If your business is like most, the buildings and equipment in your portfolio rank among your top expenses. This is why strategic facility planning (SFP) is so critically important. SFP entails understanding all aspects of your existing facilities, deciding what new facilities would be suitable additions and planning for the long-term future of all facilities within your organization. The idea is to establish current and future facility needs that are in line with your organization’s goals—and to make sure they remain in line along the way. Simply put, SFP is used to maximize building usage, both now and in the future.

Strategic Facility Planning to Match Supply with Demand

Strategic facility planning is a continuous process of matching supply with demand: The supply of buildings you own or lease must keep up with the demands for space. If your real estate portfolio includes hundreds of buildings, this becomes a very complicated situation, as some groups or divisions will grow quickly and require more space, while others will shrink or experience static growth. SFP will allow you to see every element necessary to keep your supply and demand in alignment. The information you’ve gathered from careful and comprehensive strategic facility planning will give you the ability to run scenarios to see how well those moves will work.

Strategic Facility Planning: Adapt Quickly as Needs Evolve

Strategic facility planning is based on accurate and thorough data. Your current holdings are benchmarked according to how much they help you accomplish your goals. Square footage and space availability can be matched to your goals and projected needs, revealing the gaps that need addressing in order to turn your goals into results. Using your strategic business objectives, you’ll establish baselines from which to run what-if scenarios.

Over time, automated workflows will increase the efficiency and utility of strategic facility planning. This is where a comprehensive and powerful Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) will shine. An IWMS should have SFP capabilities that can adapt as your business goals change, including:

• Strategic facility planning overviews
• Setting up the planning environment
• Forecasting
• Portfolio planning
• Space planning
• Scenario planning

Your IWMS should be able to help you put every facility and asset in your organization’s portfolio to its most profitable use—an invaluable help when it comes to strategic facility planning. Bear in mind that facilities management is just one part of a fully integrated workplace management system. The right IWMS will help your organization make costs more predictable and cut waste all the way along the path toward achieving your business goals in multiple areas, including capital projects, real estate and energy management.

Getting Started

If you’re looking for an IWMS capable of simplifying the strategic facility planning process, consider IBM TRIRIGAⓇ, a fully integrated system of powerful modules operated from a single platform. The partner you choose to implement IBM TRIRIGA matters. eCIFM has helped hundreds of organizations get TRIRIGA up and running, and we’ve made the process as fast and easy as possible. That includes moving your existing data into the new system and getting it all into a single view; we also have a suite of mobile apps to extend TRIRIGA’s functionality into the field. Our team includes world experts on TRIRIGA as well as former customers, so we understand your needs from the user side. If you want to make sure all your facilities have sufficient capacity and are set up to help you achieve your strategic business goals, give us a call.