The Hindu Business Line : Integrated approach vital for facilities management biz

AN integrated approach, driven by long-term partnerships between the property developers and related service providers, should be the guiding principle of the newly emerging facilities management business. This would go a long way in consolidating India's position as the preferred business process outsourcing (BPO) destination, said speakers at the `India Workspace 2003', organised by the Indian chapter of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), here today.

Unlike in the Western countries, facilities management was yet to become an organised and strategic associate of any business organisation in India to help them strategise their support services and office space planning to improve efficiency through savings in capital investments and operation and maintenance of their installations. However, facilities management has gained impetus with a large number of international companies relocating their ITES outfits to India, particularly in Bangalore.

The conference highlighted the developments in terms of concepts, principles and initiatives that needed to be underlined to exploit the opportunities from the new business.

Addressing a session Mr Nakul Subramanyam, General Manager (Infrastructure), ICICI OneSource, said while there were typical challenges faced by the real estate with regard to developing infrastructure for the BPO, they could be overcome by the developers community by streamlining the processes of site selection to reduce time lag and adopting innovative support infrastructure to optimise the costs to the end users.

The facility management business has to plan its investments carefully to minimise the impact of redundancy of facilities. Earlier, in his inaugural address, Mr Ernie Greer, President (Asia Pacific), Steelcase, a Michigan-based company focussing on office environment, interior architecture and furniture and technology, said, India, Japan and China were in focus for the facility management companies. He suggested to the Indian real estate industry to evolve alternate business models that cater to the preferences of the organisations to provide value propositions.

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