The Data Desert in Soft FM: Why Facility Management Can't Afford to Ignore the Gap

When most people think about data in facility management, their minds jump to energy consumption, HVAC diagnostics, or occupancy sensors. But there's a massive blind spot hiding in plain sight—soft services like janitorial, security, and routine maintenance.

Currently, soft FM, despite constituting 20–30% of a building's operating budget, is a fuzzy gray area. The truth is that without structured data, there's no meaningful way to enhance service quality, efficiency, or cost-effectiveness.

That's a problem.

In a world moving toward predictive maintenance, AI-assisted operations, and outcome-based contracts, the lack of data on soft services means many facility management firms are operating in the dark. Not only does this limit accountability, but it also puts your client relationship in jeopardy. And it's not just a tech problem—it's a leadership and operational risk issue.

The Problem: No Data, No Insight, No Improvement

Let's be clear: the status quo is costing you.

Ask a facility manager to show a dashboard with real-time data on whether the bathrooms were cleaned, whether night patrol covered all zones, or whether a remote staff member actually spent the adequate time on the service—and you'll get, in many cases, silence, not evidence.

Most facility management companies that deliver these services rely on paper logs, radio calls, or manual supervisor checks. This creates a game of telephone tag that invites errors, oversight, and inconsistency. Worse, there's no feedback loop—no data means no benchmarking, no predictive insight, and no way to course-correct at scale.

This is where soft FM lags dangerously behind.

AI Needs Data—And Soft FM Isn't Giving It Any

Artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize how we operate and maintain buildings. However, AI is not self-sufficient—it requires a multitude of inputs, particularly time-stamped, location-specific, and task-confirmed data points from soft FM.

Without consistent, high-quality inputs from soft FM, the promise of predictive staffing, optimized routing, or even service-level automation remains a pipe dream. It's like trying to run a modern logistics operation with handwritten notes and sticky pads.

Soft FM services are the day-to-day heartbeat of a facility, yet they're functionally invisible to most systems. This leaves a gap in any AI model, which either ignores them entirely or makes unreliable assumptions based on indirect proxies, such as tenant complaints or supervisor notes.

But, with the right data, soft FM can be a key player in shaping the future of facility management.

Why Facility & Property Management Firms Should Care—Now

If you deliver janitorial, security, or maintenance, you already know how labor-intensive these services are to monitor. Supervisors spend countless hours chasing down check-ins, validating task completion, or responding to "no-show" alerts that turn out to be false alarms.

Now imagine reducing that supervisory load by 30%—without sacrificing accountability.

Data-driven proof-of-presence can significantly reduce the supervisory load by on average a day per week with increased accountability. This is the kind of efficiency that data can enable in soft FM.

When service presence and task completion are automatically and passively confirmed—without intrusive or manual reporting—your oversight becomes exception-based. Your team can stop micromanaging and start improving.

The benefit is threefold:

1. Higher reliability and consistency of service.
2. Lower cost of supervision and rework.
3. Real-time visibility for clients and tenants.

And when things do go wrong? You'll know when, where, and why because you'll have the data to back it up. You’ll know and correct the issues before your client knows there was a problem.

Getting Started with Proof-of-Presence and Contactless Monitoring

Implementing a solution doesn't have to be complex or expensive.

Modern proof-of-presence tools—like Contactless FM powered by Exact Comms—allow soft FM teams to confirm service delivery using lightweight, location-based confirmation without the need for punch-ins, QR codes, or mobile apps. There are no tags to scan. It is just reliable, automated confirmation that the right work happened in the right place at the right time.

Contactless FM powered by Exact Comms is part of a new wave of Proptech solutions that aims to fill the data gap in soft services—not by reinventing FM, but by quietly adding the digital exhaust needed to power performance improvement.

The outcome? In most cases, organizations begin to see immediate improvements in service delivery within the first 30 days, including fewer missed zones, better staff coordination, and measurable accountability. And critically, it all happens while reducing the administrative burden.

Final Thought: You Can't Optimize What You Can't Monitor

The building services industry is increasingly being asked to do more with less, from labor constraints to client expectations. But without real data on soft FM performance, even the most well-intentioned strategies will plateau.

Predictive, data-driven, and proactive approaches characterize the future of facility management. If soft FM doesn't catch up, it will be left behind—not just by AI but by client expectations and financial pressures.

If you're a facility management firm that delivers maintenance, janitorial, or security services, the time to start collecting data is now. Proof-of-presence tools like Contactless FM powered by Exact Comms offer a low-friction entry point to begin that journey—no system overhauls, no hardware headaches, just actionable insight.

Because in FM, presence is performance. And performance starts with proof.