Let’s get straight to it: the Infraspeak Network™ is a shared workspace that introduces collaboration to procurement and work-execution processes between facility and maintenance managers (referred to in this article as The Client), and vendors, suppliers, contractors and facility service providers (The Supplier).
The Infraspeak Network™ simplifies everyday processes like quote requests and proposals, sharing work orders and monitoring maintenance carried out by suppliers. These newly enabled workflows allow you to do the following from the comfort of your Infraspeak platform:
✔️ Expand your Client/Supplier base and book of contacts
✔️ Manage quote requests and agree on proposals for work orders and purchase of stock.
✔️ Execute contracted maintenance work more efficiently.
With a basic understanding of what the product does, let’s provide some critical context.
You will be as excited about this as we are! Now’s a good time to get popcorn… It all starts with a question:
What is problem-solving?
It’s many things.
It’s embedded into the human psyche as a natural response to challenges. Let’s take some very “uncommercial” examples and play with this notion a bit — it’s key:
Lemons! We’ve all heard the expression “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”.
Sudoku! One of the most popular games in the world is essentially one giant problem-solving challenge packaged up as a box with smaller boxes and numbers. There are many things to be learned about sudoku, but when you pause, breathe and think about it, the big lesson is that humans love to solve problems.
Your team member who works in sales is a problem solver. Your CFO is a problem solver. Infraspeak is no different.
Every time we create a product and release it to the world, our entire team puts on their problem-solving hat because if it doesn’t solve an issue, it doesn’t achieve anything.
Take Infraspeak Gear™, the intelligent processing core we released back in 2021. The issue here was simple — admin was occupying too much of your time and slowing down your ability to execute what really matters — the solution? Automate it. Find a way of stopping you from needing to do things that you didn’t want to do.
The same process was applied to the Infraspeak Network™. Arguably, this challenge is much more layered and sophisticated and the consequences of doing things the old way are potentially, much more costly.
It’s not been plain sailing
The juicy bit of this article! The frankfurter to the hot dog — what exactly is the problem the Infraspeak Network™ will solve?
After hours of conversations with Clients and Suppliers, we saw that managing relationships with counterparts was a source of real frustration. Try to picture stepping onto a tennis court, serving the ball and… oh! There’s no one on the other side of the net. Bounce, bounce, bounce, failure. That’s a rough indication of how it was managing Client/Supplier relationships (pre-Network). For those on both sides of the relationship, for far too long, it’s been a nightmare.
Clients and Suppliers were bogged down by hundreds of hours spent trying to manage emails and phone calls, constantly frustrated by missed calls or no-responses.
Clients settling for quotes that don’t meet expectations because they have no other options and there’s no time to lose — you need to get the job done!
Buyers can’t find sellers, sellers can’t find buyers! Proposals sent in 1001 formats which are impossible to compare… nobody meeting targets!
Clients thinking Suppliers cancelled last minute and cursing them from the rooftops… when really, it was just a misunderstanding! “Damn! I didn’t see the 4 missed calls”.
Suppliers are furious with Clients because they’ve arrived on the day of the job, ready to deliver an excellent service… and? Oh. The Client forgot to say that they’d cancelled the work order because of a ‘change of circumstances’.
Zero transparency, zero visibility, zero accountability.
Contacts lost. Contracts lost. Time lost. Money lost. Sleep lost — we’ve not even scratched the surface yet!
The status quo impacted you more deeply. Many of your careers, Clients and Suppliers, were graded on your ability to deliver on these crucial procurement and collaboration promises — sub-optimum processes hit your ability to meet targets and succeed.
This then had an impact on your family life! You’d feel stressed and frustrated. You’d carry that stress on your shoulders and bring it home with you. Long evenings working until silly o’clock in the morning, missed birthday parties and lost family time — this and more because there was no proper solution to getting an effing specialist on board to fix your elevator, or not being able to meet quarterly targets for closed HVAC contracts!
Infraspeak heard all these stories. We heard your challenges and frustrations and saw that our platform didn’t yet have a solution to your problems.
💡 The Infraspeak Network™ changes that.
Crispy and simple: Like a cold beer on a summer’s day
We understood that solving inefficient procurement and muddy collaboration meant solving many more problems. Good technology solutions aren’t just cool, they have real, tangible benefits that help people. The Infraspeak Network™ is indeed an expression of Industry 5.0.
Humans and technology, when done correctly, just go together perfectly! Like crunchy, salty peanuts and a cold beer on a summer’s day. You don’t want to question it. There shouldn’t be any effort or sacrifice. It just works.
Nobody sighs before cracking open a cold one on a summer’s day and, our genuine dream is that nobody will sigh when they need to procure a new service or accept a quote request.
Let’s have a more detailed look at the product we’ve created which, hopefully, will freshen up your daily tasks.
Infraspeak Network™— 3 Pillars
Now, we’re going to approach the product with more detail so that you can grasp exactly how the Infraspeak Network™ works.
To do this, we’re going to break the product into 3 key pillars, before providing an example workflow:
- Open access. Open to all people — Infraspeak users, partners and anyone else looking to improve their client-vendor relationship management.
- Procurement. The buying and selling of maintenance services. Use case 1.
- Collaboration. Working together to execute maintenance services. Use case 2.
So what do we mean by open access?
It comes back to the idea of problem-solving — we want to solve this for everyone. The way we’ve gone about concretising this vision is by giving access to the Network to all Suppliers and Clients — existing Infraspeak customers, future customers and crucially, partners of customers too. In other words, you can invite non-Infraspeak-partners to collaborate with you using our platform.
Here’s how it works:
Let’s imagine you’re an Infraspeak-user and a world-class facility manager or service provider (so, basically, all of our customers). You attend an industry show and meet an awesome partner who fits the bill perfectly. You start negotiating, things go well and you’re ready to start.
BEFORE the Infraspeak Network™, you’d probably manage this by sending them emails and messages the old-fashioned way.
NOW, you simply send them an invitation email to create a free Infraspeak account which will grant them access to a simplified version of our platform specially designed for executing maintenance work between Clients and Suppliers. All your partner needs to do is click a link in the email they receive, create an account and we’ll handle the rest!
Users that open free Infraspeak accounts will be able to manage the procurement of services and collaborate on the execution of work orders both on mobile and desktop.
Email-free procurement, at long, long last!
We all know exactly why procurement needed shaking up. Emails, missed calls and a total lack of coherency. No, no, no! It had to change.
When designing the Infraspeak Network™, we wanted the final ‘procurement workflow’ that would take a quote request to the execution stage to be as intuitive, direct and centralised as possible, removing the frustrating back and forth that has plagued the industry for decades.
“When I do this, you see that”. “When I click here, this updates on your platform”. “When you respond to my quote request with your quote, I can compare your quote with the other two or three that I received”.
The lengthy, painstaking process of finding, agreeing on a proposal and starting a maintenance job has been cut from dozens of unnecessary processes to a few simple, perfectly mirrored clicks — everything is centralised, and everyone is kept perfectly in the loop.
Collaboration made easy
Muddy communication continued to be a major obstacle for Client and Supplier even after the contract was signed. What happens when they walk through the door? How do you reach them?
The Infraspeak Network™ allows the Client to share and collaborate on work orders with the Supplier, including a list of tasks that need to be executed. For example, if there’s a problem with an HVAC asset, the tasks might include:
- Remove Filter
- Clean Filter
- Replace Filter
On top of this, the Client and Supplier can communicate using the Messages section of the work order. This centralises all communication and removes the risk of losing or ‘misplacing’ information. We’ve all been there… you said this on WhatsApp but that on email and then oh wait… what was decided happened on the phone.
The best bit? This is just version one. We’ll continue expanding the functionality of the Infraspeak Network™ for both the Collaboration and Procurement workflows described above. Some roadmap highlights include the ability to share documents and a massive one, collaborate on planned jobs!
Tie this all together, and what do we get?
A synchronised, intuitive and transparent workflow! Here’s an example:
- Toby is the facility owner of Lemon Water Inc., a large manufacturing plant.
- On Monday, he finds a problem with the refrigeration system and technicians can’t solve it — he needs a specialist.
- As an Infraspeak user, Tuesday morning, he prepares a quote request and shares it with Supplier Alpha, Supplier Beta and Supplier Gamma.
- Supplier Alpha is a long-term partner of Lemon Water Inc. and one of its listed suppliers. They use Infraspeak.
- Supplier Beta was recommended by a colleague in the industry at an event — Toby invites the manager at Beta to collaborate with him on Infraspeak.
- Supplier Gamma isn’t known to Lemon Water Inc. but happens to already be on the Infraspeak Network™.
- By the close of play Tuesday afternoon, the 3 suppliers have connected with Lemon Water Inc. Each one prepares a quote and responds to the quote request. They set their terms, perhaps adding extra lines of material, and click share.
- Toby reviews the 3 quotes and clicks approve on Supplier Beta’s offer — perfectly aligned with budgets!
- This automatically declines the other two quotes and is reflected on their respective platforms.
- Supplier Beta converts their quote into a Sale, whilst Toby converts the chosen quote into a Purchase. This way they can manage the sale and purchase in a dedicated app.
- It’s Wednesday afternoon and negotiations are closed, it’s time to get started!
(This is where procurement becomes collaboration, hold onto your seats!)
- Toby creates a work order and shares it with Supplier Beta, who approves it, letting him know that they’re ready to get started.
- Thursday first thing, a Supplier Beta technician arrives on site. He checks his app and finds all the necessary information to execute the maintenance and sends a message to Toby letting him know everything is in order.
- The work is completed. Supplier Beta closes the work order which automatically updates on Toby’s side.
And that’s that — from quote request to closed work order in under a week! Not bad.
Wahoo! We’ve made it to the end
Cor blimey! Whoever said it was a good idea to tell the writer of this blog they didn’t have a word count… well… look what you’ve done 🤔😊😂
Infraspeakers are so proud of what we’ve done. From the Product Team who dared to put this ambitious project into action down to Eddie the dog who spurred our CTO, Luis along the way… everyone had a role to play! It was a collaborative effort if ever there was one (ey, ey, eyyy?)
We covered a lot here, and we’re here to help clarify any doubts that you have. Please get in touch with your customer success manager if you’re an existing customer, or reach out for a quick demo if you are curious about joining the fun. Demos are quick and we promise our sales team doesn’t bite.
