A&M's Real Estate Advisory Services (REAS) group was engaged to evaluate Healthcare Organization’s CRE/FM organizational structure given its recent internal growth and future acquisition plans.

Client Mandate
Healthcare Organization is a publicly held company of over 2,000 employees with 30 offices in the United States, focused on innovative cost control solutions that benefit both government and commercial healthcare programs. Healthcare Organization has experienced significant organic growth, and expects this internal growth to continue.  Additionally, Healthcare Organization is pursuing new growth and expansion through strategic acquisitions, given the recent changes in the healthcare marketplace.

Healthcare Organization recognized that such growth required a facilities group that could manage the existing internal growth, but also be a strategic partner with Finance in the acquisition integration of new, geographically dispersed office locations and staff. As part of a shared service center initiative, A&M REAS was engaged to conducted a diagnostic evaluation of the Healthcare Organization’s Corporate Real Estate and Facilities Management organization and assess its ability to meet its future demands.

A&M’s Approach
A&M REAS compared the Healthcare Organization’s CRE/FM organization, processes, and supporting IT systems against leading industry practices, with recommendations focused on identifying internal changes to each that would permit the CRE/FM group flexibility and scalability to meet the organization’s expansion plans, while also improving its existing service delivery.

Results
The Healthcare Organization is currently implementing the evaluation’s recommendations. The evaluation essentially rated three main CRE/FM components – Organization, Processes, and Technology - on a maturity scale, and provided descriptions for each level of maturity. This structure allowed the organization to recognize where it was in relation to industry practices, but also see the incremental steps it could take to improve and mature. Findings results in:

• A re-designed and centralized CRE/FM team organization, with revised time allocation recommendations for senior leaders, focused more clearly on customer relationship management, strategic planning, and financial reporting;
• An organizational structure outlining future hires and roles and responsibilities that should be in-house versus out-sourced; and
• Initial IT systems that supported financial and FM reporting – systems with clearly documented processes to supplant the existing and less effective processes - with integration into existing Finance and Accounting systems.