2023 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
CASE STUDY SAVILLIS
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“Procurement is no longer about contracts, category management, negotiations and red-lining deals with legal; it’s all about buying solutions for our customers,” says Maxi Glas. And to do that, it must “move away from an RFx mentality” and understand the motivation behind the work it is doing. “Procurement needs to know what it is sourcing for customers and truly why,” she adds. “You’ve got to understand what drives them and, therefore, what it is that makes the business successful.” Maxi, who joined Savills Property Management this year, believes arrangements should be outcomes
“Procurement should consider how contracts can help to achieve a great customer experience, and then articulate those requirements to service providers and work with them on how best to achieve it,” she says. Maxi says she always viewed suppliers as a “massive extension of the enterprise” and that they can help increase intelligence and ideas by 10-fold or more. “What I don’t see enough in procurement is people being curious about looking for new solutions and approaches - really examining what’s going on and an awareness of progress or changes in the marketplace - suppliers can really help with that.”
Traditionally suppliers of hard and soft facilities management (FM) would have been dealt with as distinct categories by Savills. ‘Hard FM’ means anything that’s fixed in buildings, such as heating, ventilation, plumbing and lighting; while ‘soft FM’ covers cleaning, catering and more. Now technology has led to an overlap between the two. It is blurring the boundaries between categories in such a way that it no longer makes sense to treat them purely as separate entities. The convergence comes with the use of AI tools and QR codes that can do everything from tell cleaners if bins or rooms require a refresh, to monitoring carbon monoxide levels to help improve health and productivity.
Procurement should become ‘idea scouts’
“I’ve always viewed suppliers as a massive extension of the enterprise. It means you can multiply the access you have to intelligence and ideas by 10 times or more.” Maxi Glas , Head of Service Partner Relationships at Savills
Category management is over; solutions management is here. Maxi Glas, Head of Service Partner Relationships at Savills, explains her approach.
Blurred Boundaries Founded in the UK in 1855, Savills has more than 40,000 employees working across 700 offices across the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. Savills Property Management’s purpose is helping people to thrive through places and spaces. It does this by delivering the highest level of service to clients and end users of their estates at every stage of the development life-cycle. Offering connected, complementary specialisms that deliver on client’s objectives.
-based. So, it would be the task of a cleaning provider, for instance, to ensure a building looks good and gives a welcoming first impression. The new head of service partner relationships at Savills, within its Property Management Division, brings with her 17 years of finance and supply chain experience from previous permanent and interim consultancy roles at GSK, Lloyds Banking Group, and Vodafone. She and her 55-strong department are formulating a new business strategy that enhances the ongoing work with service providers to achieve customer-based solutions.
It means that what is happening with hard fixtures in a property is impacting the delivery of soft services. “Nowadays, electronic devices send signals to staff to say whether or not a bin is full, for instance; they can also be used to reduce energy usage on equipment such as elevators. Tags on meeting room windows can let cleaners know if it requires attention. If no action is needed that day, you can save time, money, and energy on the work, as well as reduce your use of cleaning products,” she says. “If you multiply that by thousands of meeting rooms, you can have a positive impact on the environment.”
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