A model that is constantly evolving and that has been demonstrating its potential to strengthen itself as an important structure within companies.
By Facility Latam*
With years of objectives clearly met, Facility Management in Latin America is recognized as a Facilities Management methodology framed within the generators of advantages of a company or organization, whether corporate, industrial, hotel, health, public and finally in all areas of the business structure.
Facility Management: Europe and the United States and Latin America
There should be no complexes in admitting that in different regions of the world Facility Management has shown that it generates benefits in different sectors, however, there is still the idea that it is a simple game of names between general services, shared services or auxiliary services, when in reality it is a change of model on which there are already indicators that demonstrate that the potentialities of Facility Management go beyond superficial changes in organisational structures.
As a discipline, Facility Management was booming in Spain and the United States through multilocal companies that began to make business life and did not achieve a focus on their activities and therefore Begin to emerge Facility Services companies and even to incorporate within the structures of internal services to each company a management or direction that attended the soft and hard services that were not part of the core business.
However, in Latin America, the large business groups that land their businesses throughout the region have also done so with the idea of continuing with the same procedures that bear fruit in their main offices in terms of facilities management, which has brought as an immediate consequence that Facility Management begins to show its benefits in Latam.
Undoubtedly, the greatest attraction of certain organizations was directed towards markets that showed growth in the Latin American region and hence it was imperative to locate a "partner" that demonstrated that it had the operational and financial capacity to carry out the Facility Management services of the new branches and also the ability to adapt to the new schemes that were presented to them, understanding that companies want to standardize facilities management services from their main homes and only allow themselves adaptations in the ways that local laws required them in terms of human capital, operating permits and others typical of the new locality.
Obviously, it was to be expected that Facility Management companies outside Latin America would also see the opportunity to offer their services in the region and not only to companies from which they already came as service providers but to local companies that demanded this type of form of management of their services, hence large European companies with their Facility Services as a flag began to tropicalize their services and adapt them to the life of each potential client in order to achieve loyalty of the Facility Manegment in Latin America and also as a way to sustain the difficult market that was presented to them in each parent company by virtue of the wide competition of the service provision area and also as a method of leveraging the innovation of business models.
Facility Management and its progress in Latam
This incursion of Facility Management in Latam has not been easy to travel, on the contrary, local companies did not understand new ways for the provision of services and even did not see fit to incorporate more procedures that could bureaucratize the attention of internal clients and the management of the services associated with the properties.
There are statements from those pioneers who saw that through the global brand of internationally renowned clients that surrounded them as expert service providers was a way to make a space within the new locality and from there train people in the methodologies that Facility Management proposes despite the resistance to change. Approaches to the provision of advisory services have also emerged in the management of facilities or in the administration of real estate or condominiums, sports clubs, theaters and even companies that have ventured into construction and remodeling and others that have taken local spaces through the provision of specific services from Facility Services: Cleaning, Security, Maintenance, Internal Services, Voice and Data, Catering, Clinical Engineering, etc. and have progressively presented indicators that allow the business sector in Latin America to have its doors to a comprehensive outsoursing service.
It should be borne in mind that the tendency of Latin American companies is to contract services with specialized companies in each area or discipline, air conditioning, electricity, cleaning, food and beverages and therefore the wall is higher for a Facility Management Company in Latin America when demonstrating how this discipline has advantages as an integrator of services over specific services.
And in all this time two factors have arrived that have allowed the growth of -FM- as it is already openly known in Latin America and these factors are the Standardization of Facility Management from European and American standards which has strengthened the sector in Latam in view of the fact that there are already standard forms or ways for key elements in FM services such as: definitions, forms of client-supplier contracts, human capital management, associated services, among the most reviewed by professionals in the sector.
The other factor that has been incorporated into the scenario are SMEs and Facility Management; small and medium-sized companies also noticed that their core businesses are affected by trying to lead with services that are not the ones that really generate or add value to their customers directly but that do influence the quality of their facilities, the organizational climate and even the final result of their products or services.
Although many comment that the service sector in Latin America is just forming there is evidence that does not support this theory, an example of this is that there are already sectors related to Facility Management that grow in the region firmly. On the other hand, Facility Management is surprisingly absent in certain countries and sectors of the economy although in most countries in Latam they are already well recognized as are the cases of Facility Management companies in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, where references to the discipline are already found in companies and organizations in each country.
What is Facility Management like in times of crisis?
Facility Management begins to gain strength in times of crisis, as companies imperatively need to reduce costs and obtain profitability from their real estate assets. This need for savings drives companies to "rationalize the use of real estate and equipment. It is no longer only multinationals that contemplate Facility Management in their business structure, but local companies are joining this trend.
The development of the discipline has meant that it no longer only focuses on cost savings, but also includes concepts such as ergonomics, luminosity, design and image of the space and physical and environmental health. This seems to show an evolution of Facility Management that has gone from being a tool only for savings to a productivity tool, occupying, therefore, tactical and strategic categories.
Facility Latam - https://facilitylatam.com
