Editor’s Note: This blog is from our friends at QSI Facilities who specialize in facilities management. Enjoy these five retail facilities management trends.
The Professional Retail Store Maintenance Association (PRSM) has once again released its annual report on the nation’s top retail facilities management trends. This year’s report highlights the growing demand on e-commerce, concerns over the facilities management skills gap, the use of technology to improve facilities management and more. To help your organization stay competitive, you need to understand the top findings in the report.

1. Retail Facilities Management Trends Find Growth Throughout the Industry

Retail has faced a major misconception about the impact of e-commerce over the past years. While 36 million FT² retail space will be vacated in 2018, the amount of space occupied by new tenants in grocery stores, fitness centers, movie theaters and other retailers is much more. In addition, these newer retailers are paying higher rent than their predecessors.

Although it sounds contradictory, higher rent is the direct result of better technology and facilities’ amenities offered for retailers. In turn, this translates into savings and better experiences for consumers.

2. The Facilities Management Skills Gap Widens

Education’s traditional world in securing long-term employment and guaranteeing skilled workers is starting to change. Up to 43 percent of PRSM supplier members experience problems finding qualified, experienced facilities management workers. Paired with the additions of technology in retail facilities management best practices today, it is even more difficult to find the right staff members. In addition, 31 percent of the retail facilities management workforce are approaching retirement age, and an additional 44 percent are already over 51-years-old.

Retailers, governments and educational institutions must work together to promote retail facilities management as an exciting, tech-laden career choice for the current and future generations.

3. Consumers Still Want the Brick-and-Mortar Experience, Just Turned up a Bit

The report also finds 81 percent of millennial dollars will still be spent in brick-and-mortar stores, but millennials still want options. They want the choice of shopping in-store, online, via app and through any other venue, otherwise known as omnichannel shopping. As a result, facilities managers must gain greater control over brick-and-mortar processes and accommodate expansion of other facilities management responsibilities, like ensuring maximum network uptime and managing a company’s growing supply chain facilities.

4. New Technology Makes Retail Facilities Management Easier and Faster

Benchmarking is a term that has been around for a while in retail facilities management, but traditional benchmarking is changing. Modern, dynamic benchmarking gives companies the ability to continually benchmark and monitor operation online over time. In conjunction, web-based platforms and computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) break constraints of traditional facilities management, letting them do more with less and encouraging effective risk management. Over time, this results in greater benchmarking accuracy and better use of retailers’ resources.

5. E-Commerce Pressures Warehousing to Adapt Preventative Facilities Management Programs & Cut Costs

The booming nature of e-commerce is also forcing warehouses to adapt preventative facilities m management programs to suit an ever-growing customer base. Facility managers are being forced to look at new technology being leveraged to improve warehousing operations, and this technology requires management and upkeep.

Last mile delivery in transportation is also starting to recognize the power of facilities management oversight. Retail facilities managers are starting to take note of the need for autonomous truck docks, drone landing and takeoff pads, robotics for automated loading and unloading, as well as charging stations for forthcoming fleets of drones. As a result, facilities management will grow to include the management of these automated systems and the facilities necessary to make them possible.

Unlock Profitability & Growth by Aligning Business Strategy With Retail Facilities Management Trends

These trends indicate growth in retail is on the horizon. Unfortunately, the dominant retail facilities management trends continue to emphasize the need for facilities managers to do more with less. Ultimately, the modern facility manager must pair technology with strategy to build competitive advantage. By understanding these trends and this fact, your organization can unlock the gateway to better profitability as the world moves toward a data-based realm of retail facilities demands.