Alpha Mead Facilities and Its Spiral of Growth in Africa

If Alpha Mead Facilities is situated in the United Kingdom, it should have been among the top 10 biggest FM companies in the country.  If AM Facilities plies its trade in the United States of America, it should have been among the largest FM companies in the country. In these countries, AM Facilities would have deployed its people and processes towards quality living, workplace environment and befitting places to play. 

Being in Africa does not constitute a strategic mistake. The fact is that the people at corporate, business and functional levels want to build “the Biggest and the Best Facility Management Company in Nigeria with strong presence in all major cities across the continent.” Already, the company’s footprints are in southern and northern regions in Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa and Senegal. In these locations, corporate units connect with strategic and regional business units.

In the next few years, AM Facilities is expected to be in Cairo, Kinshasa, Luanda, Abidjan, Alexandria, Dar es Salaam, Casablanca, Addis Ababa, Durban and Mogadishu, offering value-added FM solutions to about 100 million Africans. In Nigeria and other countries where AM Facilities is delivering solutions, commercial, residential and industrial clients across different sectors of the economy are being selected based on their specific characteristics. Over the years, being selective has been useful in the process of providing appropriate solutions to the clients.

Institutionalising and Prioritising Knowledge

AM Facilities has equally been found as one of the companies in the industry that institutionalise and prioritise knowledge. This differentiation is being implemented at the individual, company and industry levels. For instance, the company has a strong preference for knowledge acquisition and sharing between and among staff towards corporate objectives attainment. At the industry level, AM Facilities initiated FM Roundtable, a yearly conference where FM professionals and other stakeholders discuss key issues and trends in the industry. Recent analysis shows that AM Facilities employs white papers/ case studies, fact sheets and webinars or videos for awareness creation towards the industry recognition and clients’ understanding of FM solutions.

Smart and Connected Solutions

Early analysis has shown that AM Facilities is most likely to key into the Lagos Smart City seamlessly considering its present deployment of various technologies in solutions delivery. The company increased her investment in new technologies and trained staff on the use of Computer-Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) & Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS), Property Management systems, mobile technology, billing software as well as energy audits and management technology amongst others towards superior service delivery to clients. Apart from these, AM Facilities recently designed “Eye-on-Site”, a new application, to improve efficiency and significantly reduce downtime in every facility by providing detailed information on the criticality of all assets on site.

The Bottom Line and Open Race

From knowledge instituationalisation, prioritisation to the delivery of smart and connected solutions, AM Facilities is providing efficient facilities management solutions that reduce operating cost, increase operational efficiency and improve businesses and individuals’ bottom-line performance. Despite these, Infoprations has discovered that employees and management of the company still need to improve on process towards public’s recognition and understanding of some FM solutions.

Analysis shows that the company’s popularity in the last five years enhanced public’s interest in the facilities management, the real estate development, the security systems and health management solutions by 36.8%, 0.5%, 34.8% and 29.4% respectively. This indicates that public or prospective clients understand the solutions through the company’s activities. Further analysis reveals that AM Facilities connected with the facilities management solution by 13.1%, while the company related to real estate development, security systems and healthcare management negatively.

These insights indicate that AM Facilities needs to deploy more resources towards the promotion of the real estate development, security systems and healthcare management solutions using the company’s unique selling propositions. Application of Integrated Marketing Communication tools remains the best channels of conveying benefits and values people and businesses would derive from the solutions. While using the tools, efforts should be on reinforcing value co-creation and sharing principles in the buyers’ minds.