In previous blog posts, we discussed how bundling your facility services can increase your financial flexibility and improve your aesthetics.
When you work with one company that performs all services, like landscaping, all maintenance tasks, repairs, pressure washing and janitorial, you can reduce disruptions and interruptions that end up affecting your tenants or customers.
Still, there is one issue we want to bring up that may impact your decision-making: hiring a facility management company that self-performs or one that subcontracts.
We prepared this blog post on self-performing vs. subcontracting to help you understand their differences and find the best provider. Let’s get started!
Self-Performing vs. Subcontracting, What’s the Difference?
Self-Performing is when a bundled service provider does all the services in-house. They hire their own workforce and then dispense them directly to the client to provide the service needed.
Subcontracting is when a bundled service provider gives the client one set price for the services they will be controlling but then hires out those services and trades to a third-party vendor who will work under the bundled service provider.
In an ideal world, choosing the self-performing bundled services provider could benefit your company, in the long run, more positively than choosing the provider who subcontracts the work. The benefits are more than just cost-driven – though cost is a significant factor.
Benefits of Choosing a Self-Performing Bundled Services Provider
When looking at facility management companies that self-perform or subcontract, the biggest difference is quite obvious – it’s more cost-efficient. However, that can’t be your only deciding factor when choosing a provider.
Cost - By selecting a self-performing provider, you can get the services you need for a cost that this provider dictates and determines. If the provider subcontracts, they will have to set prices based on the cost of the people hired to do the service.
When it comes to things like inflation, this can be very cost-effective. With self-performed facility management, the price of an inflated item wouldn’t impact the whole overall cost because there are other efficiencies that offset the increase of the impacted services.
Whereas with subcontracting, the price could be impacted from multiple directions due to the companies being hired to do the service – much like if you hadn’t bundled your services in the first place.
Quality of Work - With self-performing, the quality of the work is uniform across the board because the company hired to do your bundled services hires its own talent directly. This means they control the training for said services.
The self-performing service provider is going to ensure that only the best quality of people perform the work on-site. Quality control is standard and consistent because the responsibility falls on the shoulders of one company vs. many companies.
Subcontracting may be helpful for the service provider; but, for the client, it means there is a chance the quality of performance will take a hit. There is no guarantee that the level of work for one service will carry over to the next service and the next.
Trust in Work - When a client sees the same faces with the same brand time after time for a service, they start to trust that individual. Plus, they start to see that there is a level of trust in the work itself as well.
We live in a world where face-to-face interaction between a client and a service provider is very important because it dictates the speed and efficiency of the work to be performed. If you see the same face each time a service is provided, you start to know them by name and start to see them as human.
This can work in the positive with regard to the provider's confidence and pride, but it can also work well for the provider should a mistake be made. If the client trusts your level of service a mistake won’t be seen as the end of the working relationship, just merely a hiccup along the way.
Aesthetics - As with anything, if you ask one person to do all the tasks vs. multiple people, you are going to get a more uniform, consistent look. This can go for anything and everything.
By bundling your services together, you think you are going to get a uniform aesthetic for your company. However, unless that service provider self-performs, you may be stuck with many different opinions on what is best for your company.
It’s like looking at it from the perspective of a design meeting. If you (the client) have a meeting with one person (the self-performing service provider) it’s more likely that the two of you will reach a consensus on what should be done for your company’s services. Whereas, in a design meeting with you (the client) and ten other people (a subcontracting service provider who has to answer to all their contractors) you have to contend with many different opinions, and nothing gets done the same way twice.
Efficiency - Finally, there is the factor of work efficiency to think about. Self–performing bundled service providers can cut down on a client’s downtime because they can contact a technician, worker, provider, etc almost immediately.
Because self-performing providers hire their own team of workers, they control things such as labor shortages, response times, and quality of work because there is no middleman to contend with. Unfortunately, contractors can’t predict anything about response times or who will show up to perform the service – or if the contractor will even have someone available.
This factors into the efficiency of the services being provided because the responsibility only falls on the shoulders of one person versus multiple people. By controlling the quality of work, a provider can ensure that the work won’t have to be repeated in order to fix mistakes or shortcomings.
How Does Berman Stand Out?
First and foremost, Berman has been a trusted name in bundled service providers for 17 years. With that longevity comes a name and brand people can trust.
One of the big reasons we can be trusted is we are a self-performed bundled services provider and we utilize that to your advantage for the overall success of your company and property. Contact us today to get started.
