ARCHIBUS Moving Move Management Into The 21 st Century Prepared by ARCHIBUS, Inc. Abstract The right move management solution keeps MAC costs low while keeping corporate productivity high. Commonly used spreadsheet-based approaches to tracking move information may let too many details fall through the cracks and are subject to data corruption and integrity issues. Freestanding software solutions that are not integrated with ERP or other systems may lack the basic data-sharing and collaborative capabilities needed to ensure that people, and the resources on which they depend, get to the right locations in the right sequence and on the right day. With Moves, Adds, and Changes (MAC) so frequent, and with their cost constantly rising, proactive managers are seeking sophisticated move management software that streamlines and automates the process to keep the expense of such moves low while keeping corporate productivity high. This white paper is designed to anticipate the issues those managers face and suggest what to look for in IT solutions that can make move management more cost-efficient. Rationale T he increasingly dynamic nature of business may mean different things to different companies. Especially when it comes to the need for, and initiation, of Moves, Adds, and Changes that affect space utilization, the consumption of assets, and corporate costs. The planning, coordination, and space allocation decisions involved in managing these moves can be frequent, complex, and not for the faint of heart or technologically challenged. For high growth firms, rapid increases in size mean incorporating more floor space and people in an existing headquarters building, or adding satellite office space nearer to business partners or target markets. For organizations downsizing because of outsourcing decisions, mergers, or other reasons, consolidation of space and the sale of underutilized furniture and equipment assets may be the goal. 5/15/2008
Both types of companies, furthermore, may also be shifting individuals and groups together and apart to reconfigure teams as they are assigned and re-assigned to a range of strategic projects. No matter what the reasons behind these changes, it means moving people, furniture, and equipment. Sometimes lots of each. The planning, coordination and space allocation decisions involved in managing these moves can be frequent, complex, and not for the faint of heart or technologically challenged. That s why choosing the right move management solution is essential to control costs while reconfiguring your business environment. Move Costs and Consequences Moves may or may not be frequent but their cost is real and quantifiable. An industry survey revealed some baseline costs of the different move types: Box Move - The simplest type of move that simply moves people and their files has an estimated average cost of hundreds of dollars per person. The estimate reflects not only the cost of manpower and material but also planning time, etc. Furniture Move - A relocation of office furniture can cost thousands of dollars per person. Construction Move The most expensive move, can cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per work area in order to renovate existing space or to build new facilities into which employees are moved. Given the large sums involved, it is imperative for companies to be able to intelligently analyze whether they need a particular move project in the first place, and if they do, determine how to most economically make that move. The Move Profile: Putting People First Moves fall into four basic categories and may involve any or all types, including: People Equipment Furniture Telecom/information systems Any or all of these activities may also require tear down and retrofit of the physical space involved, but those activities are not of greatest concern here. Rather, people moves are the central focus since they
most immediately impact corporate productivity, if the move is not a smooth one. They are of two types: Individual moves occur for a number of reasons such as a change in an employee s position, the addition of a new hire with the requisite set-up activities, a team reassignment, etc. They are, of course, the simplest to document and execute. Group moves, on the other hand, may mean anything from finding a new corporate location for a small project team to a massive relocation involving a large numbers of employees due to expansion, reorganization, or consolidation. With any of these, the move planner is searching for greater economies in person/space ratios. These group moves require the highest level of communication, coordination, and documentation to ensure that group members and their equipment and other resources are moved and reunited without significant disruption of corporate productivity. Group moves may also require an additional, though no less important, consideration of office sociology. That may mean keeping track of individual or group interaction patterns, group proximities, corner/window office assignments, and a host of other issues that reflect corporate philosophy, departmental dynamics, and professional perks. All of this has to be managed correctly, and in the correct order. And all of it is made immensely more manageable with the use of a move management solution. Relocation Tools: Old vs. New School All too many moves are still being managed using home-grown, spreadsheet-based tracking systems. They offer a bare bones ability to account for the details of corporate moves but their limitations quickly become apparent once a project goes beyond individual or small group applications. Their limited deployment and accessibility by others is guaranteed by their lack of a distributed, collaborative IT interface that could be shared among move organizers. Moreover, they lack an ability to integrate with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or other systems to reconcile changes among data depositories and present a single, accurate picture of corporate assets. The result, to no one s surprise, is moves that take longer, cost more, disrupt worker productivity, and create customer dissatisfaction. All of which could easily have been avoided with the use of a comprehensive move management solution.
Move management solutions now on the market take advantage of Web-based forms and tools that collect and share move data throughout the organization. Automated workflow management features can now move that data and status updates to all stakeholders to streamline move logistics. These applications seamlessly integrate with HR systems such as PeopleSoft, utilize AutoCAD drawings that can visually represent move elements, link with other IT systems such as HP OpenView, and empower ERP systems such as SAP that aid or are affected by the moves in question. Most importantly, the new crop of move management applications will have the flexibility to reflect the concerns and move management styles of the companies employing them. A Move Management Solution Checklist A move management application that can meet moves of any scale, and user needs of every description, are characterized by features and functionality that need to be viewed as nonnegotiable by corporate move professionals. Web-Enabled Solutions A proposed move management solution must have a Webenabled implementation of appropriate forms and tools for data collection and distribution in a multi-user environment. Strategic Master Planning Support Permits comprehensive, flexible development of space management plans that address changing business requirements. Capital Budgeting, Product Management Integration To eliminate the need for importing/re-entering financial and product data, a well-designed move management solution will incorporate the same projects and actions tables used in capital budgeting and product management activities employed in a company s facilities management software. Role/Process Assignment Because moves can be so complex, and coordination of team members so important, one of the hallmarks of a capable move management solution is its ability to identify move team members and define their roles and associated responsibilities. Once a role is assigned to a user, all associated processes and relevant information access rights will be assigned to that user to ensure that the move team member has the information and tools necessary to perform the job in concert with other move organizers.
Background Data Collection Tools The conceptual and physical foundations of moves are determined by a well-researched catalog of background data on the people and things to be relocated, as well as the space and infrastructure resources to which they are being moved. To that end, a move management system supporting the collection of this essential data will record: Building, floor, and room inventories a series of data tables will help move managers develop their space hierarchy Organizational hierarchies, defining organizations, divisions, departments, and functional groups Employee lists, connecting people with the office spaces allocated to them Equipment lists, for complete asset inventory and control Jack lists, to identify all data and voice jack locations and capacities to accelerate communications implementation and problem resolution Workflow Rules for Changes, Approvals, Assignments With the collection of information comes the obligation to communicate move/ task details relevant to the roles of move requestors, coordinators and executive move managers. A move management solution demands a set of workflow rules that prioritizes the order and urgency of certain tasks while employing e-mail to notify move team participants of milestones reached and next steps to be taken. Comprehensive Move Management Functionality Most importantly, workflow rules must be comprehensive in incorporating fundamental move components that include: Move requests Reviews and estimates Approval routing Approval capture Move issue/activation Completion reporting Work order closure AutoCAD Overlay A CAD overlay permits the use of trial drawings to plan group moves by supporting the creation of trial configurations in a CAD floor plan compatible with AutoCAD environments. The overlay should also be able to set up multiple drawings within one trial if employees are being moved to multiple locations. Furniture and Equipment Move Management More often than not, relocating people means relocating furniture
and equipment (F&E). An F&E move management solution lets you configure trial furniture and equipment layouts, and compare existing F&E inventory with what s needed to complete the move. Ideally, it should have tools and methods that allow tracking of: Warranties Leases Insurance Depreciation Moves Location Ownership A full range of move planning, reporting, and querying tools is also highly desirable. Compatibility with Open, Legacy IT Systems For maximum utility and convenience, Web-based move management solutions must be selected with the goal of running on the most popular Web application servers (such as Apache, Tomcat, or IBM WebSphere) and with the ability to also access industry-standard database servers such as those from Sybase, Oracle, and Microsoft. This facilitates system access over the public Internet or over a private intranet using a standard Web browser. Achieving MACs-imum Cost-Effectiveness: Case Studies in Move Management The fact that even some billion-dollar companies are still managing their moves using manual, paper-based processes will surprise some, shock others, and encourage any company to look for a better methodology to get corporate assets from Point A to Point B. Full-featured move management applications represent a giant step forward for firms willing to make the IT investment. Such an investment can have a surprisingly fast ROI as little as 3 months, in many cases on top of streamlining the move process and minimizing lost productivity. Just how great a difference these solutions can make is seen in the stories of organizations that turned potential relocation trials into organizational and financial triumphs. JM Family Enterprises: Auto Firm Finds A High Performance Vehicle For Moves Forbes once ranked it as the 15 th largest privately-held business. Fortune ranked it 19 th on its 100 Best Companies To Work For list in recent years. Yet JM Family Enterprises (JMFE), a $7.7 billion a year diversified automotive company, would probably have put itself at the
bottom of its own list of companies employing the latest technology to automate moves, adds and changes (MAC). The Deerfield, Florida-based company was burdened by a labor-intensive, time-consuming paper process to handle employee MAC projects. In fact, said its director of corporate and real estate services, it took eight people at least an hour and a half in planning a typical move, three weeks to schedule and approve a move, and an additional two weeks for the move to happen. Because there were no tracking mechanisms in place, moreover, the company wasn t able to employ departmental chargebacks to recoup costs. High on the company s wish list was a Web-enabled system that would offer a user-friendly interface, a complete request-move-close capability, work rules with e-mail notifications, calendar scheduling with built-in work rules and the ability to automatically generate work orders and support database/drawing updates. After an intensive search for a complete online solution, JMFE added a third-party MAC application to its existing facilities management implementation and realized rapid improvement in its MAC processes that included: A reduction of time from three weeks to one hour - for the move scheduling and approval process A 50% reduction in move completion times 100% productivity improvement in the corporate and real estate services department Greatly improved service levels and client feedback $40,000 annual savings in JMFE s Space Management department
The company is now extending its move management solution beyond the headquarters operation to its other business locations around the US, where it will also add space validation and forecasting applications. Not too far behind: A customer survey tool to ensure that JMFE continues to deliver hassle-free service while improving the company s bottom line. Silicon Graphics: In The Chips on Move Cost Containment Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) is a widely recognized leader in high performance computing and visualization solutions. A global organization with more than 200 buildings and thousands of employees, SGI was caught in the technology downdraft that accompanied the dot.com bust, which meant that consolidating offices and improving operating efficiencies were crucial for survival. In its search to maximize resources, streamline processes, and ultimately cut costs, successful consolidations and reorganizations meant having a clearer picture, and making better use, of its real assets while tracking the constantly shifting size and make-up of its work force. Matching the right workers with the right workspace, for example, called for the integration of its facilities management system and PeopleSoft human resources applications, synching both databases to get an accurate corporate profile of workers and their whereabouts. But the trend toward consolidation of offices, and the associated re-assignment and transfer of workers, kept the company s employee move team in fast forward much of the time and weighed down by coordination issues. Even a simple move involved the cooperation of up to five departments. That s why SGI adopted move management software that allowed them to create, among other functionalities, a Quick Move process to initiate multiple moves. One action button can now trigger an entire move project. The move management application compiles all relevant data from the IT department, AutoCAD department, and move planner. The information is then recorded in a move package that s fed into the company s facilities management/move management software.
The package orchestrates the entire move to such an extent, that: Within 24 hours, the new room identification numbers are assigned in the database All AutoCAD drawings are updated The employee s new seat is reflected in the company s employee locator feature The combination of facilities management/move management functionality has become so important to SGI that it was identified as one of the company s 12 mission-critical applications. So critical, in fact, that SGI plans to roll out the multi-functional solution worldwide to manage its portfolio of 200 buildings housing the firms nearly 9,000 employees. Improving Move Management: Information, Integration, Insight Reduced downtime. Minimized move errors. Improved relocation, communication, coordination, and collaboration. If that were all move management solutions delivered, most companies would consider the investment in them well spent. But a well-designed move management solution also offers companies the opportunity to profit from the synergies of integrating silos of move-relevant company information in existing Oracle, Sybase, PeopleSoft or other enterprise databases with a rich move management tool set. That greater degree of integration enables many innovations trial layouts, move analytics, intelligent dashboards, to name a few that give companies unprecedented insight into their asset management patterns. Insights that make possible continuous process improvement for moves. And move your business forward in the process. For more information about the ARCHIBUS solution suite and the customers who use it, please go to www.archibus.com. About ARCHIBUS, Inc. ARCHIBUS is the #1 provider of infrastructure and facilities management solutions in the world, with expenditures for ARCHIBUS-related products and services exceeding $1.7 Billion (US). With ARCHIBUS, organizations can use a single, comprehensive, integrated solution to make informed strategic decisions that optimize return-on-investment, lower asset life-cycle costs, and increase enterprise-wide productivity reducing their infrastructure and facilities related costs by as much as 34%. Today, more than 4,000,000 ARCHIBUS users collectively manage over 5,000,000 properties around the globe. Available in over 130 countries and more than twenty languages, ARCHIBUS is supported through a global network of over 1,600 professionals. ARCHIBUS, Inc. 18 Tremont Street Boston, MA 02108 Phone: 617-227-2508 Fax: 617-227-2509 info@archibus.com