CAFM & IT
a focus on doing things differently and a fearlessness in transforming the market, challengers share some exciting qualities. They are incubating in cities with great connectivity and an acclimation for technology, successfully partnering with other forward-looking clients. They’re now scaling – talking with larger organisations with multi- location deployment.
Who is the establishment? Basically, established brands are those left over. Established brands can be innovative and dynamic, but generally operate within the status quo.
Challenger strengths Marketing & messaging
Established CAFM brands commonly suffer from experience – making on-boarding sound hugely laborious and boring. Contrary to this, challengers offer simplicity – this hardware/ gateway portal plugs into your business and away you go.
Focussed. Fearless
Challengers are small enough, focussed enough and hungry enough that if they don’t come to market with a great product or service, it doesn’t take long to get there. This fearlessness, focus and nimble agility is a great differentiator from the status quo.
Challenger weaknesses Cost & networking requirements
Innovation hasn’t reached the point where IoT/ AI technology costs have lowered. Additionally, office providers are investing heavily in workspace, replacing networking/ infrastructure in an effort to keep up in the arms race for market share. Don’t forget, all these devices talk over networks - meaning signal strength needs to be capable of sending loads of data packets from loads of devices all day long. If you’re in a new building or simply a tenant, the costs of network replacement won’t be as strenuous.
Who’s it for?
A very real question is – is this kit being installed to attract clients or to bring benefit to clients? The hotel industry serves as analogy here – cumulatively, regular hotel guests spend around two to three days working out the lights or adjusting the temperature. Flatscreen televisions, smartphone docks and speaker systems go unused yet, hoteliers still require a degree of drama and spectacle to attract guests.
Experience
Sure, many challengers have been formed by ex- employees of established brands – but have they scope to deliver a complex mix of deep products and services enabling end-to-end strategic and operational activities gaining real understanding of facility performance?
Established strengths Products and experience
Tried, tested and true. You want something done, go to people who’ve done it before and can show results. Established brands have successful products and
www.tomorrowsfm.com
processes for managing facilities. Ask how a supplier handles anything from on-boarding to disaster recovery and they will provide process documents, use cases and references attesting to success. Established brands are experienced, hardened and empathetic to the needs of large organisations. With established brands, you know what you’re getting.
Established weaknesses Resistance to change
Established brands have staked out some amount of success and become comfortable. They can repeat what has been done before, because it’s what they know and what’s worked before. A lack of focus and laser-like determination affects speed to capitalise on new opportunities.
Who’s the better choice? Unfortunately, there’s no clear cut answer. It comes down to what you want and what type of organisation you are. If your workforce is contained across one building, for instance, and networking and connectivity is strong enough – challenger offerings will enable personnel to monitor air quality, turn off resources and interact with facilities the way they want helping them feel empowered.
“Challengers break the conventions of a category, or industry, offering something substantially new.”
If you’ve global operations managed by multiple in-house and out-sourced teams – there are a number of boxes you’ll want to check before on-boarding: What are your goals? Have your facilities infrastructure and connectivity to support requirements? Will this technology support data gathering cross-facilities to capture a robust utilisation picture?
Answering these questions will help understand if a challenger may suit or if you need a more fundamental solution with the experience to advise on heavy lifting and where to focus efforts. There are great capabilities emerging in challenger brands supporting users and not all established CAFM platforms have rolled over. The truth is – some challengers will fall by the wayside as will established brands. Both will write cheques they can’t cash in an attempt to remain competitive, protecting and gaining market share. However, in the next few years there will be a synthesis forming a new establishment - challengers will adopt the best parts of what established providers do and vice-versa.
Remain vigilant and don’t be charmed by successful marketing. Critically probe your needs carefully and match your questions with the technology that will most closely deliver answers.
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