{"id":8173,"date":"2024-02-19T08:17:12","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T08:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swgnew.com\/na\/blog\/be-a-data-whizz-to-get-the-most-from-your-iwms\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T13:43:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T12:43:43","slug":"be-a-data-whizz-to-get-the-most-from-your-iwms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swg.com\/na\/blog\/be-a-data-whizz-to-get-the-most-from-your-iwms\/","title":{"rendered":"Do You Need to be a Data Whizz to Get The Most From Your IWMS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maths teachers used to tell us to learn our way around numbers as we wouldn\u2019t be walking round with a calculator in our pocket. While they were wrong about the latter, the importance of numerical data cannot be underestimated.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As facilities management collects more and more data in order to identify workplace insights and get ahead of the competition, we must ask ourselves what skills are required within the team to turn that data into <\/span>actionable <\/span>information. While core on the curriculum, Maths is often a subject people struggle with and indeed, exam results from the UK<\/a> and Australia,<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>for example, have shown a decline in standards.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, with problems come solutions. While data will continue to rise in prominence for FM, software vendors continue to work on ways to make it easier to access, analyze and collect it. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reducing human error\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Service Works Global has been <\/span>surveying the industry<\/span><\/a> for over a decade, with the results showing that ease of reporting was consistently the most desirable benefit of a IWMS system. When using spreadsheets or paper, reporting can be a very time-consuming, difficult process<\/span>, which is prone to manual error; meanwhile<\/span> IWMS performs the same calculations in seconds. On-screen<\/span> dashboards can be customized to show live data relevant to each user. For example<\/span>,<\/span> help desk operatives can see graphs and charts relating to the number of jobs outstanding and which operative they have been assigned to, whereas a facilities manager may look at cost per task and resolution times across different services. Data can also be exported to Excel on demand or scheduled on a regular basis to save on administration time.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Integrating PowerBI reporting with IWMS\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

While Excel is a commonly used business tool, for those looking for deeper insights it can still require a degree of skill in making the graphs and using formulae such as VLOOKUP or pivot tables. Business intelligence software like Power BI has faster processing power than Excel and has been designed not only to allow the user to build complex dashboards but also to make it simple to interpret the insight. Power BI can be linked to QFM software<\/a> and any other database. Reports can be built from scratch<\/span>; <\/span>alternatively<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Service Works Global provides<\/span> clients with a set of templates on key KPIs. Information obtained could include:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n