Facility Managers Can Use Data to Build Clout

Facility management, dashboards, data   December 13, 2010




Today’s topic is the importance of using data effectively. From energy costs per month to occupants per square foot, many facility managers are sitting on a haystack of information and don’t know how to find the needles that top management is really looking for.

"We see facility organizations with a lot of data but they don’t know how to mine the data," says Stormy Friday, president of the Friday Group. "What we hear from senior executives is that reporting capabilities are not very good, and the tendency is to just inundate senior executives with a lot of data that is meaningless." At the opposite extreme, some facility managers don’t report anything. Either way, top executives don’t have useful metrics to evaluate facility department contributions. A dashboard — a regular report with a handful of key metrics — is a good way to build clout by showing what the department has accomplished. Items for the dashboard might include energy costs, work order performance or occupancy information.

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