How Sopra Steria can help organisations to improve the performance of their real estate portfolios by working collaboratively to design and deliver a data driven strategy

Many organisations are facing new challenges when it comes to their real estate portfolios. From achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, to understanding how existing portfolios need to be adapted to support the future of the workplace to meet evolving user expectations.

Most organisations with large, disparate estate portfolios may already have answers to their questions covering estate rationalisation or optimisation, but simply do not have the skills, tools, expertise or partnerships to be able to unlock their estates potential.

Can data unlock your estate management strategy?

At Sopra Steria we have over 35+ years’ experience in designing and delivering Estates Management digitalisation services. From the projects and programmes of work we have been leading and part of we have discovered many organisations have a wealth of data and information which will help their decision making processes. But in many cases they are being held back from being able to find the answers they need to overcome their most pressing challenges by not having the right data driven strategy in place.

What is a data driven strategy?

A data driven strategy can help organisations learn about their estate portfolios, understand what could be achieved and prioritise key actions whilst taking a risk-based approach to delivering value. The data needed to drive those key decisions often already exists within an organisation although it may not be easily accessible to those who need it. By implementing a technology enabled solution organisations can unleash the value of that data to enable data driven decision making to support the development and realisation of their estates management strategy.

Through our experience, we understand the challenges that public and private sector organisations face especially when they have large, dispersed estates delivering critical services. We understand these challenges in great depth and have experience in developing the solutions to address them. We do this by examining data and information across 3 key areas:

Strategic insight  | Customer insight | Dynamic insight

Strategic Insight

First of all it is important to understand the key strategic drivers for the Real Estate portfolio your organisation is managing. Sopra Steria can facilitate collaboration with teams in your organisation to understand their key priorities, extract data related to the strategic objectives your organisation wants to achieve and then work with you to develop the right ‘moment of truth’ around each strategic priority area. By working with a specialist Data and Analytics provider with experience in estates management your organisation will be able to:

• De-conflict complex priorities and contractual models to make sure your estate management team is focused on delivering the right outcomes for the organisation.
• Capture data and insights from across the supply chain. Enabling your management teams to identify where problems may occur and be able to put real time actions plans in place to mitigate supply chain risks.
• Enable greater efficiency in data gathering through agile and flexible IT interfaces and data processing capability.
• Overcome difficulties in allowing your data to inform decision making by using our systems integration capabilities and specialist Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) knowledge to help build ‘Value for Money’ propositions for capital expenditure. Resulting in the build of stronger Forward Maintenance Registers.
• Access accurate Reporting and MI in one place from multiple contracts and suppliers. Sopra Steria can help your organisation to build and manage a single, bespoke and accurate view of performance, bringing together all suppliers data and creating a reporting model to suit customers and end user’s needs

Customer Insight

The second key component of a data driven estate management strategy covers understanding the customer or end user of your estates portfolio. Users of your buildings will all have different requirements when they are visiting, working or socialising within the spaces provide. Sopra Steria can collaborate with your teams to:

• Help you understand the data extracted from technology based solutions such as IoT tracking and automation to better manage the working environment. We recognise the difference between simply maintaining an estate to a contract requirement and supporting strategic decisions on the use of the estate.
• Support the health and wellbeing of employees and building users, retaining and attract talent. We do this by bringing together customer/user insight and data together to better understand the needs of building users and facilities teams, closing the loop on feedback and solution through agile and technical data driven solutions.
• Put the customer and user experience first. We recognise that Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) are often designed to meet contractual commitments but miss out the voice of the customer. We can work with your Real Estate, HR and Employee Experience teams to create and develop Experience Level Agreements (XLA’s) using our qualified XLA practitioners, through a structured, industry recognised and proven approach to understanding the customer/user experience for each of the buildings in your portfolio.
• Enable the Mobilisation of complex contracts benefits from a collaborative approach. We do this by providing a customer centric experienced front end user helpdesk service which is already integrated with large Public and Private sector clients linked to our key partners CAFM providers allowing seamless integration to supplier’s systems. We have proven capability in large complex mobilisations and integration of systems in large Public sector contracts. Using our experience of working with partners to support large workflow capability allows greater “reach” into the operational delivery, data and insight capability to support customers and their suppliers in delivering a better service for their customers.

Dynamic Insight

The final area of a data driven strategy in estates management is Dynamic. So what do we mean by Dynamic? At Sopra Steria we know and understand that no two days are the same in the life of a building. It is important estate management teams have access to real time information so they can react to events which may be happening on a daily basis and also have the ability to plan ahead for future building use. By working with Sopra Steria to understand your organisations data in relation to real time and future planning your estates management team will be able to:

• Have the ability to integrate legacy and new systems to provide useful MI. For example we can provide an agile and flexible approach to building business critical data sets. These will provide detailed and relevant insight to the supply chain performance and also strategic support in the management of large and often aging estates. Our 40+ year history of systems integration can support robust mobilisation execution, seamless supplier on/off - boarding and integrating complex contracting arrangements.
• Reduce assurance costs of validating Estate and Asset compliance. We recognise the increasing reliance on suppliers to demonstrate that the estate is safe and compliant with increasing use of standards such as SFG20. We work alongside our clients and key partners to deliver an accurate position on estate compliance. Additionally, we can provide data and insights that will allow a more efficient compliance regime through active tracking of key data and work with our customers on their compliance strategy for future contracts with suppliers.
• Take a collaborative approach to the CAFM Systems focused on the customer experience. We do this by working with your estates management team to create a “whole journey” approach to workflow. This allows a near real-time view of new and outstanding works using our key partners best in class CAFM system. Enabling a clear view of job and task status as well as detailed reporting. This proactive view of works management along with better access to service users reduces the batch driven “look back” reporting and provides focus on delivering improved service.

In this article we have explored why estate management teams need to develop a data driven strategy. In the next three articles Sopra Steria Estates Management specialists will be examining the challenges of realising an estates management ecosystem through the perspectives of Customer, Dynamic and Strategic insights.

Sopra Steria has over 35 years’ experience in helping clients unlock their digital transformation ambitions. Many of these clients have used this opportunity to support the optimisation of their physical estates. We combine our digital and business process transformation credentials to enable digitalisation through an individualised real estate ecosystem which is designed to specifically solve the challenges that organisations face to drive efficiency and save operational expenditure costs.