OpenWorks Versus Independent Contractor Companies

Buying and staying local is great, and it's a spending strategy employed throughout the world and country to keep money flowing in a community. When you can do so, buying local and staying local works out in the end—especially for small businesses.

Many multi-site organizations desire to use various local, independent contractors to manage commercial cleaning and other facility management services in their operating regions. This practice is valid and understandable. However, utilizing multiple independent contractors for your locations could put your business at risk.

Let's examine how OpenWorks stacks up against independent companies:

1. A Patchwork of Providers Creates Inconsistencies.

While you may receive local relevance from independent contractors, there must be a way to ensure consistent service performance across your locations. Each provider has different processes, quality standards, and methods.

In addition, services are fragmented versus being integrated with one single point-of-contact. As a result, unnecessary internal resources are spent on vendor management across your locations with dozens of independent providers. And when an issue arises, you must contact multiple providers for scheduling, questions, and complaints.

With multiple providers, you don't receive consistent pricing across locations and can't benefit from pricing based on volume. Instead, you must negotiate each contract for each site and each service provided by each contractor.

These inconsistencies in operational process, quality, service levels, and costs may work for the local site manager, but these decisions may not align with overall corporate objectives. So with a patchwork of providers, there is no way to build alignment and efficiency across your organization.

^{OpenWorks provides one point of contact for all your facility services across all your locations. Functioning this way reduces your operational risk as you build consistencies based on performance levels and efficient facility management processes.

Moreover, OpenWorks does not charge an additional fee for overseeing responsibilities at all your locations.}

2. Lack of Centralized Responsibility For Oversight and Standardization.

You must ensure operational consistency across your sites, and you also need to ensure responsibility for overseeing all those operations.

Independent contractors are not structured to provide this operational oversight and there’s no way to ensure that these independent service providers as a whole are providing consistent service performance across locations.

First, most independent commercial cleaning companies hire hourly workers and provide them with varying levels of training. Therefore, the quality of service you receive and the methods they employ will differ across service providers.

Next, there is no way to manage all these providers to create the consistencies you need across your organization. If your sites require various services like cleaning, landscaping, electrical work, plumbing, HVAC, and snow removal, you need to have optimized standards across these providers to operate efficiently. And as a customer, you cannot establish processes and ensure these different contractors follow them.

^{OpenWorks operates under a unique franchise and service provider model, offering integrated facility services.

These services are standardized across your sites while your service providers understand every site-specific need.}

3. You are Unable to get a Holistic View of Your Operation.

You require information across your organization to make data-driven decisions; your facility operations are no exception. But the problem is that this information is not always readily available.

When you make all service provider decisions at the site level, most independent providers don't have the resources or tools to provide you with pertinent data. They are unable to invest in technology and processes to ensure accountability, service quality and visibility at the regional and national level.

You need these relevant details to help make better decisions. Data factors include time spent working on-site, opening and completing work orders, resolving service items, and monthly billing.

Without this technology, you must trust each provider that the work was completed appropriately, on time, and correctly billed. There is no single source of truth to answer your questions when work is not completed to your satisfaction.

^{OpenWorks provides one point-of-contact for all your facility service needs and a cohesive data platform allowing you to view all of your site activity from one location.

With OpenWorks, you'll gain governance, ensuring you that all your sites are operating efficiently.}

OpenWorks is a facility management leader because we care about what we do and the people we work with. Our unparalleled quality, customer service, robust technology solutions, and proven network of elite service providers continue to deliver consistent solutions that exceed expectations and have earned us an industry-leading 99% customer retention rate.

Our mission is to make your world work better. And we're here to get you there every step of the way. This year, make your employees your priority by taking care of them where they need it the most – at the office. Schedule your free consultation with OpenWorks to learn about our facility management services today.