Top Reasons to Outsource Facilities Maintenance

Reduce or Control Maintenance Costs

For non-core activities, such as facilities maintenance, outsourcing can prove cost effective and deliver a competitive advantage. Three reasons are generally attributable to realizing cost savings through outsourcing:

• Lower Cost Structure: an outside provider realizes economies of scale that are created by serving multiple customers for the same need, resulting in better service at a lower cost.
• Specialization: focusing on a single core activity, and applying those skills across multiple diverse clients, creates an ever growing knowledge base that can be applied to drive down costs.
• Research and Development: all research and development is focused on a single core competency – facilities maintenance. By partnering with an outside specialist, the company can leverage the contractor’s significant investment in improved technology and field-specific advancements to remain at the cutting edge, without sacrificing its own internal resources. These improvements drive down cost for the company, without significant investment or risk.

Improve Company Focus

Outsourcing lets a company focus on its core business by having operational functions assumed by an outside expert. Freed from devoting energy to areas that are not in its expertise, the company can focus its resources on meeting its customers’ needs.

Gain Access to World-Class Capabilities

World-class providers make extensive investments in technology, methodologies, and people. They gain expertise by working with many clients facing similar challenges. This combination of specialization and expertise gives customers a competitive advantage and helps them avoid the cost of chasing technology and training. In addition, there are better career opportunities for personnel who transition to the outsourcing provider.

Free Your Internal Resources for Other Purposes

Every organization has limits on the resources available to it. Outsourcing permits an organization to redirect its resources (most often human capital) from non-core activities toward activities that serve the customer. The organization can redirect these employees to core business activities. People whose energies are currently focused internally can now be focused externally on the customer.

Resources Not Available Internally

Companies outsource because they do not have access to the required resources within the company. Outsourcing is a viable alternative to building the needed capability from the ground or investing to expand a current capability. Again, economies of scale provide an advantage for outsource providers.

Gain Better Management and Control

By serving many clients in several different markets, outsource providers bring a depth of knowledge and experience that is difficult for companies to duplicate. Knowledge of industry best-practices, cost-saving, and capital-preserving techniques, as well as how best to implement them, allow outsource providers to deliver results that are typically beyond what a company can achieve alone. In addition, the company can set aggressive goals, knowing they have an expert partner to implement and achieve them.

Share Risk

A good outsource provider will deliver its services for a fixed, budgeted price. In this arrangement, the outsource provider assumes financial responsibility should the programs cost exceed the budgeted price. By sharing its risk with an outside provider, the company can more accurately budget and predict its costs, and free up capital reserves.

Navigate Complex Regulatory Environment

Facilities professionals must understand multiple regulatory and compliance laws, and stay abreast of frequent changes and new developments. Outsource providers invest significant resources to train their employees and develop best-practice processes and procedures for navigating these issues. By outsourcing, a company places this responsibility in expert hands, without sacrificing its own success.