Introduction
Digital transformation (DT) has been an ongoing phenomenon for over a decade, but it took the COVID-19 pandemic to catapult many organizations into a digital-first world. Digital technologies are the fundamental and endless agitator of the business world, including facility management (FM).[1] Digital technologies are critical for developing solutions for the FM industry's challenges, including:
Developing and servicing spaces that promote occupant health and well-being.
Reducing facilities’ environmental footprints and impacts.
Providing operational telemetry, augmenting limited maintenance personnel, enabling facility managers to do more with less.
Narrowing and closing the flow of materials, energy and water in buildings and more.
The FM community needs practical advice moving forward.
To understand how the pandemic affected DT in the industry, the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) organized its first 24-hour Executive Summit with experts on DT and senior leaders from FM and adjacent sectors. Subject matter experts included:
- MATT BEANE, Assistant Professor, University of California Santa Barbara and Fellow, MIT Institute for Digital Economy
- JEREMIE BRECHEISEN, Partner, Managing Director of the Gallup CHRO Roundtable
- GEORGE WESTERMAN, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan Management School of Business, Executive Director, Global Opportunity Initiative
- EDWARD WILSON-SMYTHE, Managing Director, Digital Consulting, NTT Data
This white paper, “Leading the Digital Transformation in the Facilities Management Industry,” summarizes the summit's findings for IFMA members. It defines DT and its implications for FM organizations. It also describes the critical trends shaping the business community with respect to DT, highlights how DT impacts knowledge and skills development and transfer and what FM can do to prioritize productivity and learning, and provides recommendations for navigating DT.
IFMA’s Executive Summit was explorative and provided a venue where industry leaders could share insights, opportunities and challenges concerning DT. The summit explored ongoing steps that the industry and IFMA could and should take to help accelerate DT by empowering:
- Organizations small and large to take charge of their future development
- Workers to take control of their careers.