The COVID-19 pandemic spurred a significant digital transformation in organizations. Now, in the post-pandemic period, facilities management priorities include building integrated systems, gathering talented teams, and communicating across all departments. For creatives and employees, digitization transforms the talent balance by necessitating novel skills and capabilities and contributes to professional development through powerful, inexpensive tools.
Accelerated technology adoption affects how organizations serve end users, create value, and shape operations. Technology offers the facilities management profession opportunities for enhanced performance in ways that save time in the short and long term using a more digitally connected approach to everyday tasks.
How to Navigate Digital Transformation in the Post-Pandemic Period
1. Set a Clear Vision for the Digital Transformation Outcome
Setting a clear vision requires these questions:
- What is the desired employee experience?
- Which things should be prioritized for purchase and implementation?
- How will the most critical changes work for individuals in various locations?
Digitization allows organizations to execute their vision and transform as they need by closing gaps through control platforms, Augmented Reality (AR), and other enhanced tools. For instance, low-code digital platforms that offer Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can schedule meetings and identify when to order supplies and replacement inventory (LED bulbs) based on installation dates and monitored usage. These systems allow complex customization beneath a user interface, so companies can focus their workforce on other needs.
2. Map Out the Technology Advancements Needed for the Near and Remote Future
Technological advancements help streamline and integrate business processes. Mapping out changes in technology requires organizations to create technology roadmaps that diagram, display, and document comprehensive digitization plans.
Technology roadmaps also enable organizations to lay out and strategize why, which, and when to adopt specific technologies. Doing so helps facility managers avoid costly mistakes and prepare for when technologies become obsolete. Effective technology roadmaps also highlight key strategies to achieve digital transformation objectives.
3. Collaborate to Define What Needs to Be Addressed
Digital transformation necessitates cultural changes, including customer centricity, calculated risk-taking, and enhanced collaboration. Collaboration among skilled workers improves agility and innovation potential, as well as facilities’ international coverage consistent with market dynamics. Contemporary collaboration tools allow team members to make quicker and more effective decisions.
User adoption constitutes a key metric employed to establish the effectiveness of a particular collaboration strategy. The user needs help to delineate technology necessities that drive the assessment of different collaboration tools.
4. Define How Much You Are Allocating to Each Initiative
Investing in the other biggest facilities management priorities leads to the main priority, digital transformation in the post-pandemic era. Whether your organization has limited or unlimited resources, it is vital to allot resources to guarantee optimal returns. Defining how much to allocate to various initiatives is a team effort and enables organizations to minimize resource wastage.
5. Pinpoint Who Is Responsible for Each Piece of the Puzzle
Successfully navigating the digital transformation space requires organizations to set clear roles and responsibilities for different team members. For instance, digital transformation managers supervise teams that use digitization and data to deal with factors that impact a firm’s ability to accomplish strategic goals. Digital transformation managers also develop specific plans and programs for technical implementation.
Data analytics helps an organization define its data transformation path. Data architects perform data analytics by examining blueprints, aligning IT tools with data assets, and linking to the transformation strategy. A database administrator’s role in digital transformation includes large-scale data migration to boost security, performance, and availability.
6. Trace Through IT Infrastructure to Ensure End-to-End Functionality
As a standard practice, IT decision-makers and their facilities management counterparts audit digital assets to ensure compatibility levels meet with the current demands for business.
Power Upgrades and Cabling Adjustments
Part of that compatibility is the readiness to reconfigure the workspace to support the collaboration of the workforce.
The Gridd® Adaptive Cabling Distribution® System is a revolutionary low-profile access floor mode that makes changes quick and efficient, especially when paired with the FreeAxez advanced technology application.
Gridd® Mobile is an Augmented Reality (AR) app that offers facility managers, maintenance personnel, IT teams, and electricians critical information about cabling on intelligent devices. The app features augmented reality, product information, technical support, site pictures, as-built drawings, and how-to-videos. AR lets users see power and data cabling locations without removing carpets.
Gridd Mobile enhances your facility’s durability by enabling future teams to easily make changes, moves, and additions to a particular space.
7. Think Outside of the Property Walls
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation and made remote work increasingly viable. Future digital transformation requires facility managers to think outside the boundaries of the property and explore ways to make remote work more effective. Facility managers need to ask themselves these questions when formulating a digital transformation strategy:
- What types of functionality will remote workers need access to?
- How will facility managers determine permission levels?
8. Invest in the Biggest Facilities Management Priorities and Then Evolve
End-to-end digitization is a core facet of digital transformation that helps perform most facility management functions. The setup facilitates workflow automation, layout maps, and asset tracking via a cloud-based platform that keeps everyone in the information loop. Organizations can help to realize digital transformation by investing in the most significant facilities management priorities and then evolving those areas of operations.
Key facilities management priorities include:
- Physical infrastructure, such as a raised floor.
- Network infrastructure like network switches, security, and camera installations.
Evolving requires facility managers to consider important trends driving digital transformation. The trends include:
IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a collection of physical devices that exchange data through internet protocols. The technology enables facility managers to act on novel business intelligence, gather more data, and swiftly react to changes.
Big Data
Big data enables organizations to gain valuable insights from collected data. Facility managers can analyze the data and detect changes before they morph into real challenges.
Predictive Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning
Using predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning to assess physical assets makes it easy to extrapolate and predict an asset’s performance lifecycle. Using this information, facility managers can conduct effective predictive maintenance and deal with potential problems early.
9. Part of the Vision Is Redesign
The technology industry is ever-evolving and will undergo changes in the future. Existing systems should allow short- and long-term reconfigurations to facilitate smooth transitions.
10. Keep What Works
Continuous assessment allows facility managers to determine which aspects of their digital transformation strategy are working. They can then tweak the elements that don’t work and reintegrate them into their strategy while maintaining those that do.
Learn how the Gridd® Adaptive Cabling Distribution® System can simplify your IT infrastructure management process.
