SBM Case Study

Managing through magic of technology.

We are experiencing disruption in many industries and facility management is no exception either. SBM, a leader in this space needed to not only upgrade itself to compete with young tech savvy startups but also enhance the CX including serving it in-house team of over 8K associates.

The end result is a robust application that caters to the clients, regional managers and their staff on ground through live updates on overall facility management, team performance and effective communication between all stakeholders. This application currently serves clients in US, Singapore, Malaysia and UK that support 6 languages. It is made up of a Web app that is mainly to manage facilities and Android appear operational workflow. It is designed with latest in web and app technologies and is responsive across all breakpoints from large desktop to mobile screen.

Project Scope

• Client Onboarding

• Vendor/Partner portal

• Client portal

• Employee intranet

• Messaging and Notification center

• Ground staff Android App

• Time tracker & Billing

• Team Management

• Task Management System

• Learning management

 

– a person who does a scientific study of the customs of individual peoples and cultures.

Observing the users and researching about their behavior, learn and understand the core needs of target audience. Working in partnership with SBM’s in-house developing team, I lead UX owning all experience design for the project, collaborating with junior UI and UX designers and product managers.

The work included:

• Holistic view of complete process

• Stakeholder interviews, including management and 3rd party partners

• Qualitative and Quantitative surveys

• Low/high fidelity prototypes

• Wire-framing and UX design

• Information architecture

• Interactive prototypes

• Visual designs

 

SBM clients could not see how their facilities were managed to justify the cost without updated status report.

SBM management had to communicate constantly with onsite supervisors for updates that was cumbersome and time consuming.

The ground staff spent too much time chasing supervisor and getting their daily task list and had to spend more time in logging information manually on the tasks them completed.

As a result over the years, SBM was losing business to new players in the space that offered better visibility into facility management using technology.

 

Managing facilities is a complex challenge with many moving parts simultaneously. It was critical to understand the core issues, identify bottlenecks before proposing ideal solutions. As a team we interviewed direct and indirect users of the facility, regional managers and ground staff to get an insight into a day in the life of a supervisor. We also studies current tools, routines and requirementments that helped us to build the final solutions.

Learning

What logistics, circumstances or settings are relevant to managing the facility for the ground staff?

Which user directly interact as part of the daily facility management operation?

How does the community get impacted due to these services?

Insights

What are some of the most positive experiences with the facility we can gain better insights from?

Who can we collaborate and partner with for better outcome in this community?

Opportunities

How does the client contribute to enhance the total experience that we could leverage?

What are some of the way it becomes a bottleneck, if any?

 

As part of this observation, we spoke to over 30 individuals that were directly involved and impacted due to this service. We also surveyed another 60 individuals that were involved in providing these services including regional managers and client liaisons on site.

• Lack of transparency made it challenging for client to know if their requests are being addressed.

• Ground staff spent too much time chasing supervisor to communicate about the required supplies, equipment and getting daily tasks.

• Supervisors were stressed to send out daily reports to management, while supporting the ground staff on their daily tasks and conducting manual audits routes.

• Back office took over two months to onboard a new client, costing company lost revenue in millions.

• Managing time and logging appropriately for billing was a nightmare for payroll that directly affected delayed invoices – costing company dearly.

Some of the key findings from our survey.

• 69% preferred better online/mobile tools over face to face interactions.

• Lack of visibility was huge concern for the company as well as the clients.

 

Based on our study, we focused on ideas that could offer easy access to different types of users with clear call to action. Mobile phone are ubiquitous and we planned to leverage that for ground staff to minimize facetime with supervisors. Finally, using immense amount of data to learn, analyse and use to identify any bottlenecks and increase performance.

Our solutionb – a web application that served three distinct set of information.

A) Updates with notifications and messages.

B) Timely call to actions

C) Performance metrics and predictive analysis.

Data is the bloodstream of business.

Management, Clients and Ground Staff expect transparency and clear communications to build trust. The Web app and Mobile app was designed to deliver the same.

 

There were different type of users and how their interaction made an impact on the community.

 

Before we started sketching the IA (Information architecture), we created wireframes of our concept and got the feedback from our targeted users. Key employees from California, North Carolina and Colorado were invited to participate during this process. Apple team represented the ‘client’ helped us fine tune the concept before we went to the drawing board.

Result: 3 New features were added that would significantly reduce the on-boarding process from 2-months down to less than 3-days!.

 

Excited from the positive feedback, we quickly prototyped and shared internally with all departments. This created early team-wide alignment, sparked lots of great ideas and created a strong sense of ownership across different disciplines within our team and the client community.

Sharing our methods and thinking from the outset helped us build a strong relationship with all the stake holders. Ample opportunities for input at all stages of the project built trust and created a comfortable environment to share ideas — forming a partnership which will serve much value beyond this phase.

The company decided to deploy Android phones that had the application installed and ready to use by all its ground staff. This helped us focus on a single platform and learn from usability testing.

Meeting with key stakeholders such as SBM Managment, Clients (benefitiary of the services) and ground staff regularly through this process helped us to understand their functional challenges with technology, application and onsite connectivity. Together we identified risks and aligned on expectations and constructed a shared vision for the app.

 

Our approach was simple: Build an easy to use smart application that served our users and act as and exec assistant to help them go through their tasks effortlessly. Our goal was to not just change how our users perfumed their task, we fundamentally transformed the facility management industry.

 

Client Dashboard

 

Facility Management is a complex business and we had a tall order of issues that needed addressed. The Web app we created addresses those and delivered beyond expectations on our KPIs. Some of the key highlights of this project.

• Onboarding down from 2-Months to less than 3-days!

• Sales managers were able to bring in Google, Amazon and Microsoft as new clients, solely attributing to the Webapp, demonstrating level of transparency and performance.

• Overall performance increased by 18% (over 3-months) and many other small wins.

As a team we delivered the project goals set by SBM on time and on budget. The application earned accolades from industry and kudos from clients. The team effort and commitment from management helped succeed the project while making long lasting friendships.