In these challenging financial times, progressive building service providers, whether in-house or contracted, are looking for tools and techniques that help them save time and money by automating a labor-intense business.

Technological advancements in quality assurance inspection and “best practices performance management software,” are allowing for improved operational performance, enhanced communications, and increased customer satisfaction and retention rates. Web- and mobile-based software can help service providers build integrity and trust in their operations.

These software systems can tie together national and multiple location accounts and various departments, with quality assurance inspection and reporting systems that can be customized for each location. You can show benchmark goals against current service score performance, and show trends of continuous improvement.

With a management premise of “what gets measured – get’s done,” and “what gets measured and routinely reported continuously improves,” the investment in the right technologies makes total business sense from a bottom-line, operating and customer-service perspective.

How are savings in time and money accomplished by utilizing quality assurance inspection software? The field savings come from enhanced methods of auditing And inspection, being able to complete and report them from a number of different sources such as your laptop, desktop, or on and from a mobile hand held device through the Internet.

The better inspection systems are completely customizable at the user administrative level, allowing the system to be used for numerous data collection purposes, automating maintenance inspections such as custodial, landscape, equipment, IT systems, vehicles, parking lots, roofs, fences, and any other area or item you wish to collect data on, with multiple values or score.

The system will also calibrate instan­taneous scores in the field upon inspec­tion completion, giving the inspector and customer immediate feedback. Inspec­tions and score results can also be vali­dated through the system’s capability to upload from the handheld device, both pictures of deficiencies or corrections, and verifying signatures of both the in­spector and the customer’s agreed upon score performance values.

The mobile inspection software system creates further savings of reducing data input time spent in the office. It lessens communications time to disperse inspec­tion data as it is sent automatically to all the right people upon completion of the inspection.

Savings of communicating discovered inspection deficiencies are accomplished with automated work-order flow and au­tomated follow-up systems involving all the right respondents to a particular issue. This creates a further savings of commu­nications time tracking and following-up on these inspection deficiencies. Savings of automated report consolidation and re­port generating costs, the savings of travel and vehicle expense by being able to send inspections and work orders from a hand­held device from the field, and the en­hanced response capability to customer concerns and requests over the internet equal huge savings over similar manual processes.

The administration overhead savings come through these same systems as you manage safety, compliance, training, hu­man resources and other administrative functions through a best practices system for each department that is measured and tracked. You can manage programs such as “green” initiatives, as these systems are highly customizable and flexible.

Managing and creating a culture of safety and compliance by being proac­tively prepared for fire protection, safety, risk management, OSHA, MSDS, Right to Know, HACCP, HAZMAT, hazardous waste disposal inspections, and any and all other internal self preemptive audits, reduces workers compensation and insur­ance premium costs through improved ex­perience ratings, creating additional hard dollar savings.  These systems allow for customer over­sight of performance responsibilities. In­house tenants and customers of contractors that enter into a true partner relationship have more cooperation and full trust disclosure on both parties than ever before. These systems allow the cus­tomer to view submitted inspections, open action items or work orders, and run their own reports of quality assurance perfor­mance in their affairs, at any time of the tenants or customers choosing.

These systems give the facilities services and opportunity to continually demonstrate operational excellence and continuous im­provement trends, or proof of sustainable acceptable levels of quality performance. Enterprises that are leading their efforts with these technological advancements and giving such advantages to their customers are meeting and exceeding customer expectations.

The greatest challenge to implementing continuous performance improvement management systems and methods is that operational excellence and continuous performance “Must be Driven Top-Down.” Often, owners and top managers are made aware of these programs and the potential organizational improvement enhancements.

There are true savings in time and money from automating many laborious operational and business processes, and they are desirous of these benefits for the enterprise.

Then to gain consensus decision-making support they turn the decision process over to middle-management and the very people who will be utilizing the system to report on their departments. When these middle managers understand the power of   the system to create behavioral change and document, archive, and maintain performance records and evaluations in the numerous areas, the system is capable of collecting data to report, you always find you have promoters and detractors of new efforts towards change in performance excellence.          

Promoters within the organization have the spirit of operational excellence and want the ability to show and document their continual performance improvements. They thrive on recognition and achievement of incentives.          

Then there are detractors, who fear being exposed in their lack of operational    performance and weakness. They will find a number of excuses and so-called reasons not to move ahead. Too often, the detractors have sufficient decision-making ability  to stymie the organizational improvements and maintain the status quo. Sometimes you count the votes and sometimes you weigh the votes, and for an organization to stay on the track of continuous quality improvement, upper management must weigh in on the side of the promoters.

One testimonial of a successful imple­mentation of continuous improvement fol­lows: Net-Work Services Company is a janitorial and facility services provider in Omaha, NE. They manage client facility services for 3,000 buildings across 22 states, and turned to VEKTR information management software from NUVEK, LLC, to support a robust quality assurance program that required an inspection plat­form capable of interfacing with propri­etary systems to achieve an accurate and synchronous exchange of large volumes of data.

The fundamental problem NSC faced was two-fold. First was the need to main­tain accurate portfolio demographics such as facility address, facility type, rentable square footage and population density. Next the software needed to be capable of tracking facility customer and internal manager relationships, maintaining inde­pendent and autonomous organizational changes without manually maintaining separate databases.

Don Fairfax, company manager for NSC, focused the project on a “touch-it-once” approach. Presented with objectives and specifications, Nuvek LLC developed an effective interface, the VEKTR Plat­form that enabled NSC to conduct ad hoc inspections on any facility, at any time, with a high degree of confidence.

As a result, the underlying facility data and manager relationships remained ac­curate, leading to improved operational performance, enhanced communications, and increased customer satisfaction. ❑

Dennis Parker is vice-president of mar­keting and sales of NUVEK, LLC, pro­ducer of the VEKTR software for quality assurance inspections, maintenance audits and inspections. Visit www.VEKTR.com for additional information, or call him at (801) 628-0693.