A facilities management marketplace is a platform through which a company with hundreds of shops, restaurants or branches orders each repair from local contractors, then tracks the job and pays for it. It is a part of a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS), or connected to one. Its users are retail chains, restaurant chains, banks with many branches and petrol pump networks.
A chain with outlets in 60 cities cannot employ its own plumber, electrician and air-conditioning technician in each city. So it hires local contractors. Without a platform, each store manager phones a contractor he knows, and the head office has no idea what was done, how long it took or whether the price was fair. The marketplace fixes this. It holds a list of checked contractors for each trade in each city, with the rates agreed in advance. Every job is a work order that the head office can see.
Consider a café chain with 280 outlets across India. On a Friday in April, the air conditioner at its outlet in Indore stops cooling. The store manager raises a request in the app at 11 a.m. The platform sends the job to the chain's chosen air-conditioning contractor in Indore. It also sets a not-to-exceed limit of ₹6,000, the most the contractor may charge without asking for approval. The contractor accepts within 30 minutes. His technician arrives at 2 p.m. and checks in on the app. The app records the time and the location, and asks for a photo of the unit. He finds a failed capacitor, replaces it and checks out at 3:15 p.m., with another photo. He uploads an invoice for ₹4,800: ₹1,500 for the visit and ₹3,300 for the part and labour. The platform checks the invoice against the agreed rates and the limit. The store manager confirms that the café is cool again. The invoice is then sent for payment, and the contractor is paid within 30 days.
The head office now has a record of every job in every outlet. It can see which contractors arrive on time, which outlets have the most repairs, and which machines fail most often. A contractor who often arrives late gets fewer jobs.
The invoice check is the same kind of check described in invoice audit, and the payment usually runs through accounts payable (AP) automation. How is this different from field service management (FSM)? FSM is used by one service company to send its own technicians. A facilities management marketplace is used by the customer, to choose among many service companies.