Global to local

According to IFMA, involving facilities management throughout the complete building lifecycle rather than just at the operations stage significantly reduces long-term costs and improves building performance. It’s an approach that Laura Toumazi, Vice President of Sales in the UK, believes is one of the huge advantages in partnering with CBRE, coupled with the occupier services provider’s empathetic and bespoke approach to every client partnership.

Toumazi is one of the few leaders in the sector who made FM a career destination. Her father worked on the FM client side in the Financial Services sector, and after graduation, she began working for Credit Suisse on behalf of Nuffield Health, looking after Front of House operations for the Gym and Wellness Centre. She then worked for Barclays Capital on their cleaning contracts, later moving into FM operations for Johnson Controls.

When a new supplier won the services contract, she was approached by Johnson Controls to join its Enterprise Sales team. She spent over seven years with the International Financial and Professional Services Sector Sales team, working on complex and large-scale client solutions.

After Johnson Controls was acquired by CBRE, she moved into UK Sales Director roles before becoming Vice President of Sales for CBRE’s UK Facilities Management business which comprises around 7,500 employees and over 850 contracts. Here she helps drive sustainable growth, responsible for 70 Business Development Professionals.

She says: “I believe my background in operations adds context and credibility. I’ve been TUPED as an individual three or four times, and have gone through the experience of a contract being awarded to another partner, so I know first-hand how important good communication is to our teams on the ground.

“But alongside my own experiences, the thing that I love most about CBRE is that sales truly partner with operations. In every business unit we have an Operator and a Business Development professional who work in partnership. We don’t use the central sales team to go win these contracts, but instead give our clients the opportunity to meet our operators – which means they buy into our operational teams, not a sales pitch.”

MARKET LEADERSHIP

CBRE became a UK market leader in occupier services following the strategic acquisition of Norland Managed Services in 2013 and Johnson Controls Global Workplace Solutions (GWS) in 2015. It has retained that position by maintaining a client retention rate of 97 per cent.

Toumazi is justifiably proud: “We can’t grow sustainably unless we are able to retain our existing clients, and we can use these successes to showcase what we can do to attract new business.”

Each division has a Managing Director who partners with a Sales Director. Divisions are organised around business units, with a Business Unit Leader, a Business Development Manager and a Business Unit Sales Coordinator – this is referred to as a ‘business unit triangle’ which is fully focused on the customer.

Adds Toumazi: “We ensure that the business units don’t get so big that they are unable to be responsive and hands-on – keeping us close to our customers.

“That’s what is fundamentally different about our business. It has been so successful in the UK that we’ve now replicated it across other regions globally.”

Toumazi acknowledges that there is a preconception that CBRE is a huge organisation, with some potential clients assuming they would be too small to partner with them. To address this issue, the team focuses on both large scale clients that procure globally and outsource globally as well as clients that procure on a country-by-country basis.

Since the creation last year of its new Building Operations & Experience (BOE) segment, CBRE can deliver end-to-end building operating solutions at a global scale.

Says Toumazi: “We combine global excellence and local delivery which, coupled with the fact that we can support the client end-to-end on the property life cycle – from advising clients on where to lease space, how to fit out buildings, to operate them and then dispose of them – means supporting the entire asset life cycle, which is an interesting and unique proposition.”

CLIENTS & SERVICES

CBRE supports every sector, from higher education, the NHS and healthcare to many of the iconic landlord owned skyscrapers in the City of London. It also delivers services to the aviation industry and to life sciences and complex manufacturing, including food production.

Currently CBRE sees the public sector as a growth area, given that it makes up 60 per cent of the total FM market. Logistics, manufacturing and aviation are also seen as areas for growth. For the services offered there is a deliberate business decision not to self-perform every service as CBRE believes not any one organisation can be expert in every field.

Says Toumazi: “Instead, we’ve chosen to be experts in technical delivery, because of the heritage of the acquisitions we’ve made, the investment that we’ve made at a global level, and because our true belief is that if you don’t maintain the assets, then you don’t protect and preserve the assets for clients.”

She argues that focusing on hard services offers the flexibility to come up with bespoke solutions for each client, whatever their region or sector.

“Mine and my team’s job in the sales process is to really get under the skin of the client and understand their key challenges, understand their objectives, what they want to achieve and what is being discussed at the C-suite level that the real estate and FM team can help influence to determine the best solution.

“We’re very fortunate that we work with clients from every sector, every outsourcing maturity level, and because of our delivery model, we have experience or an answer to support them across any challenges they may have.”

TAKING THE LEAD

Working with service partners makes it imperative to foster a one team culture, so all frontline employees are made to feel part of the same team, while focusing on innovation, training and career progression within their service discipline.

Toumazi believes the sector needs to broaden the talent pool in FM which means finding ways of attracting a diverse range of people into the industry.

She says: “I want the best people for the job and to do that we have to promote flexibility and progression. Many women leave the industry mid-career, when they have a family, so we have a responsibility to promote flexibility and progression, and that really comes down to stronger role modelling and allyship.

“I believe in leading with empathy and that’s reflected in our people-centred organisation, where strong interpersonal skills, an understanding of everyone’s individual motivators and truly caring about them as individuals is our superpower.”

AI IN FM

According to Toumazi, while the leaders of the future are going to have to be more AI and tech savvy, FM will remain a people-led service. Whether engineers, receptionists, managers or workplace ambassadors, CBRE teams are briefed to engage with occupiers as the custodians of the clients’ brands – something that can’t be replicated by technology.

AI tools are however, becoming an important way of responding to client needs quickly and proactively by aggregating data to perform predictive analytics on the way estates are managed. For example, CBRE’s CAFM system now incorporates AI that identifies any issues with a particular asset to flag it to the engineering team. This predicative data helps engineers maintain that asset, offering the client reassurance their assets are being maintained at optimum levels.

From a supply chain perspective, because the delivery model draws on specialist suppliers, service partners are encouraged to invest in AI tools that benefit their respective service discipline; for example cleaning partners deploying sensor technology to track footfall in washrooms.

CBRE has also recently launched CBRE FM Link; an end-to-end facilities management technology ecosystem, bringing together data, digital tools and service expertise to give clients clearer visibility and control over how their buildings perform. It helps organisations cut costs, work more efficiently, deliver on sustainability goals and create better workplace experiences. By replacing fragmented systems with a connected, insight-driven approach, it aims to mark a step-change in how FM decisions are made.

Explains Toumazi: “Our approach is about deploying AI in a meaningful way, making our people more efficient so they can focus on the customer and what they’re trying to achieve, and that to me is real customer service.”

FUTURE PLANS

For the future, Toumazi explains that CBRE is focusing on how to unlock innovation across every single service discipline, and utilise AI to help add value at every opportunity.

“It’s about processes that are suitable for AI which do not remove people but make them more efficient so that they can refocus their time on things where humans add value,” she explains.

“I think we’ll see a lot more focus on AI, particularly around driving efficiency and freeing FM professionals to focus on insight, risk management and performance, all the areas that are most critical.”

Interestingly, she also believes that the next generation of outsourcing will explore better ways of integrating property, real estate and FM to unlock true insights into that total cost of occupancy and how every penny and pound is being spent across an estate.

“It’s about doubling down on our supply chain and understanding how we can unlock further benefits – from our partners to our clients. Because we manage tens of millions of dollars of spend, the ability to really leverage that in a beneficial and focused way is a unique opportunity that we have as an organisation.”

Toumazi’s focus however remains on the custodians of buildings and workplaces and how they deliver value to client partners.

“I’m very fortunate,” she says. “We’ve got 7,500 people in this part of CBRE, and I see my role in the business to be the critical friend in a way that gets the best out of people, and taps into empathy and emotional intelligence.

“As amazing as innovation and technology is, and how necessary it is for us as an organisation, we can’t deliver any of it without our people, who remain our biggest asset.”