Corinne Blatter
Service-on-Demand project manager
Post Real Estate Management and Services Ltd
The buttonboard is extremely versatile for facility management.
Facts & Figures
September 2020
Company Facts:
Company: Post Real Estate Management and Services Ltd
Industry: Services
Number of employees: > 1,500
Project Facts:
- Process optimisation with digitalisation
- Increased service quality
- Additional service models due to technology
A buttonboard in place of regular inspection rounds
Post Real Estate Management and Services Ltd manages a portfolio of around 2,000 properties across Switzerland. As part of its innovative process, it piloted the Service on Demand solution for the first time in 2017. Buttonboards are attached to selected hotspots such as coffee machines, snack vending machines, water dispensers, printers or toilet facilities, with which malfunctions or service requirements are reported at the touch of a button. Facility Management is assigned the job via the Service on Demand Platform. Regular inspections are a thing of the past. Swiss Post now also offers its solutions to third parties and in external markets. This has proved very popular and has enabled the company to build a large customer base. The buttonboard was developed by a partner firm in collaboration with the Swiss Post. The data is transmitted over the Swisscom LPN, LoRaWAN.
Challenge
In facility management, regular inspection rounds are extremely costly. Post Real Estate Management and Services Ltd identified a much more cost-effective system, as Corinne Blatter, Service-on-Demand product manager, explains: “We wanted to replace fixed inspection rounds with a needs-based system. Building users themselves can report when the coffee machine is playing up or the toilet paper has run out, for example.” The economical and intelligent Service-on-Demand solution was developed in cooperation with the Post Office’s IoT competence centre. Swisscom was invited on board as connectivity partner because: “We want to work with partners who are the best in their discipline.”
Solution
The undoubted ‘star’ of the new Service-on-Demand solution is the buttonboard. Each of the six buttons sends a specific service message to the task management platform. Users can simply press a button to report that a light needs fixing, for example. The messages are sent to the platform via the Swisscom Low Power Network (LPN), LoRaWAN, which offers a number of benefits: the Service-on-Demand solution does not need to be integrated into a company network at great cost, but works on a simple plug-and-play basis. What does it all mean for facility management? “It cuts our work time by up to 30%,” says Corinne Blatter.
Benefits Post Real Estate Management and Services Ltd
Positive error management for innovation
Bundled IoT know-how is the ideal way for your business to solve its existing pain points with IoT.
Partner ecosystem
A successful IoT solution is based on interaction between several ecosystem partners, each with top expertise in its field.
Risk mitigation
With a prototype, success can be quickly assessed and risk mitigated. Swisscom’s IoT Enabling Services can help.
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