In this episode, we hear from Michael Saldi, CEO of facilities software company SCLogic. Mike takes a deep dive into the expanding role of digital transformation, how this has impacted the FM industry, and what the future of FM will look like as Gen-Z enters the workforce.
In this episode, we hear from Michael Saldi, CEO of facilities software company SCLogic. Mike takes a deep dive into the expanding role of digital transformation, how this has impacted the FM industry, and what the future of FM will look like as Gen-Z enters the workforce.
Topics include – how digital transformation has impacted the FM industry, Gen-Z’s role in the next generation of FM, and how AI and machine learning will play a role in the future of FM.
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And digital transformation to us means how do we take all of those data sources and turn it into actionable information for senior management?
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In this episode, we hear from Michael Saldi, CEO of Facility Software Company, AEE Logic. Mike takes a deep dive into the expanding role of digital transformation, how this has impacted the FM industry, and what the future of FM will look like as Gen Z enters the workforce. Now, let's get into today's episode.
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Could you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background? Sure. I'm Mike Saldi, I'm the founder, c they're CEO of Ecologic, so we're an enterprise software company that really focuses on. The logistics of how things move around campuses. That's college campuses, large enterprise campuses, large government campuses.
We've got an incredible amount of history in this, in this space. We started out, I started SCLogic in 1996. In 1998, we introduced our first software products that was today what we would call a point solution to fix a very specific problem. In the basement of facilities, and that was how do you track all the FedEx and u p s stuff that was really starting to come into these facilities, and how do you track those items?
We had customers specifically ask us for a UPS tracking system that they own. They wanted to be able to do what UPS does outside their four walls inside. And collect signatures and understand where that that volume of packages was going and make sure they filled any compliance holes of back in the day, it was almost always a FedEx envelope, right?
Somebody paid money to get that envelope into the building and did it, didn't make it to the desktop on time. That's how we built the company. We spent an awful lot of time in the basements of buildings and that logistics process. Has to, what an outsider would be, a stunning amount of complexity and variability in how different organizations want to close that compliance gap.
And all of that learning was built into our platform of how things move around facilities and campuses. And its spread throughout the campus, the the application that even surprises me at times. It's now secret that digital transformation is sweeping the modern workforce, and this includes the FM industry.
So before we dive into all things digital transformation, can you give us an overview of what this looks like in the FM industry? So, digital transformation to me is really the combination of. Hundreds, potentially thousands of existing data sources and new data sources inside of facilities and how they operate.
To use an example, SCLogic provides, uh, and lots of other companies provide a package tracking application. That you use to, to manage the compliance of overnight items and shipped items that are coming into an office environment. And that's a, that's a data source. That's, we're collecting data, we're putting it in our own database.
And other companies are doing the same thing. There's the same for Reprographics, there's the same for storage boxes there. There's the same for maintenance and facilities and. It's just this endless amount of data being collected in applications and lots of times still clipboards of items that are, that are being managed and running these facilities.
And digital transformation to us means how do we take all of those data sources and turn it into actionable information for senior management? It's easier said than done. Right. So what do you think are some of the biggest challenges for facility managers trying to implement a digital transformation strategy, and what are some of those benefits to adding in that strategy and how it could improve their processes?
So if digital transformation, that all sounds really cool, right? So everybody's got a vision of what's going on down in the basement. There's somebody up top of that organization who's got a control panel that's uh, clicking and moving their mouse around and getting an understanding of what's actually going on in the basement.
That's really not reality. Inside of large organizations. I've been selling to you just like lots of people in this business. I've been doing this for 25 years, selling into large organizations. And trying to help them improve their processes. Every company, every organization, every university, every government agency, every bank has a, um, a stack of software products and clipboards that, that actually operate the business.
So there's this inertia. It's, it's the larger the organization, the harder it is to change things. What a lot of times ends up happening is somebody get very senior, gets frustrated with the fact that they can't see all these things, and they'll go out and, and we're gonna throw money at this. So they'll spend 5 million, 10 million to try and put a, you know, large platform in that's gonna solve all their problems.
It's happened for 30 years in the software business. Uh, and we can name different software categories that we're gonna fix everything. It's gotta be this flexible, particularly in the age of AI and, you know, rapid software development. It's gotta be a flexible, flexible way to, to just help the people that are operating the building.
What can I put in their hand? What can any software company put in the operator's hands that just helps 'em do their job better? And, you know, the data is a, is the, the data that results out of those software product. Is a, is a benefit, right? It's not just showing senior management at the top, all of the charts and graphs of everything that's happening inside that building.
It's how, you know, how do we help those people that are down there who have to, you know, put in an eight hour shift? How do I make their job work better? And, and I think I said it earlier, you know, the, the data output is, is a plus at the end, but really how do you focus on getting that done better? So digital, you know, digital transformation.
As a, as a topic is a great, um, you know, very high level conversation, but you know, what, what can we do to be driving cost out of the operation of the building and the operation of the campus? And you do that by making everybody who has to do those jobs be able to get their job done better, faster. With a modern interface, with a mobile device, with a browser screens and reports that, that help them actually do their job better without somebody having to tell 'em what to do.
How can we, how can we predict what has to happen? How can we predict volumes? How do we predict staffing? Um, those are the things that I think digital transformation really, really helps with. The data's a benefit afterwards. It's a. That's a really great point. And so going off of that, what do you think this means for the next generation of facility managers As Gen Z enters into the workforce?
People that operate facilities are in many ways, uh, aging out. And those positions need to be filled, and they need to be filled with really entry level people. These are, again, systems of action, and those actions are physic. And they need to be done by people. And as the facilities management group as a whole begins to age, we need to be careful and we need to be replacing those positions with Gen Z.
So they, they absolutely need tools that they expect to be functional and they expect to be mobile and they expect to be fast. And they expect the handheld to know where physically from a GPS perspective they are, so that it can anticipate. Finish the work so that they can do the physical stuff. And then the software is, is collecting that information carefully and seamlessly and in, in the background.
So going off of that, how much reliance do you think we will have on AI and machine learning and what role will that play in the facility management industry moving forward? That is a rapidly evolving topic. You know, AI and machine learning has. Accelerating, I think that's the right word to say. So a lot of the products that we're seeing introduced, again at the, uh, end of the first quarter of 2023, those products have been being worked on for years and years and years.
And the stuff that you're seeing today was probably built six months ago. Meaning the things that the AI and machine learning companies are working on are far more advanced than, than the products that we're even seeing. As a company and as all software companies and as all enterprises, we have to be cognizant and we have to be watching what opportunities does this present, right?
Doesn't matter how much AI and how much machine learning happens, companies are still going to need, companies are still going to need. To manage the compliance and movement of items around those facilities. That's gonna be going on for the next five years, the next 10 years, right? Air conditioning systems are still gonna need to be repaired.
Lights are still gonna need to be changed. They're still gonna be human beings involved in the management of that. What software can do with AI and machine learning is predict those maintenance cycles. It can predict volumes of items that are moving along. The software that we develop will absolutely be using AI and machine learning.
There's lots of stuff that we are working on to make sure that we're staying relevant and that we are staying current. But I, you know, I, I continue to tell myself to operate a facil. You know, buildings aren't going away. Factories are not going away. Government facilities are not going away. College campuses are not going away.
The way that those campuses are operated will absolutely be changed by, by artificial intelligence, and whether that's tools as an individual, right? You know, you can use chat g p t to help your right marketing materials, right? You can use it to help you analyze spreadsheets, but it'll also be used organization wide.
How can we use AI and machine learning to fix processes as they run through, as they run through those facilities? And then the third level of AI is, you know, what AI products can the facilities managers adopt to build this more efficient interface between the human beings operation of the building and collecting that data, collecting that information, predicting, predicting specifically what's going on.
You've been in the industry for decades and have become a thought leader in the FM industry. And so speaking from experience, what advice would you give companies starting out in their digital transformation journey that is gonna depend on each company in their environment? Right. So digital transformation isn't a start or a stop, right?
Digital transformation started 30 years ago, right? How do I. Computers and software to the operation of either my manufacturing facility or my banking operations or my campus auxiliary services. How do I add software to that? And what's, what's happened is software has grown and grown and everybody expects it.
We very, we very rarely walk into a company that doesn't have a number of products that handle logistics inside of, on those operations. So the first thing you have to do is assess where you are today. What are the, what are the current pain points of the current software stack that you have that's in the facility side?
And take a look at all those find different platforms. Platform being something that can do more than one thing, that can consolidate data that's not just a point solution to. A very specific problem. Probably if you add the dollars up, you can add up all your point solutions that you're spending today in your FM space and come up with a pretty decent amount of, of dollars.
You can combine those, you know, if properly project management managed, you can. Find a platform that can handle, we have one customer who's replaced so far, 12 applications, 12 little point solutions. Things that they may have written, things that they may have bought, spreadsheets that they might have had.
They've taken those 12 things. They all had a logistics vein to them. Who touched it? Why did they touch it? When did you touch it? How did it move here? Where is it right now? That's, that's, that's a logistics application to us. Combine those 12 applications up into a single platform, and now they can actually see everything that's going on and be billing back to proper departments.
So every enterprise's journey to digital transformation, which is a. I don't know, kind of a made up term right by marketing folks. To me it's a continuum. It's just constantly changing. It's, it's constantly growing and shrinking at the same time. Computer and operation systems used to be wildly more complicated and take a lot more time to put in.
And now with proper definition, There are tools and platforms out there that fix those problems relatively quickly. I'll give you an example. We did an airport in Sweden that had a logistics issue of how do you schedule the trucks that are delivering things to the airport for all the vendors and the, you know, the McDonald's, for example, inside that airport needs to get hamburger pat's and you need to schedule a truck.
That truck needs to go through security. They've gotta schedule a. They need to unload those items. They need to track however many pallets they are. Communicate with the McDonald's as to your delivery is here. Do you want it delivered to your store? Do you want to come and get it? Which items need refrigeration?
They had a number of systems to do all this, and a lot of it was telephone based and they began speaking with us, and I think I was in Sweden in September or October. We had a beginning conversation by December. We had a specification for them. Think in January they signed a contract with us and that that airport's already up and operating in under eight weeks of, of implementation.
So software can be faster. It's just how do you make it. How do you make it simple and how do you fix those problems? All this digital transformation, all this software talk, we recognize and everybody else in this industry recognizes that facilities, managers, and heads of facilities, they have work to do, right?
They have things that they've gotta do all day long. So digital transformation sounds like this great process that they want to dive into. That takes some time and you've only. 2% of your day to be able to think about these level of things. So I would encourage you to engage thought leaders, other people in the software business about how they can help you.
Let them go away and do some work for you and think through how you might fix some of these issues. Go back to your day, come back and see what we all have to say. See what we think we can do to improve, you know, save money for the company and make the jobs better for the people that report to. Well, this has been a great discussion.
Thank you again for sharing these awesome insights, and if listeners want to continue this conversation with you, what's the best way to connect? I'm always on LinkedIn, but if you reach out to me, I'm happy to have conversations and interact back and forth to figure out how we can help.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. And as always, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast for more incredible content.