"Our vision is simply to be a service provider of choice for facilities services," says Patrick Kidd, vice president of Site Management Operations (SMO) for Ford Land. "It's very straightforward: If you walk up to just about any employee within our group and ask what the vision of Site Management is, they'll say to be service provider of choice."

To achieve this goal, SMO has developed a new operating model that focuses on customer satisfaction.

"We have a very large staff, a very large portfolio, and a budget that is always under pressure," says Kidd. "Our only response was to become a more effective and efficient organization."

To enhance customer relationship management, the group has created a cross-functional matrix based on centers of excellence and a new centralized customer care center. To increase accountability, SMO has established a new position, the property manager, as well as a business office function. Performance measures for the new model are tracked on a balanced scorecard. The new model was launched on March 1, 2001, and improvements are already being measured.

"Over time, our customers have a choice," says Kidd. "Even though we are an internal service provider, Ford can decide it can't afford us and look for other ways to get those services. Knowing that we are not immune from being outsourced was really the call to action for all of our employees."

Developing the New Vision

Ford Land SMO has approximately 1,200 employees (200 salaried and 1,000 UAW represented hourly workers) servicing a portfolio of 116 buildings, 18 million sf, and 48,000 customers. SMO came together in the late 1990s from a number of decentralized facilities groups. Redundancies persisted throughout the new organization and, as a result, developing an efficient structure was initially problematic.

The first step in facing this challenge was to define SMO's "current state," which Kidd describes as the state of the operation before any changes were made to implement the new vision or "desired state." Between the current and desired states is what Kidd refers to as the "delta state," or the period of transition from the one to the other.

To define the current state, SMO first solicited customer feedback, then employee feedback, and then did external benchmarking. SMO provides more than 100 services, which fall into approximately 20 categories. In analyzing these offerings, the team looked for areas where it wasn't providing a service related to its mission, then looked at areas where there were service redundancies.

To develop a vision for the desired state, SMO has established an ongoing partnership with Spectrum Strategies, a strategic planning firm based in the Detroit area. Spectrum Strategies provided much of the background research and continues to document the new processes. In May 2000, Spectrum served as facilitator at an offsite-planning workshop, which brought together all 24 of the managers and supervisors within SMO for two and a half days.

"I really see the workshop as a turning point in the development and implementation of the changes that we have underway," says Kidd. "We got buy-in from this very important group of managers and supervisors."

The participants were given a request for proposal and asked to develop a response as if they were outside service providers. The participants divided into four cross-functional teams, each with representatives from facilities planning, maintenance, food service, and engineering. The teams had 24 hours to develop the proposals. Each group recommended some kind of cross-functional matrix, and all suggested establishing a customer advocate or spokesperson (each called it something different) on the SMO team.

"The proposals were all very similar," says Kidd, "so we took the best of the best and refined them."

Moving into the Delta State

On January 31, 2001, SMO held an all-employee communication, bringing its 1,200 employees together at Ford's World Headquarters to explain the new operating model. Bi-monthly updates are also communicated through InSite, Ford Land's monthly newsletter.

There are three building blocks to the new operating model: Customer Relationship Management (CRM), centers of excellence, and Business Office.

Customer Relationship Management
The CRM building block has two major components: the property manager and the customer care center.

The property manager is a new function within SMO, created to act as the primary interface with the customer to ensure all of their facility service needs are provided and their expectations are met or exceeded.

"In the past, we had a number of people taking care of a building or group of buildings, but there was no individual whose primary role was to represent the customer," says Kidd. "Everyone was servicing the customer, but nobody was really looking out for his or her best interest."

Kidd reports that the new function has been well received both with customers and within SMO.

"It has removed a lot of the guess work. It's very fundamental, simple, and straightforward and is proving to be very effective," he says, adding, "Our second quarter customer satisfaction ratings, the first full quarter of operating under our new model, showed an 8.8 percent improvement. Overall, 2001 satisfaction ratings improved by 9.6 percent over 2000. We're off to a great start and very proud of our team's accomplishments."

SMO's customer care center will provide a single phone number, a single fax number, a single Web address, and a single email address that all 48,000 of its customers will use to get any type of service or information.

The center is 80 percent rolled out at present and Kidd estimates it should be 100 percent in place by mid-year.

"Right now the phone and fax numbers are functional for the customer care center, and customers can email their property manager directly," he says.

The customer care center's Web functionality is still being developed. Once rolled out, the Web site, an extension of SMO's Maximo CMMS system, will be available on the Ford Motor Company intranet.

Centers of Excellence
SMO has established four centers of excellence: Maintenance and Operations, which provides building maintenance and heating and cooling, as well as running the power house; Facility Planning, which manages the occupancy of buildings, as well as being responsible for move management; Facilities Engineering and Construction Group, performing engineering and small construction projects; and Food Services, which delivers food service contract management across all Ford sites, including manufacturing.

"In the past we had people who dabbled in housekeeping or in grounds, but we didn't have one specific expert responsible for these activities across our site," says Kidd. "The centers of excellence have changed this and it's proven to be amazingly effective."

Business Office
The third building block in the new SMO model is the establishment of a Business Office, which provides support to property managers and centers of excellence, managing performance measures, strategic alliances, and e-business solutions. The Business Office is also responsible for the training and development of employees.

Having a central administrative function helps to maintain common processes, practices, and procedures across the SMO operation.

Kidd points out that although the building blocks of the new model may look like three silos, SMO operates them in a matrix relationship: services are delivered based on service-level agreements established between the customer and the centers of excellence, managed by property managers.

To make sure SMO employees are satisfied and more productive in the services they deliver, SMO has established change teams across all of its centers of excellence. Change champions manage the change teams within centers of excellence. The centers of excellence are in turn coordinated by the Business Office.

Balanced Scorecard

Ongoing performance measures for SMO are divided into five areas of focus, or what is more commonly referred to as a balanced scorecard, helping SMO to define and document its service delivery process. The five areas are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, growth, financial performance, and productivity.

A 10-question customer survey, taken quarterly, gauges customer satisfaction within specific service areas: physical environment, maintenance, custodial, and grounds.

"Each of the questions has a tie-back to a specific center of excellence," says Kidd. "The property managers have an interest in all of them and work with the centers of excellence on areas that need improvement."

SMO employees also complete an annual job satisfaction survey.

Growth metrics track the gain or loss of SMO's business. In the last quarter, for instance, the group has picked up additional accounts within Ford Motor Company, specifically Jaguar, Mazda, and Lincoln.

Financial performance measures are also compiled from existing systems, tracking costs like headcount, material, overtime, etc.

Productivity numbers come directly from Ford's Maximo CMMS database, providing information on measures such as call-center response and turnaround on requests.

Improvements

By August 2001 SMO had been in the delta state for almost six months.

"I wouldn't do anything differently," says Kidd. "I would implement a couple of things faster, specifically the customer care center¾a real enabler of increased customer satisfaction¾and the Business Office."

SMO has had two pushes for cost reductions so far this year, and Kidd notes that the new operating model has enabled the group to respond more effectively and efficiently than in the past.

"We've been able to meet those challenges because we have a better handle on our business," he says.

Looking Ahead

According to Kidd, before SMO became a centralized group, it was largely an administrative function providing services. Once centralized, it became more of an independent management function.

"What we would like to do is to raise it to the next level: introduce a level of accountability and establish an interdependent relationship with our customers, with more give-and-take. With the vision of being the service provider of choice, we are aiming for more of a partnering relationship with our customer. That's where we want to be," he concludes.

By Lee Ingalls