Paper to AI: Sysserve Charts Future Of Sustainable Facilities Management In Africa

OLORUNDARE ENIMOLA, Lagos

Mr. Owoeye Johnson, the Co-founder and Executive Director of Sysserve, the company behind Instanta, a physical asset and operations management platform has called on Companies to fully embrace Intelligent Platforms enabling sustainable facility management.

He made the call while delivering a paper at a recent conference organised by (International Facility Management Association Global Africa (IFMA Global Africa), organised to bring professionals in that field to connect, learn, and innovate strategies for the industry.

According to Owoeye, the Facility Management application floated by his organisation has in the past 13 years helped many organisations across different industries to achieve their digital transformation objectives, helping them at different stages of digitization, from those just starting to those already running highly matured systems.

Noting that there are five stages of digitization, with companies operating at different levels, from Non-existent to those at the Nascent level, some are Emerging, others running a Connected Systems, while others operate Intelligent Systems, Owoeye said.

Owoeye went on to share the Digital Maturity Model developed by Deloitte and McKinsey that he adapted for the facility management industry, revealing that the framework provides tools for organisations to evaluate their level of digital maturity and help build a roadmap to achieving full maturity.

In his words, “Companies in the Non-existent category have no centralised system for record keeping, but have data silos that are largely in manual formats, in some extreme cases, facility officers in such organisations literally have to travel to the head offices just to obtain a physical signature for vendor payments, work orders or procurements while decision making are generally slow, reactive, and based on guesswork rather than data.”

Pointing out that such organisations will need to first adopt a central record keeping system to kickstart their digitization maturity journey.

Owoeye said those in the Nascent category have a system in place but underutilized, stressing that the system does not drive their operation but used mainly as a record-keeping tool, while other operations still run on manual processes, saying, “They keep insisting we have a system when in reality, the system is grossly underutilized and not adding real operational value.

“The organizations in the ‘Emerging’ category are fully utilizing their facility management system to power their operation, but their processes are still heavily human-dependent, proned to errors and delays, which sometimes affect the quality of reporting. ” He added.

The ‘connected category’, according to him, invest in IoT sensors that automatically captures real-time readings, from energy usage and equipment run hour to temperature, humidity, and space occupancy, integrating with other enterprise applications for automated vendor payments, procurement and financial reporting. This level produces a massive volume of data, which is now becoming increasingly difficult to turn into useful insights to enable decision-making and sustainability.

Owoeye said that level five is the pinnacle of digital maturity, where AI is embedded at every layer of their facility management operations, where they have generative AI and big data analytics that support planning, budget forecasting, and resource allocation.

He said, “You can describe their operation as autonomous, a self-running system controlled by IOT sensors and AI.” He affirmed.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Conference, Mr Femi Kareem, a conference attendee who is a Manager in a Facility Management Company based in Abuja, said, “An intelligent platform is an integrated digital solution that collects, analyzes, and acts on data from different sources to optimize operations.

“It focuses on resource efficiency of energy, water, space, vehicles, and reduces emissions, cuts down waste, reduces costs, helping automation and providing AI driven solutions.” Kareem said.

Other attendees interviewed also agreed with Mr. Owoeye Johnson on the need for Facility and Logistic companies to embrace and adopt the intelligent platforms to optimise operations and cut down wastes to the barest minimum.

Mr. Owoeye concluded that building an intelligent FM system that drives sustainability is a journey, not a leap. It is a gradual process. that demands strategic planning, continuous improvement, and sustained investment. Every step forward brings you closer to a smarter, greener, and more sustainable future. And the time to begin that journey is now.”