CREATING AND SUSTAINING VALUE: THE CASE OF ABM UK FACILITIES MANAGEMENT COMPANY (Essay Sample)

CREATING AND SUSTAINING VALUE: THE CASE OF ABM UK FACILITIES MANAGEMENT COMPANY
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CREATING AND SUSTAINING VALUE: THE CASE OF ABM UK FACILITIES MANAGEMENT COMPANY
PART 1: Overview of Operational Activities
           ABM UK delivers facility services such as parking and transportation, grounds and landscape, janitorial services, mechanical and HVAC, facility engineering, energy, lighting, and electrical. ABM also offers complementary services such as energy sustainability and efficiency, including renewable energy solutions, electric vehicle charging stations, and building improvements. Green solutions are designed to assist building owners in attaining energy star and LEED certifications (Dixit et al. 2016). In 2015, ABM announced the implementation of an initiative that will enable the company to offer improved transformational services. This initiative will primarily focus on the firm's most profitable operations and core strengths, as well as streamline its business activities to administer unique client and industry solutions. In June 2015, the management implemented a comprehensive strategic review in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group to create a long-term strategic framework for the enterprise. As a component of this process, ABM highlighted key operational objectives whose attainment will enable the company to differentiate itself in the marketplace. Other benefits constitute accelerating revenue growth and improving ABM's margin profile. 
           Attaining profitable growth constitutes one of the operational objectives. Growth will be achieved by accentuating the company's focus on solutions and industries where ABM can acquire a competitive advantage on quality and service and achieve margin-accretive, profitable growth. The initial focus will be channeled towards key verticals, where it has the opportunity of creating a competitive advantage. This will encompass High-tech, Education, Healthcare, Aviation, as well as Business and Industry. Organizational realignment is presented as the second key operational objective. In this regard, business operations will be aligned to administer excellence in client solutions and support specific industries. This will be realized through a shift to an integrated end-market vertical approach, consolidation of specific shared services, and implementing a simplified organizational model (Shim, Bliemel & Choi 2017). Most of these changes were fully incorporated by the end of fiscal 2016. 
           The third operational objective entails attaining consistent excellence. This involves executing best practices in labor management and account management across the enterprise, as well as designing and implementing a more integrated model for continuous improvement in its transformational services. This will additionally entail driving initiatives to assist in the reduction of future severity and insurance claims. ABM also proposes to achieve cost optimization by capitalizing on the enterprise's scale to manage operational costs more effectively and efficiently, including procurement and process enhancement and supplier consolidation. The company acknowledges the need for talent development within the organization. In this regard, ABM aims to create greater career paths and opportunities for the personal development of its employees. This will be achieved by accelerating the growth of the firm's system capabilities for talent management. The techniques used for capital allocation in ABM play a critical role in its success, particularly considering the fact that ABM has several subsidiaries (Uy et al. 2019). The management purposes to increase its focus on specific metrics of financial performance and ensure that its dividends are consistent with current practice.  
           Cost and speed are the primary order winners for ABM UK. The organization recognizes the need to attain efficient and high utilization of short delivery times and resources. To achieve this, the company employs several lines of operations coupled with shared resources. To attain low loss and high speed, the company employs economies of scale, which are largely technology-oriented. This enables ABM to deliver wide-scale services at high speed. The enterprise ensures effective management of lead time as a strategy to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace. An efficient lead time means the company is able to deliver its services faster to the market as well as gaining a faster advantage on innovations and new transformational services. Reduction strategies for lead time are responses to operational and logical challenges in the aspects of distribution, manufacturing, and procurement (Schultz 2017). To optimize its order winners in this regard, it is advisable for ABM to shift its locally managed distribution and procurement functions to the regional level. This will largely alleviate the complexity of its management models. The company will also be able to obtain an advantage in the improved management of its inventories and volume consolidation. This will also allow ABM to benefit from supplier-led innovation. Complimentary advantages include improved service offerings and enhanced internal service levels. 
           With regards to order qualifiers, ABM accentuates its focus in ensuring consistent reliability. Brand loyalty is less pronounced in the highly competitive facility operations industry. As a result, consistent service availability is essential in securing market share (Weise et al. 2014). ABM ensures that its transformational services are readily available at the right time and at the right place through enhancing the visibility of demand and particularly along the supply chain. In a bid to optimize its service availability ABM maintains consistent communication with its suppliers. The organization also continues to develop trusting and close relationships with key individuals and enterprises in its supply chain. Within its internal organizational structure, ABM has established shared systems and processes which feature national transparency of supply and demand. This has facilitated improvements in sourcing decisions, productive investment, and enhanced decision making on service innovations.