Case Study: Pharmaceutical Company

Integrated, Web-based Facility Management System helps The Company Improve Communication and Collaboration to Realize Dramatic Productivity Gains

Industry: Pharmaceuticals

Facilities: 39 buildings on campus, 4 leased buildings, 2.5 million sq.ft., 5,000 occupants

Client Since: 2003

“With FM:Interact, we increased move productivity by 60 percent and the entire company is more in sync. Changes in space allocation and occupancy are now recorded in a more timely and accurate manner.”
-Company Facilities Manager

Background:
The Company is a world leader in offering medicines to protect health, cure disease and improve well-being. Its goal is to discover, develop and successfully market innovative products to treat patients, ease suffering and to enhance the quality of life.  The Company also seeks to provide a return to shareholders that reflects their performance and to adequately reward those who invest ideas and resources in the company.

Facilities and Property Overview
Company headquarters campus is located in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company occupies approximately 2.5 million square feet of owned and leased space; the 39 buildings house 5,000 employees and contractors and serve both office and research uses.  The Company’s facilities group is focused not only on the efficient use of facilities but also on creating a modern working environment that aids communication and collaboration.

Challenges
In 2003, the Space Solutions group at The Company was facing a daunting set of challenges including an aggressive site master plan, an 80 percent churn rate and a number of disconnected facility information systems.

The disparate systems included a homegrown move management system in Lotus Notes and a third party Web-based facility program that displayed floor plans and stacking diagrams.  In addition, The Company’s finance system was unable to generate accurate chargeback information which slowed the budgeting process.   

Since the systems were difficult to use and unable to share information, the facility space information was often outdated and out of control – making it difficult to track and plan moves.

It wasn’t until a newly developed site master plan for the headquarters’ campus called for a number of new buildings and extensive renovations to existing buildings, that the group decided it was time to make a change.  As part of the plan, thousands of employees would need to be moved - a task that with the existing information systems would be nearly impossible.

Solution
With the site master plan in mind, the head of space solutions for The Company, and his crew turned to their CAD solutions and training partner, AMS, for help.  After a detailed review and subsequent report about the existing conditions of the facilities data, AMS suggested that The Company use the Web-based facility management software FM:Interact, FM:Systems’ flagship product.  

“We recommended FM:Interact because it gave us a highly flexible foundation that can easily be configured out-of-the-box, plus extended and enhanced as needed to meet the challenging requirements of The Company.  The way FM:Systems facilities data and modules are related also makes it easy to support space planning as well as onboarding and move management, and provides an accurate source for space charge backs,” said Dan Lorenz, technical director for AMS.

Due to the flexibility of FM:Interact, The Company, with the help of AMS, was able to create an integrated system which links multiple data sources and streamlines data entry. Currently, The Company uses FM:Interact to connect information from the following systems:

• Building and Room Information (Kiosks & Project Engineering AutoCAD Drawings)
• Human Resources (PeopleSoft)
• IT (Request Center/Hardware Deployment & Moves)
• Communications (Voice and Video)
• Educational Services (Onboarding PC Training Scheduling)
• Finance (Cost Unit Information- SAP)/ (Occupancy Charges)

Results
Since implementing FM:Systems in 2003, The Company has reduced costs, increased efficiencies and ensured business continuity through efficient space utilization, reduced churn rates, streamlined processes, and accurate and flexible reporting and strategic planning. 

As Key Information is Shared, Departments begin to Collaborate  
A key benefit to the implementation includes the ability to share information between systems. This sharing of knowledge allows The Company to have access to a comprehensive planning tool that allows multiple departments to collaborate on moves and space management and provide internal customers and management with updated and targeted reports in real-time. For example, employees in IT and telecom groups have views into move projects that help them better plan and track their work – making sure that the connectivity and communications requirements for the new occupant are met accurately and efficiently.

Accurate Reporting Improves Space Use
The system also allows for greater control over such things as in-house resources and space utilization. With FM:Interact internal teams now have ownership of the data needed to better perform tasks such as space planning, strategic planning, capital project implementation and occupancy cost calculations. It also aids The Company in improving space utilization by allowing them to do departmental planning/modeling with accurate reports of occupancy information. 

“Because we were finally able to track all information in one location it helped us work with other departments such as finance,” stated the facilities advisor.   “After integrating FM:Interact with our financial system, SAP,  we are able to forecast the space needed to help departments plan strategically for a specific building or specific section in a building, so there is no wasted space.”

“The integration has also allowed us to have access to more accurate information and it has significantly streamlined the internal accounting process,” added The Company’s associate director.

In addition to SAP, The Company also integrated FM:Interact with their HR, IT and Telecomm systems to streamline their onboarding process. This allows The Company to proactively have new employees’ computers, telephone and other essential tools set up before they arrive on their first day, making for a better user experience.

Reduced Move Costs
A third key area of improvement for The Company is reducing the cost and complexity of moves. Prior to implementing the facility management solution, The Company was constantly onboarding and had a churn rate of about 80 percent.   With the site master plan calling for more than 4000 of its 5000 employees to be moved, FM:Interact was able to boost productivity by increasing the number of moves from 50 to 80 per week –a 60 percent improvement in productivity. In addition, the lead time required for each move was agreed to with the service providers to be reduced from five business days to three days under the existing contract.  Essentially, this means that because of FM:Interact onboarding and move management, The Company was able to get more work completed by their service providers without having to pay them more.  Move process improvements have a direct impact on the overall productivity of the organization by getting people in place and productive more quickly.

“FM:Interact played a crucial role in helping us get better control over our churn,” said the facilities manager for The Company.  ”We would not have been able to do it if our systems were not connected and all stakeholders were not working from the same information.  Prior to implementing FM:Interact, we could not accurately allocate space, IT could not keep up with the increased number of moves, and there was no efficient way to properly manage charge backs. Now, FM:Interact provides a single easy-to-use system for all facility services including furniture and moving services, telephone and connectivity services, computer accounts and hardware, space allocation and occupancy and much more.”

This implementation has also helped The Company meet its corporate objectives. “It’s not just about making the facilities department run more efficiently but also supporting the strategic mission of the business,” says the head of space solutions. “Technology is just one piece of the overall corporate objective of bringing innovative products to the market to ensure a better quality of life.”