Technology
The data usually exists. It is just not assembled.
Almost every operation we look at is already generating enough information to answer its own questions. The problem is that it lives in four systems that were bought in different decades and do not share a definition of anything.
What we work with
A typical engagement pulls from a maintenance management system, a building management or automation system, utility billing, the general ledger and a pile of vendor invoices. Individually each is a partial view. The maintenance system knows what work was requested but not what it cost. The ledger knows what was spent but not what it was spent on. The automation system knows what the equipment did but nobody has looked at it since commissioning.
Most of the value in the first few weeks of an engagement comes from simply reconciling these against each other. When the work order history and the invoice history disagree about how many times a unit was serviced, that discrepancy is the finding.
Reporting that survives a change of staff
We are wary of building anything that only works while the person who built it is still there. Deliverables are structured so the calculation is visible: the assumptions are stated, the source of each number is named, and someone new can rerun it next year without reverse engineering a spreadsheet.
Where a client wants that reporting to become permanent rather than a one time deliverable, we will say so, and that is generally a software problem rather than a consulting one. Building it properly calls for digital business solutions development, which is a different discipline with different people, and we would rather hand that piece to a studio that does it full time than pretend a consulting engagement is the right container for it.
What we do not recommend
Buying a new system to solve a problem that is actually a data entry discipline problem. This is the most common and most expensive mistake in the category. If work orders are being closed without labor hours recorded, a better maintenance platform will produce the same empty fields with a nicer interface. Fix the practice first, then decide whether the tool is the constraint.
A reasonable test before any facilities software purchase: name the decision you cannot currently make, and the specific field that is missing that would let you make it. If that sentence is hard to complete, the purchase is premature.
Start with the numbers you already have
Send us a recent operating budget, a maintenance log or a vendor contract. We will tell you what it says about the way the site is being run.
Get in touch