Did you know facilities managers spend an average of 60 hours per month managing suppliers? Or that 48% of work order delays are caused by miscommunication?
The adage “no operation is an island” rings particularly true. Facilities managers turn to specialised suppliers for executing corrective and preventive maintenance jobs, making outsourcing a staple of their day-to-day operations.
Ensuring collaboration between internal and external stakeholders, automating workflows, and gaining full visibility over operations and performance are critical challenges. Without the right tools, inefficiencies pile up, miscommunications slow down decision-making, and valuable data gets lost in silos.
Solving these challenges was one of the major driving factors behind the launch of Infraspeak Network™ back in January 2023 — and we’ve never stopped improving it ever since.
Designed as a collaborative Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) solution, the Network connects customers and suppliers in a single workspace, reducing administrative burdens, streamlining workflows, and providing real-time insights to enhance overall efficiency and performance.
The Network simplifies and optimises critical supplier relationship management steps
1. Supplier engagement and onboarding
- Establishing clear communication channels with suppliers;
- Reducing onboarding time;
- Ensuring new suppliers align with your facility’s protocols;
- Minimising errors and administrative overhead;
- And enhancing transparency and accountability in supplier relationships.
2. Workflow integration
- Incorporating supplier tasks into your facilities management operational coordination;
- Enabling real-time tracking and performance adjustments;
- And automating repetitive processes, freeing up valuable resources.
3. Performance analysis
- Providing insights into cost analysis and operational efficiency;
- Giving visibility over supplier performance against KPIs and objectives;
- And identifying opportunities for process optimisation.
Since 2023, over 280 customers and 1000 suppliers have already connected through the Network. That resulted in more than 100,000 shared Work Orders and Planned Jobs.
Why is Infraspeak Network™ better than other SRM solutions?
Designed specifically for the FM industry, it aligns with its unique needs and challenges by offering functionalities and workflows crafted to enhance operational efficiency and supplier relationship management in FM.
Infraspeak Network™’s capabilities enable real-time supplier communication for faster issue resolution, improving efficiency and compliance. They also boost autonomy for suppliers and clients while ensuring precise execution of long-term maintenance strategies. To name a few:
- Clients can share work orders and planned jobs with suppliers and have visibility over execution, measurements and other data related to those tasks.
- Suppliers can create and share work orders, and add faults and failures found on-site that weren’t included on their work list, thus enabling them to communicate urgent issues quickly and in real-time.
- Suppliers can manage their work schedule and clients get visibility, cutting useless back and forth.
- Clients can share asset information with suppliers, including brand, model, serial number, and more. By giving suppliers access to this information, they can make real-time decisions, and improve asset reporting. Moreover, it will reduce the need for additional communication.
- Speaking of communication, clients and suppliers can also enjoy centralised conversations and share documents over the Network using in-app messages, on the Infraspeak Next™.
🔥Intelligence and automation capabilities
Imagine how much time you could save if a work order were automatically shared with a specific provider based on pre-defined conditions. And what if you could automate approvals or receive alerts for out-of-range values?
By using Infraspeak Gear’s intelligent capabilities combined with the Infraspeak Network™, you can automate your supplier-related routine tasks, get insights, and enable smarter decision-making, thus significantly reducing manual effort and enhancing operational effectiveness.
Infraspeak Gear™ turns your data into actionable intelligence and opportunities for continuous improvement.
🔥 Data is centralised and easily accessible
Centralised data enhances insights, accuracy, reporting and performance tracking. Rather than relying on manual reporting, long email threads, disjointed SMS conversations and unrecorded phone calls where information can be forgotten or lost, all communication is centralised and stored in the platform.
Advanced data collection generates comprehensive insights on supplier performance, operational metrics, and cost analysis, enabling facilities managers to make informed decisions based on accurate, up-to-date information.
🔥 Configurable sharing rules
To offer an even greater level of customisation, Infraspeak Network™ has introduced Asset Sharing Rules. This allows customers to personalize the sharing rules for assets with their suppliers, ensuring that they only have access to the equipment relevant to their interventions.
Imagine you want to share all your HVAC equipment with a specific supplier. By setting up the rules, equipment of that type will automatically be shared with the designated supplier.
This feature enhances operational efficiency and provides suppliers with visibility and control over the assets assigned to them.
🔥 Field matching in work orders
Additionally, customers and suppliers can align the different terms used to define areas and work order types, preventing communication gaps. Suppliers can maintain their own workflows and terminology while staying aligned with customer requirements, as these terms will be automatically mapped to the customer’s terminology. This also allows for rules to be set to apply this mapping to future work orders and to define the behaviour of assigned personnel.
For example, if you are a supplier receiving a work order, you can define that the received “Area A – Type A” will always correspond to your “Area B – Type B.”
🔥Simple articulation with other existing software
One of the biggest benefits of using Infraspeak Network™ is the fact you can integrate your system with several different types of software. This provides flexibility and, crucially, adds extra levels of synchronicity to your interdepartmental operations. Infraspeak supports integrations with ERPs, invoicing tools and data analytics tools like Power BI, and many more.
Infraspeak Network™: success stories
We couldn’t write about using the Infraspeak Network™ without referring to beloved customers and advocates.
Rohloff Group
The Rohloff Group is the South African master franchise of the KFC brand, responsible for hundreds of KFC restaurants in the Western Cape, Gauteng and Free State.
Their previous system simply couldn’t handle the full scope of assets involved in managing KFC operations; it lacked advanced features for work order management, task automation, supplier and budget management, software integration, and data analysis. Upon transitioning to Infraspeak, the group noticed immediate improvements in efficiency and transparency in their maintenance operations, largely due to the Infraspeak Network™.
In just the first year of using Infraspeak, the Rohloff Group successfully managed 18,000 requests for quotes and work orders from over 60 suppliers. They were also early adopters of the approval flow feature, which provided more detailed control over budget approvals.
CAPS Group
CAPS Group needed a robust digital solution to manage their growing maintenance network and suppliers. Their improvised use of ERP SAP for maintenance lacked essential features, proper reporting, and real-time data, limiting operational agility and visibility.
“The suppliers who accepted their invite have reported a positive, frictionless user experience and enjoy sharing the workplace.” (Lucy Curry, Maintenance Team Manager). Around 50% of suppliers have adopted it and are also working hard to convince the remaining suppliers to change. Paul Wilson, Managing Director, stresses that “it’s been a stress-free, positive onboarding experience for most suppliers using the Network.“
The platform also reinforced a people-centred culture, supported by ongoing training and efficient customer support. Looking ahead, CAPS Group plans to expand Infraspeak’s use globally and integrate advanced analytics for better decision-making, along with enhanced security features.
If you’re already using Infraspeak to manage other parts of your FM operations, it’s time to use it to manage suppliers too! And if you still aren’t using Infraspeak… well… we’ve provided you with a fair few good reasons to get started, right?
