ISS Leads Drive to IFS
ISS has been presented with the 2009 Frost & Sullivan Market Strategy Leadership Award in the European market for integrated facility management (IFM). The successful integration of three key strategic elements - total commitment across all business lines, constant development of service capabilities and, a high level of M&A activity – have, and will continue to support the advance of ISS.
Throughout 2008, and into 2009, ISS, one of the world’s leading providers of facility services, has continued its transition towards becoming a global provider of Integrated Facility Management. With the overall business growing, ISS’ revenues from integrated solutions have been experiencing stronger growth than revenues from single service offerings, demonstrating how well it caters for a market where increasing end-user demand for one–stop-shop service solutions and international contracts is the overriding trend.
“The move from a single service provider towards an international IFM company has become ISS’ topmost principle,” notes Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Michael Meyer. “This has been reflected not just in the alignment of its business model but also in the way it presents itself externally to clients and competitors.”
The company’s strategy ‘The ISS Way’ focuses on continuing the development of single-service excellence concepts and integrated facility services capabilities, promoting regional and global knowledge and best-practice sharing, as well as increased focus on cross-border sales.
A global corporate client organisation founded by ISS in 2007 to win IFM contracts with large multinational or global clients yielded immediate results. In March 2008, ISS entered into the largest ever contract in its history - an international integrated services contract with Hewlett Packard covering several countries across Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa.
ISS’ strategy has been to achieve offerings of the same service range and service quality in all countries through a high rate of service self-performance. Currently ISS self delivers at least 3 services in most of its European main markets, often including security, catering, office support and property services besides its core strength in cleaning. Here in the United Kingdom, ISS is capable of providing the full range of integrated services, including Facilities Management through ISS Coflex.
“Backed up by client feedback ISS sees its high self-performance rate as one of its differentiators in the market,” states Meyer. “A high self-performance rate, combined with a high level of management capabilities, ensures that ISS is able to deliver value-added services, while expanding from single service excellence to multi-service, establishing itself as one of the very few truly global companies to offer integrated facility services.”
The company’s M&A activities too are driven by the underlying strategy of enhancing its capabilities of integrated service offerings and further gain international footprint. In recent years, the acquisitions of Coflex FM in the UK, DEBEOS in Germany and Edelweiss FM in Switzerland have proven strong strategic fits by adding technical competence within the areas of property services and building maintenance.