Service Delivery Model – The technical design pillar for your property function

Make the most of your service delivery model

Following on from the ‘people pillars’ derived from our Property Assessment Framework (which you can download here), we’re focusing on the technical design pillars of your property function: The Service Delivery Model.

The service delivery model (SDM) refers to the allocation of roles, responsibilities and tasks between internal and contracted services.

Most of the operational and transactional property function is delivered under contract arrangements, so designing the right mix of internal and external services is key and covers:

• Make or buy – what you keep internally and what you contract out.
• Contracting strategy – how you structure the contracted services.
• Organisational design – how you structure the internally delivered services (covered under People and Design Pillars).

The SDM is a key design element of any property function. It will impact all aspects of delivery including how data is managed and what internal resources are required.

It is often the first question to answer in terms of setting up your function as all other design questions hinge of whether you are doing it yourself or contracting out the function/task.

Figure 1 – Grosvenor’s Service Delivery Pyramid Model

First-generation organisations will often have too much delivered internally and have not considered the possibility that the operational layer can be delivered better by outsourcing.

The data management and MIS functions will also drive this design as clients will often have a subpar system as they have not considered that data management can form a part of what they contract out.

You might have a problem with your service delivery model

Most commonly the issue will be a lack of strategy or a lack of ability to manage the needs of clients because the function is too focused on the operational aspect of managing the portfolio. Key symptoms of problems include:

• A high proportion of internal effort on operational task and functions (should be 40% strategy; 40% tactical and 20% operational).
• Internal clients not getting strategic advice and/or feeling that the function is just a doer, not an advisor or strategic planner.
• Poor systems and data management.
• Too many contractors and too much time spent on managing ‘subbies’.
• No contracting strategy or an ad hoc approach to contracts and their renewal.
• An overall focus on buildings and services, not customers’ needs or alignment of the function to strategic goals for the business.

The more mature a function, the more it focuses on clients and demand related issues not input and supply issues. A well designed SDM will enable a property function to focus more time and effort on what adds the most value.

Do you need help applying our framework to your business, or make sense of the data? Contact us today, and we can help you identify and resolve problems within your property function