DLA
New working practices suggest that firms should strive to achieve a paperless office, but the fact remains that in many of today's office environments paperwork is a necessary, and indeed crucial element of a working day. Law firms, for example, still depend on paper documents such as case files, which need to be stored and archived. That doesn't however mean that law firms can't go some way towards achieving paperless working, particularly when it comes to the facilities management side of the operation. Why give over a large amount of storage and therefore much needed space to documents and information relevant to facilities work when a law firm can implement a Computer Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) system, wherein all the pertinent facilities information is stored electronically?
DLA, the tenth largest law firm in the country, certainly advocates the use of such a system. For the past five years, DLA has been making use of QFM from Service Works Global, one of the UK's leading providers of Facilities and Estates Management Software.
DLA, established in 1996 following the merger of Dibb Lupton Broomhead and Alsop Wilkinson, has fast established itself as a leading full service law firm - last year celebrating an annual turnover of £203m. Following aggressive expansion, the firm today comprises nine UK offices in London, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Bradford, Edinburgh and Glasgow, European offices in Belgium and Madrid, as well as a presence in the Far East (Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai). London acts as the main office for DLA's UK activity and it is from here that Dave Wallace heads up the facilities help desk, using QFM. Wallace joined DLA, approximately six years ago, when there was no facilities management software on site or even a facilities department per se.
As Wallace recalls, "I came in as the understudy for the facilities manager and when I arrived there was no facilities department, no structure. Everything was on different bits of paper and so we needed to put all of this into a workable database." Aware that DLA was in dire need of a more sophisticated method for capturing and recording facilities related information, Wallace explored an extensive list of available CAFM systems.
"QFM was chosen because it addressed the specific needs unique to DLA. The firm wanted a system capable of dealing with both asset and building related calls. We found we could use QFM for facilities orientated jobs such as building problems, broken machinery, service issues, performance monitoring and producing KPI reports." As Wallace discovered, QFM wasn't only capable of storing vital facilities data but also providing the foundations for establishing a dedicated facilities help desk, which would work in conjunction with the data. Wallace initially implemented QFM to set up a local help desk to meet the requirements of their London office. "Today all facilities calls come into the London help desk, where QFM subsequently allocates them to the relevant UK office," explains Wallace. "So, if for instance, an asset is broken on another site, then they'll call us in London and we'll take down the asset number, the name of the person calling etc. The QFM database will bring up all the information for that asset and the location of the person who is calling us, and then we'll deal with the problem from there. QFM has enabled DLA to successfully establish a facilities call centre.
It's a one number service essentially. Rather than people having to ring up different departments or different areas they can just go through to one help desk. There are plans to possibly implement a ‘view only' system at the other UK sites over the Web, where users might have the ability to look into information relevant to that particular site - without the need to call the main help desk."
Wallace believes that there are obvious benefits to having one UK office serving as the central facilities point of contact: "Rather than having the various areas of facilities management handled by and spread across different departments, or in our case different offices, this way, the majority of jobs are handled by accessing one or two QFM screens. It's the fact that information can be found much more quickly, rather than having to ring up every single department to find out who's done this and who's done that," Wallace says.
When you consider what DLA had to contend with prior to installing QFM; namely paperwork here, there and everywhere, it obviously made good business sense to implement a system that could eradicate the need for such paperwork, a system that could ultimately become ‘a focal point.' "QFM enables us to have all the information to hand, rather than having to sift through piles of paperwork. At the press of a few buttons, the information you need is there. In addition, since the information is logged electronically, it is much easier to produce reports relating to particular jobs, especially since the reports can be interfaced with third party applications such as Word and Excel."
Using QFM also means that DLA has "an excellent monitoring tool. We've always got job references where we can go back over jobs if a problem arises and track the job's history. Without QFM no one would be able to tell you which jobs were carried out three years ago. However by looking on the system we can see the exact date that they were carried out and any subsequent follow up actions. If the system had been paper-based, all that information would have been archived many months before."
DLA had specific demands that it needed a CAFM system to meet and while QFM comes packed with a host of modules, the key selling point for DLA was that Service Works Global was able to tailor the software to meet their exact requirements. "With QFM you have a system that works for all facilities departments, because it can be set-up to meet individual companies' needs. That's obviously very beneficial since every firm has a different method of working," Wallace says. Despite being a very sophisticated piece of software, QFM has proven easy to implement and use. Three people use the software from the London office, taking around 400 calls a day, and no one has needed "a great deal of training. We've probably only had two training sessions ever and that was all that was required to get us up and running. If any questions do arise, then Service Works Global is on hand and if you give them a call, they are always very helpful."
Wallace - and indeed the company as a whole - is convinced that QFM "really has enhanced the business, allowing the facilities department to be managed in an efficient and effective manner."