Dive Brief:
- Accruent and ServiceChannel formed a strategic partnership to combine their solutions into an integrated workplace management system for multisite business operators, according to a press release.
- The companies say the solution expands ServiceChannel’s platform to include real estate management system Lucernex, energy management and asset monitoring system vx Observe and workplace optimization system EMS.
- The partnership aims to address growing demand for data-driven management systems, as facility leaders lean on building insights to make operation, design and maintenance decisions.
Dive Insight:
Technology conglomerate Fortive owns both companies, following its acquisition of Accruent for about $2 billion in July 2018 and its purchase of ServiceChannel for approximately $1.2 billion in 2021. At that time, the parent company estimated ServiceChannel’s acquisition would enhance its revenue growth profile by about 50 basis points, with a 10% return on investment capital target anticipated by 2026.
According to the release, ServiceChannel and Accruent have more than 50 mutual customers, with a combined offering that will serve multisite operators that have 50 to 10,000 locations. Fortive additionally purchased construction software firm Gordian in 2018, adding software that tracks construction project costs, manages facility operations and provides data-driven building insights.
Globalization has accentuated the need for global market insights, which can be formulated from the two company’s customer network data, and can be used alongside internal data to drive building efficiencies across a portfolio. IWMS systems can also drive decision-making and operational solutions, streamline lease administration and accounting, and analyze or compare different project outcomes and investment scenarios based on data gathered at the facilities, according to Gartner.
The partnership between ServiceChannel and Accruent aims to address a growing pressure for facilities leaders to find efficiencies amid high labor costs and commercial real estate woes. As a result, many are leaning on technology to automate processes and deliver actionable, data-driven operational insights, with JLL’s recent 2023 State of Facilities Management report finding that 57.8% of managers want business intelligence to give real-time data to support repair-vs-replace decisions.
These conditions are expected to help grow the global IWMS market from $9.8 billion in 2023 to $12.1 billion in 2027, according to a Research and Markets report. The report also estimates that deploying IWMS solutions is expected to improve facilities energy consumption by 11.6%, facility usage efficiency by 40.1%, maintenance costs by 16.1% and enterprise asset lifecycle costs by 34.9%.
Fortive’s combined IWMS will now have to face its other large competitors to meet this growing demand. Eptura, for example, recently released enhancements for its Archibus IWMS, adding automated lease renewals, occupancy data and Autodesk building information model integration.
