Randstad

Randstad Belgium is an employment agency with 940 staff and a turnover of more than 512 million euros. On an average day, some 18,600 temporary staff will be working for Randstad. The organisation has 117 temporary staff agencies, over 50 in-house offices within client companies and 4 other locations of other types. A team of six at the Randstad Building & Facilities department manage virtually every imaginable facility for Randstad's branches and operating companies.

Planon has clearly been developed from an FM service delivery perspective
Bernd Pronker, a technical assistant with the Building & Facilities department, says: "If a new branch is being opened somewhere, our responsibilities begin as soon as sites are being looked at. Our mission is only accomplished when the branch is closed again. In the interim we're responsible for things like the work processes, snagging & follow-up, maintenance, technical assistance and fit-out." Bernd Pronker is also responsible for the Planon implementation. They have been working jointly with Planon since the year 2000. According to Pronker, "We had a good look at the market first and the main reason we picked Planon was because it has very clearly been developed from an FM service delivery perspective."

The intelligent partner
Randstad used the Planon Implementation Method (PIM) for its
implementation work. According to Pronker, "We spent about three months doing the implementation; a process we tackled in great depth. Firstly, we carefully screened all the available data and we also took a critical look at all of our working methods as well.
For each aspect, we asked ourselves a number of questions: how do we do it today, how do we want to do it in the future and how are we going to incorporate our plans in the Planon structure? Just for the sake of speed you can choose to go and stuff the software full of data. But we deliberately went for a more thorough and considered approach. The result is that, instead of creating just a run-of-the-mill database, Planon has now become a highly functional instrument for us in our work." Did you get support from Planon for this? "Certainly," confirms Pronker. "The Planon consultants first acquainted themselves thoroughly with Randstad as a company and the value system embraced by our organisation. Planon really did help us work through the various options available during the implementation. Together, we kept on looking for solutions that would lead to the realisation of our objectives. They didn't come across as being a smart Alec - more as a partner who would think things through with you."

Making major savings
Has using Planon already produced any concrete benefits for you? Pronker says: "Definitely. We've already achieved some cost reductions with Planon. Take the Rent Management module, for example. That module has given us a crystal-clear picture of all our expenditure on rents and rental contracts. We've converted these insights into financial gains. And we've also made significant cost gains on the man-hours expended. In the past, we did a lot with Excel and other databases here. This meant that we had to hunt around for the data a lot and we always had to make lists. We are now able to work from a single central database, thanks to Planon and that saves a hell of a lot of work, of course. It's much more efficient, and it means that we save a lot of time on our day-today activities. That alone results in major cost savings." What are your future plans for Planon? Pronker says: "At the moment, we're looking to see if we can also use Planon for other internal services within our organisation, such as Marketing, Safety and the IT departments for example."