Why LOSC uses Mobility Work for its facility management

Jérôme Delplanque, maintenance manager, has been working for ten years at the Luchin estate, the training center of LOSC, the Lille soccer team. He uses Mobility Work's CMMS and facility management software to manage the maintenance of the club's sports facilities.. Its responsibilities are multiple. As part of his duties, he manages the entire technical part and the operation on the site: from construction to routine maintenance including the management of energies, projects, green space, cleanliness and space. As a maintenance manager, he must have visibility on the daily organization of the domain and its activity.

Mr. Delplanque, in charge of the deployment of Mobility Work facility management software in his organization, agreed to give us his testimony. He explains to us how the application meets the LOSC requirements and why he chose to trust a start-up.

What is the role of the maintenance manager at LOSC?

Since I started working at LOSC ten years ago, the job of maintenance manager has changed a bit. At the time, maintenance was the main part of my activities, because there was a real need; we have to manage nearly 50 hectares, so someone had to be dedicated to it full time.

Subsequently, new needs emerged: site supervision, management of construction, improvement and space optimization projects - indoors or in new construction. The growing activity of the site has resulted in a multiplication of needs in terms of calendar and schedule management. This is why I strive to have a global vision of the site and our activities to avoid any problem of duplication in the calendars, or not to register the same users twice in the same area, while planning, in parallel, the necessary maintenance interventions, and ensure the cleaning, cleanliness and management of the premises. All this in order to have a daily operating state that is as transparent as possible for users.

All information relating to the equipment is available from its dedicated sheet in the Mobility Work maintenance management application.

In short, my field of action is very broad. In my opinion, the job of maintenance manager is characterized by a more practical, more technical dimension, which is based on a good knowledge of its installations, its tools and its teams.

How did you hear about Mobility Work?

I discovered Mobility Work a bit by chance thanks to social networks, on LinkedIn, but in the end, nothing is really the result of chance. At that time, I was looking for a new facility management solution that could suit our site, at the Luchin estate.

You should know that, in order to meet our maintenance needs, 98% of us use subcontractors, which I then coordinate. However, these companies often offered us a global maintenance contract including their own facility management software. This is where our problem lay: insofar as we have had to change subcontractors several times, we wanted to avoid depending on their maintenance management tool.

With each change of maintenance provider, we had to change the software and start from scratch. In other words, data could not be transferred from one facility management software to another, due to a lack of skills or resources. We were also losing all the history: retrieving data is a very time-consuming task, to which we could not assign anyone, and that caused us to lose time and efficiency at the start.

Moreover, these facility management solutions required a very sedentary organization on us. The applications were designed more for fixed workstations, computers, and allowed us less to be mobile.

So I was thinking about it with my management when I discovered Mobility Work. In February 2018, I met Marc-Antoine Talva, co-founder and CEO of Mobility Work, who asked me to do a test on some equipment. I quickly understood how the application worked and all the possibilities it offered. The low installation cost was a decisive argument during negotiations with my management to switch to a private maintenance management solution.

Is the facility management software already in place?

During the trial period, we faced some small difficulties but thanks to the online chat tool, I was able to communicate with the technical teams who were very responsive. Afterwards, I saw that the updates were done very quickly. Our expectations are taken into account by your teams and I must say that is very reassuring.

With my management, we therefore decided to continue the adventure and to commit to the paid version. Including the trial period, we have now been using Mobility Work asset management software for almost ten months.

What are the advantages of Mobility Work in your opinion?

Mobility Work presents three major advantages for facility management: saving time, exploiting data and traceability of interventions.

Mobility Work stands out for its simplicity. The facility management software is very easy to learn and users are well supported by a very responsive technical team. This allowed me to quickly learn about the application and its functionalities in order to present them to maintenance teams and service providers in order to better understand their questions. I was thus able to show them all the advantages of this new generation facility management software myself. They saw the benefits right away! Afterwards, I gave two or three other presentations, more detailed, where I addressed different themes based on what I had previously tested.

The search function also illustrates this quest for simplicity. Even though Mobility Work makes it possible to get rid of trees, I wanted to add a certain structure when I integrated our equipment. The maintenance technician should be able to find his way around easily - because he is the end user, after all. This is where labels come in handy. Simply type in the search bar the keywords added in the equipment description to find it immediately.

All the news relating to current interventions are available from the news feed of the Mobility Work mobile application

Second, I would say that the mobile interface is a great asset of Mobility Work. The mobile application offers a certain complementarity with the web application, a coherent and very well developed tool to facilitate its use. It is particularly useful for maintenance technicians working in the field: it allows them to easily find their way around, to see which tasks are in progress and overdue and to be able to intervene accordingly.

Finally, I would mention the analytical tool, which offers a very interesting integrated monitoring solution. On this point, I think that the Mobility Work facility management application is significantly ahead of other software. With more traditional facility management software tools, you must first extract the data, then build your Excel from which you can finally extract the graphs you want. With Mobility Work, everything is done automatically, it's a real time-saver! It is a great analytical tool that allows you to identify key points.

What is the feature that you use the most?

The news feed. Thanks to him, I keep in touch with the field in all circumstances. In my office, I have set up a screen on which it scrolls constantly: I can thus follow the operations of the maintenance teams, know their location, progress, time spent and status. This allows me to be very responsive and to monitor the activity of the site in real time. The only downside: the need to refresh the page manually. I think it would be nice to have, for example, a setting in the “preferences” menu that would allow us to manage this feature.

Maintenance technicians, for their part, appreciate the “agenda” feature, especially on the web version. It is very visual, which, in my opinion, is reassuring. Thanks to the color code, you can quickly get an overview of overdue tasks, for example.

What is the main added value of Mobility Work?

I would say that Mobility Work facility management software is more adapted to the reality on the ground. Sometimes, traditional CMMS are too complex and struggle to respond to the problems of maintenance teams, and especially of the end customer. It is becoming difficult to issue a report or to monitor activities.

In my opinion, facility management tools must be adapted to the needs of the field; they must meet the expectations of the end user. Mobility Work is more in line with this perspective. We work as a team with Mobility Work, which is very much linked to its status as a startup: a team that is very attentive, as well as a real dialogue that is not always found elsewhere.

What feature (s) would you like to have?

Since deploying Mobility Work on our site, we have identified two major areas for improvement.

The first concerns the mobile version. In my opinion, it would benefit from integrating certain functionalities already existing on the web version. I think it is important to have the most complete application possible, especially for teams operating in the field. Whether it is a notification system, an internal company chat, or the possibility of finding the tasks and activities of other users, each of these functionalities contributes to the optimization of our maintenance activities by facilitating the sharing of information between teams. Likewise, it would be a real plus for maintenance managers to have the analytical and reporting tool even when they are on the go.

The second axis relates to stock management. The Mobility Work facility management software offers us the possibility of managing stocks and spare parts, which is very useful for technicians: they record their withdrawals and are very dedicated to this. However, in my opinion, there is still a lack of a notification system when stocks are low or empty. Inventory integration should also be facilitated without using the tools to modify the equipment itself.

Finally, this is not a feature in itself, but I would like to see in the preferences the possibility of requiring the entry of time spent on a task, on an activity. Because if the technician does not fill in the time spent, we cannot make sufficient use of the analytical tool.

What are your company's future projects?

I have just finished the maintenance plans and integrated them into the CMMS. In this respect, Mobility Work is a flexible tool; it is not adapted to the field of maintenance alone. It can also be used to manage vehicle flows, for cleanliness, for stocks of furniture, chairs, etc. The Mobility Work facility management software allows me to go further in my operating activities.

Finally, I managed to adapt Mobility Work to my functions. I think that your tool was first designed for industry, but it also makes it possible to operate a tertiary site, like ours.

Are you satisfied with the team's responsiveness?

Yes, perfectly. There is nothing to complain about. It is rare but it is the case. You have a solid structure. I can bring things up, you are always reachable. Sometimes I am told that things are under development, but I get it. You have a good team, always attentive, always available, and who provide us with quick answers, which is very valuable.

However, there should be more communication about upcoming updates, advancements and improvements. For example, in the “coming soon” section of the help center, which you could also include in your newsletter. This is very useful for monitoring your activity: updates, organizations that integrate into the application, events in which you participate...

The final word?

I am really very happy with your solution. For 6 months I worked without the facility management software, only by email and telephone. The follow-up was unmanageable. Now that Mobility Work is deployed, it is reassuring both for me, for my management and for the users, because we have gained in responsiveness and efficiency. Finally, the technicians are more serene and the site is in even better shape.

Compared to other facility management tools that are too complex, where there are too many lines or fields to fill in, Mobility Work maintenance management software is very neat and intuitive. And the cost is a real asset!”

Thanks to Mr. Delplanque for agreeing to give his testimony. User feedback is at the heart of our approach and helps us improve our product on a daily basis.

Are you interested in maintenance management and want to know more in order to increase your productivity and save money? Contact our team to find out how to better manage your maintenance!