“Data is the new oil”, we’ve been saying for the past decade plus – and rightly so. We’ve poured time, money, and energy into data, dashboards, KPIs, and reports. Meanwhile, the same issues keep appearing: margin leakage, contract risk, workforce instability…
Since starting Datore, I’ve talked to countless businesses about their FM data. Most of them are drowning in data, even dashboards, but still starving for insights and impactful data-driven actions.
But, recently, I’m glad to see a shift in how FM data is used: not as an awareness tool, but as a tool to introduce positive changes in how businesses operate.
FM Data in 2026: Are We Finally Improving Business with Insights Instead of Just Building Useless Dashboards?
FM Data in 2025
If 2025 proved anything, it’s that more data does not automatically lead to better decisions that make an impact.
Data scattered all over systems and spreadsheets
If you’re running FM operations, whether you’re a service provider, managing agent, or in-house team, your data landscape probably looks like this:
- CAFM / WFM system for jobs and assets
- Separate HR or workforce system
- Finance data in the ERP
- Health and Safety in its own silo
- Contract information in PDFs and spreadsheets
- Client communications across emails and CRM
Each one of them telling a completely different story, with not a single dashboard showing the real (full) picture of your business.
Speaking about dashboards… I’ve heard about “live” dashboards with manual exporting of data from various systems into Excel, then connecting Power BI to those spreadsheets… ‘Live’? It only stays current if someone remembers to re-export that data every week – otherwise, it’s a great rear-view mirror.
The insights graveyard
But let’s say you’ve actually managed to build insightful dashboards with reliable data.
Here’s what happens too often in the world of FM:
- 1. A problem emerges (margin shrinking, labour costs growing, equipment failures increasing)
- 2. Someone asks IT to build a dashboard to understand it
- 3. Everyone discusses it in meetings for a few weeks
- 4. A new, more urgent problem appears
- 5. Someone asks for a different dashboard
- 6. The first dashboard is forgotten
- 7. Repeat
- 8. You end up with 1,100 useless dashboards (true story) that are delivered after the problem has been salved / priorities have changed
I like to call it an insights graveyard: hundreds of dashboards that provided awareness but never drove a single action.
But… As I said, I can see more FM professionals who don’t let insights die on the dashboard and act on them to tangibly increase revenue, reduce costs, and keep their clients happy.
FM Data in 2026
The Data Warehouse Revolution
More and more FM organisations come to us because they’re finally recognising that they can’t make good decisions when data lives in fifteen different places.
We build them a proper data warehouse where all their data comes together, gets cleaned, transformed, modelled and becomes useful… at last.
That’s massive progress but let’s be clear: centralising data is the entry fee, not the competitive advantage.
A single source of truth only matters if it changes behaviour on the ground.
From "Let's Understand the Problem" to "Let's Fix the Problem"
The bigger shift isn’t architectural – it’s cultural. The best FM professionals aren’t asking for more dashboards anymore. They’re asking:
- "What action should we take based on this insight?"
- "How do we automate the response?"
- "How do we measure if our actions actually worked?"
What does data-driven action look like in the FM world
Here are some real-life examples of data-driven actions our clients took to improve their businesses:
Example 1: Increased client retention & new bids with client-facing portals
A cleaning service provider faced growing client pressure for visibility. Instead of sending them more backwards-looking reports, they gave them live data: service delivery metrics, issue resolution times, and trend indicators by site.
With a client portal, they reduced ad-hoc queries, improved trust, and spotted issues before they turned into formal complaints – transforming their historical supplier / client relationship in a trusted strategic partnership.
And let me tell you, it’s their (and a number of our other clients) biggest differentiator when it comes to putting together tender responses and closing new business.
Example 2: Employee management – agency cover reduction
A security provider needed to minimise their high agency spend. By analysing rostering, absence, overtime, and site performance data together, they discovered that short-notice absences at specific sites were triggering agency cover, while their internal staff was underutilised on others.
They set up alerts to flag patterns early, allowing operations teams to adjust rotas, address attendance issues, and intervene before agency costs spiral – significantly protecting their margins.
Example 3: Improved preventive asset maintenance
For an M&E-heavy logistics provider, reactive callouts were steadily increasing despite high PPM completion rates. Weird, right?
By bringing together asset age and condition, PPM history, reactive job frequency and cost data, they identified specific asset types and locations where PPM was ineffective.
They adjusted maintenance strategies and reduced reactive work – drastically improving uptime and lowering long-term cost.
The Shift from Dashboards to Decision Support
What these organisations do differently, and why 2026 will be their year?
- Automated data pipelines (no manual exports)
- Unified data warehouse (single source of truth)
- Alert-driven workflows (proactive, not reactive)
- Clear action protocols (everyone knows what to do when alerts trigger)
- Closed-loop systems (actions are tracked and results measured)
Data → Reporting → Insights → Actions → Impact
Most FM organisations are still stuck at reporting. Some invested in analytics and are proud to say they’ve reached insights. But the ones winning in 2026 are those delivering impact.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
From my experience, three forces drive this shift among FM professionals:
1. FM margins are tighter than ever.Businesses can’t afford to “be aware” of problems for months. They need to fix them right away to protect their bottom line.
2. Clients increasingly expect real-time visibility and proactive problem-solving.Monthly reports are no longer impressive. Clients demand transparency, foresight, and confidence that issues are being handled before they escalate.
3. If you want AI to support your FM operations, you need clean, unified data first.AI can’t learn if your data is scattered across hundreds of disconnected systems and dashboards.
The question is...
Are you satisfied with understanding your problems, or are you ready to finally fix them?
The answer dictates only surviving or really thriving in the years ahead.
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