Information and Communication Technologies and Supply Chain in Facilities Management in Denmark

This report presents the results of a study of factors impacting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption in the supply chain of Facilities Management (FM) in Denmark.

The research questions addressed in this study are: What are the key factors that influence adoption and assimilation of ICT systems in the supply chain of FM? What are the main benefits gained from deploying ICT systems in FM supply chain?

This study is important because it investigates motivators, barriers and benefits of adopting ICT systems in the FM supply chain, which is new to the FM literature as well as the IT innovation adoption literature and supply chain management literature.

The report takes the starting point on the definitions of supply chain, supply chain management and FM to go deeper into a literature review of factors that can affect the adoption and assimilation of ICT in the supply chain.  On the base of this literature review a semi-structured interview guide has been developed and 12 in depth interviews have been conducted with respondents from 12 different companies. Each interview lasted circa 1.5-2 hours and all interviews were fully transcribed. Data for the study were also gathered from archival sources as well as attendance to practitioner conferences and workshops on the topic of IT systems in FM. The participant lists of these seminars and conferences, the web site of the Danish network for FM as well as discussion with industry experts were used to find relevant companies and people to interview.

The results of the study show that there are a number of factors that influence adoption and assimilation of ICT in the supply chain of FM in Denmark. By following the literature, these factors have been grouped according to organizational, technology and external environmental factors. Some of the most important organizational factors are better FM management decisions, better long term and short term planning and forecasting of FM resources, better overview and control over the budget and the activities that need to be done as well as bbetter service provided to the customers.  Among the organizational barriers important ones are the difficulty of writing in the contract the process of how and when to get data from the FM service providers, and lack of resources to implement the systems and to make the necessary organizational changes in order for the system to get implemented. Among the external drivers there are improve and control relationships with FM service provider, opportunity to offer single point of contact also in complicated bundled services, government regulation, and critical mass of users. Among the external barriers there are lack of collaboration among software providers, clients and users in order to develop and store all those info and disagreements between the service provider and the customer about the data that need to deliver. In any case supplier-customer interdependence was found as a key external factor. Among the technological factors important are increased control and systematization in data collection and service delivery, better decision regarding service provision and employees got more control of their daily work. Among the technological barriers there are the ICT systems are still not user friendly, different systems are not compatible, and lack of standard format and classification schemes for FM data input.

The research presented in this study has been financed by the Centre for Facilities Management - Realdania Research (CFM) based at the Department of Management Engineering, Denmark Technical University (DTU).