From everyday improvements to transformative change
When a business collaborates with a facility management provider to become more innovative, it isn’t always about dramatic leaps – it often starts with small, practical changes. These could be swapping out single-use plastics for eco-friendly alternatives, introducing sustainable packaging in canteens or exploring renewable materials for everyday items.
Or the measures can be more substantial like advanced sensor technology to enable companies to optimise space usage, monitor occupancy and adjust cleaning and energy consumption in real time.
However, as Rasmus Kagenow-Andersen, ISS’ Global Head of Service Innovation, explains, partnerships to drive transformation need to be based on solutions that will have a genuine and measurable impact on the customer’s goals:
“Co-innovating with a facilities management provider is not only about tools and gadgets, it’s about driving business outcomes.”
Effective innovation based on a tailored strategy
Working with facility management partners means organisations can focus on their core business, while we help monitor innovation pipelines and identify new opportunities for improvement.
At ISS we build customer-centric innovation strategies based on three key dimensions:
- Operational model – Understanding when innovation becomes a key focus for the account, if there will be specialist innovation resources, and when innovation will be fully embedded into daily operations and the customer’s culture.
- Focus area – Determining which particular customer goal that innovation will address.
- Pipeline sourcing – Using our breadth of information about our innovation projects globally, analysing the customer focus areas and our service model and working with the customer to develop tailored innovation opportunities.
“All of these dimensions boil into an innovation strategy that we develop with our customers that's made-to-measure. It will always be a staged, adaptive and outcome-driven innovation strategy,” Rasmus says.
“It's important to have that conversation so we make sure that we apply our skills and allocate our resources in the direction that is most important for our customer.”
