ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Peter Ankerstjerne, head of group marketing at global facilities services provider ISS, talks about two major knowledge megatrends that will affect businesses. They are technological development and the growth of a knowledge society.

With 90 per cent of the world's data generated just over the last two years, information and the excess of it is forecasted to impact businesses for years to come. It can only be assumed that with the rate of technological advancement, this rate will multiply.

Successful FM and services industry companies towards 2020 will be the ones that can efficiently collect, store, secure, analyse and operationalize data to generate value and maximum benefit for customers. We like to call this, the knowledge megatrend.

Technological development

The first of the two knowledge megatrends is the enabler: the technological progress, which is ultimately intertwined with economic progress. Technological progress increases productivity, leads to the development of new industries, income growth, and reduced poverty.

Technological developments, high-tech innovation, increased business activity, as well as products and services, enter a country via foreign trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), and are frequently disseminated through migrant populations. These avenues permit the diffusion and adaptation of technology to larger parts of the global population.Towards 2020, technological development will be shaped by the force-multiplying effects of:

• The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials technology, and information and communications technology

• The acceleration of technological development

• Growing information exchange between developed and developing countries

• Developing countries participating in technology development

• Consequences for the FM and services industry

The Internet of Things and ambient intelligence will allow facility managers to develop a much better understanding of how people are using buildings, leading to new maintenance approaches, better designs, and more productive spaces.

This development will also lead to a number of ethical and security challenges, for which FM and services industry managers should develop contingency plans. For example, which data are you permitted to store, and for how long? Who owns the data collected from individuals moving through the building? Who is responsible for securing and protecting these data?

According to Dr Dean Kashiwagi, technological development will help transition the FM industry from its technical paradigm towards new strategic approaches.

The growth of a knowledge society

The communication revolution is creating an explosion in the creation and dissemination of information. New reporting, collection and control technologies are creating a mountain of data that needs to be collected, stored and analysed. Successful FM and services industry companies towards 2020 will be the ones that can efficiently collect, store, secure, analyse and operationalise data to generate value and maximum benefit for customers.

To standardise data collection and make it cross comparable, ISO standardisation will be required before the maximum benefit of data collection and the knowledge society is realised.

Consequences for the FM and services industry

The increase in the level of scientific knowledge in all FM and related services will increasingly rely on specialists. The demand for better-educated labour with degrees in FM specialty topics will change how business is conducted and will drive greater professionalization while expanding the knowledge base within FM and related services.

Professor Kathy Roper points out that one of the major labour-market focus areas for managers towards 2020 will be the need to obtain quality labour and find capable staff at all levels of the organization. The average employee will have higher skill-set development and training requirements owing to the top-down integration of new technologies and higher expectations of service from the buyer. This will require higher training and better internal knowledge-sharing management culture.

www.issworld.com