if that happens, the overall reputation could suffer and business could slow.

These issues are bigger than any technology platform. In fact, they’re essential to charting future success. It comes down to understanding priorities, trades, skill sets, and workflows. Follow these three best practices to ensure a stable bench of providers is available:

• Determine how many technicians are needed at any one location at any given time.
• Assess which regions are showing the most need and for what trades.
• Document that each providers is properly insured and that the documentation is on file.

Additionally, someone will need to handle the alignment between providers and work orders. Accomplishing this will require an in-depth knowledge of each provider’s individual strengths, a record of their responsiveness, and an ongoing assessment of their performance. And all of that requires the kind of expertise that no technology platform alone can provide.

Technology is essential to the success of any modern-day facilities portfolio. But it’s by no means the key to the lasting success of your financial organization’s maintenance programs. Consider working with a team of dedicated experts. Get in touch with SMS Assist to learn more about our programs: weknowFM@smsassist.com.