This month, we spoke to Cindy Hermsen, CEO, FM Innovators. Born and raised in The Netherlands, just after finishing her studies at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, she established in Spain where she built a successful marketing agency. Business development has always been her strength; the startup ecosystem, where a maverick soul, common sense and agility are combined with smart tech, soon drew her attention.

Her leading role in a startup innovation program for facility management sparked the founding of the Global Alliance of FM Innovators, a meeting point for FM industry leaders and FM startups worldwide. Cindy coined “FMTech” for all digital solutions of the complete span wide of FM activities. She is now on a quest to bring these solutions to the attention of any facility manager interested in preparing their corporations and personal careers for the coming years.

We spoke to Cindy about FM Innovators, popular cleaning technologies of 2022 and a lot more. 

Tell us about FM Innovators.

The Global Alliance of Facility Management Innovators (FM Innovators) is the meeting point where FM decision-makers can stay abreast of the industry's evolution – from the latest (and long-term) trends to innovative solutions fueled by startups. Membership is open to board members of FM service providers, corporate FM directors, heads of innovation, business transformation managers, and FM consultants who we collectively call FM Innovators.

Our expert team here at the Global Alliance of FM Innovators scouts digital startup innovation globally, vets them and makes selected startups available to our members. We make sure our selection covers the complete and vast spectrum of FM activities, from maintenance to waste management and from cleaning to catering.

We firmly believe that digitalization is touching the careers of all FM’ers. Therefore, any facility manager wanting to get acquainted with startup innovation is welcome in our community. Decision-makers are especially welcome in our Boost-Your-Innovation Program, set up for corporations to speed up the process.

Our FM Innovators’ membership platform is the ideal meeting point for facility managers and industry leaders to get immersed in FMTech. We’re here for you to make innovation easy, without high risks and endless costs.

In line with our goal to be the meeting point between the facility managers and digital innovation, we recently launched the FM Innovators Summits, with the 1st Digital Cleaning Summit on May 19, 2022, 10 AM CEST. The Digital Cleaning Summit is where the FM industry learns about the latest FMTech developments and incumbents find their partner in cleaning - a unique online live event for the FM Industry to meet up with cleaning start- and scaleups from around the world. All participants are digital native firms, working on cleaning in their specific areas such as robotics, data-driven cleaning, frontline worker engagement and IoT.

The 1st Digital Cleaning Summit will be the first of many FMTech landmark events, with a  Digital Maintenance Summit, an Operational BIM / Metaverse Summit, a Workplace Management Summit, and an Energy Solutions Summit already in the pipeline.

According to you, which cleaning technologies are the most popular in 2022 and why?

As a keen observer of digital trends and working with startups every day here at FM Innovators, we see the following popular cleaning technologies: 

1. First and already well-known, the IoT sensors and request buttons, often integrated with digital workplace management solutions, are geared towards smart, data-driven and dynamic cleaning as opposed to static cleaning prior to the pandemic
2. We see specific IoT devices to track high-value mobile cleaning equipment 
3. Robots, which are teamed up with the workforce to create super teams 

The pandemic has definitely ushered technology into the cleaning sector – in a way, modernizing it and paving the way for other technologies to find their foothold in the cleaning industry. Technology will be revolutionizing the cleaning industry; it has only just begun. We are really standing at the beginning of a new era in cleaning. 

What are the challenges most soft FM professionals face in implementing new technologies? 

One of the biggest challenges is the engagement of the workforce – the frontline workers – who will be actually using the technology. The new technology is often initiated by company leaders and decision-makers, but the real change is in the buy-in of the actual users of the technology.

How do you think they can overcome these challenges?

Our conversations with both FM service providers and tech companies have shown that the true ingenious factor, the X-factor, lies in the combination of various smart technologies AND the engagement of the workforce, comfortably using the technology. The frontline workers must feel they perform better and feel that they are supported mentally, not menaced. So top-to-bottom communication along with proper training in using the new technology is a must.

Does the soft FM industry resist the change to new technologies? If yes, what can be done to help the transition?

There is always resistance to change to something new, that’s the way we humans are designed.  Company leaders, including FM decision-makers, have the biggest influence on innovative culture adoption in a company. So, for starters, do company leaders have an innovation mindset and does it reflect in the way they run the company, and communicate with their team and clients? One of the best practices that I see for decision-makers and leaders is to talk about innovation regularly, cite innovative practices that have made a difference in their business or benchmark from those in the industry. Start the practice of continuous improvement, including innovation in company meetings, business planning and reviews.

What have been the catalyzing factors in the implementation of cleaning and soft FM technologies?

There is no doubt that the single biggest catalyst in the implementation of cleaning and soft FM technologies is the Covid pandemic. Where before cleaning and soft FM were content to be manual and labour-intensive and static, with the pandemic, came the hybrid working, unpredictable foot traffic and building occupancy rates plus the need for transparency and efficiency leading to dynamic, in-demand cleaning. We also have to remember that the pandemic also highlighted the need to ensure the health and safety of frontline workers which brought to light the need for technology and practices for frontline workers' well-being and engagement. These catalyzing factors along with the challenges of ensuring that built environments become more efficient and sustainable heralded a wave of technologies that I believe will change cleaning and soft FM in unprecedented ways.

What do you think about the future of cleaning technologies?

As I mentioned earlier, we are standing at the beginning of a new era in cleaning. I see the trends in cleaning technologies towards:

1. Wearables help cleaners to track and support physical problems they may have 
2. For cleaning workforce engagement, gamification and social technologies are deployed  
3. There is huge potential in the use of blockchain. Blockchain is to become the trusted enabler of smart contracts between cleaning providers and clients.

3 advises you would like to share with soft FM professionals who are trying to implement new cleaning technologies. 

We have seen various challenges to be overcome:
1. The fear of being replaced at the frontline level,  and
2. The rejection by middle staff, whose role is changing in a data-driven environment and they need quite some support in this change. We all can imagine that if a supervisor shows on-site that he/she doesn’t care about the tech being implemented, the frontline team will care even less. So, my first advice:

1. It is important that Directors explain very well the changes that are being made and are themselves true ambassadors of the project. The executing teams must experience that the tech is easy to use and that it benefits them in terms of efficiency and making work easier, and more building-user experience compliant.

My second piece of advice has something to do with cost:

1. Technologies that will require hardware will need consideration when it comes to capital expenditure, while technologies that are software-based do not need investment as high as hardware needs. There are leasing plans and other financial formulas available though, for hardware. So, in tech implying hardware like drones, return on investment is in the long term and for working at scale, deployed on many square meters, so to say. Hardware offers a big advantage though when we consider the health and safety of frontline workers. For example, skyscraper facade window cleaning, cleaning in dangerous spaces because of a pandemic of nuclear radiation etc. Take all these factors into consideration when deciding not just basing it on pure cost.

And my final advice is about adopting digital innovation as a mindset:

1. Digital tech is not something we do away with, it’s more that tech evolves into new propositions, based on earlier ones. Digital tech is in constant transformation, a process, a mindset and a game-changer. I am convinced that it’s THE key factor that will divide the winners from losers; companies that are not agile in adopting tech will lose market share, even if they are big players right now. To me, it’s clear that for FM professionals, like those in smaller cleaning companies, now is the moment to move and look for that new unique selling proposition in the tech ecosystem.