Digitisation in Facility Management

The latest study by the Center Smart Services on the “Future of Facility Management” is progressing! The study participants met in Aachen to identify digitisation potential in their companies. The aim of the meeting was a detailed examination of existing business models with regard to digitisation possibilities.

To achieve this goal, the already existing business models of the study partners were analysed exemplary. This was and is necessary because even in facility management, renowned companies lose more and more important market shares to innovative, young companies that they had previously not considered as serious competitors. The partners of the study have recognized this issue now and used the context of a one-day Workshop to think out of the box and look for new ideas and solutions.
With support of FIR at RWTH Aachen University, the business model examples were analysed, evaluated critically, “attacked” and used to identify weak points exemplarily in order to sensitize the study participants for the topic of disruption.

During the workshop, existing business models typical for the facility management industry were discussed. For Analysis purposes, they were broken down into their individual parts such as revenue sources and benefit claims. The participants were then presented with three platform-based business models on which successful companies such as Amazon or Facebook are based. Based on this knowledge, it was then discussed to what extent the respective business model can be made more innovative and improved by incorporating new digital technologies. In a final step, the newly developed business model was embedded in a “business ecosystem”.

The aim of the workshop is to help the participants to recognize and identify future market threats at an early stage in order to react to them fast.
In the coming months, the final study steps will follow, such as a tour of the Building Technologies section of Siemens AG in Frankfurt and the presentation of the results of the Delphi survey on “Future technology trends in the facility management industry”. The final results of the study are expected in February 2019!