Mobile facilities management tools: Raising the bar on inspections and remediation

We may want to perform at the highest possible level in life and ensure everything we do meets that standard. But, if we are honest, people often sacrifice perfectionism to make progress.

With only so many hours in the day and demands on our time high, the best of us can be forced into prioritising some tasks over others. For example, in facilities management we set standards for inspectors, but have you noticed any nice-to-have details missing from an audit report – such as photographs and media evidence of an incident? And, have those reports ever been filed a little later than we’d like?

When people are rushing from one job to another, it’s easy to understand and forgive the odd discrepancy. We know these little omissions shouldn’t happen, but given other pressures and time constraints, they might be excused.

The problem is that once we start ignoring small oversights, ‘must do’ tasks are quickly downgraded to ‘should do’ tasks and the standards we set quickly start to slip.

Take care of the small things

However, times are changing with a growing trend in digitisation and, in particular, mobile apps. It has become so easy to capture and record all necessary information, instantly, that there’s no longer any reason why we can’t maintain high reporting standards.

This has changed the game in facilities management significantly because, as the American poet Emily Dickinson once said, “If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves.”

By ensuring details are no longer missed, we have been realising significant benefits that are helping to raise the bar. Here’s 3 key ways this has been happening.

Speed of resolution

Pulling together an inspection report can be extremely time consuming. Paper forms must be manually completed and submitted, the data analysed and interpreted, and resulting actions picked out and communicated to the relevant people. At worst, this data must also be inputted once more – from paper into a digital format such as Excel. The length of time this takes does not make for a quick or timely customer experience.

Digitisation has changed this. As demonstrated by teams using iAuditor, the time it takes to complete an inspection has been halved, with properly formatted reports being received up to eight times faster than before.

As for the resulting issues and repairs, maintenance teams are notified immediately without having to wait for the full report to be received and reviewed. This means remediation work is completed quicker and more efficiently, leaving both customers and managers happier.

Better customer experience

The ability to quickly respond to issues and repairs has a profound impact on customer experience.

This is further enhanced by the ability to provide clients and managers with detailed inspection reports – meaning vital information is always available and never missed. When you have a consistent level of information, you can also analyse data and provide evidence of recurring issues or show how the service provided has improved over time.

Enhanced reporting also allows facilities managers to discuss where further improvements could be made, and demonstrate progress using photographic evidence.

A greater level of assurance

When you can resolve issues faster and provide evidence to this effect, you will see additional benefits where health and safety is concerned. Mobile apps allow hazards to be recorded and reported instantly so remedial work can be prioritised and dealt with immediately.

Having evidence of when work was completed also minimises the potential for fraudulent personal injury claims being made, or legal action being taken against a company. When reductions in these incidents can be demonstrated, it improves a business’s risk profile and could help to lower insurance premiums.

Turning ‘should do’ back into ‘must do’

Given the positive impact on business performance derived from mobile facilities management tools, the bar for inspectors can ultimately be set higher. With mobile apps making it quicker and easier to report in detail, we are now better placed to complete tasks and provide an unprecedented level of service to the customer. And those elements of the job that may previously have been seen as merely ‘should do’ tasks, are once again becoming ‘must do’.

If you would like to know more about how mobile inspection tools such as iAuditor can improve your FM operations, please visit our Facilities Management page.

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