As the year draws to a close, Alistair Craig, Managing Director at Anabas, reflects on the last 12 months and all that we’ve achieved across the year in corporate facilities management.

It’s no secret that 2022 started out as a ‘wait and watch’ year with many sectors still coming out of a degree of paralysis brought on by the pandemic. Following industry-wide trepidation with the Omicron variant in Q1, almost a year on it’s turned out to be a great year for Anabas.

If we’ve learned anything from the past few years, it’s our talent for adaptability in the face of massive upheavals to the world of work. Most of our clients now have their own hybrid working strategy – even if some of these are still developing.

Looking ahead for corporate facilities management

With offices becoming the manifestations of brands, we know that our clients see the value in our expert service experience to present a wow-factor for their own clients and to attract talent. After-all, people need somewhere to collaborate, albeit no longer five days per week.

The year ahead will no doubt be characterised by action, with heads of corporate real estate and FM keen to reignite operational strategies. Facilities managers will need to keep adapting to cost constraints and condensed teams in the office at ‘mid-week peak’. This may lead to reductions in the floor-plate size that organisations occupy so workspaces will need to be about fostering collaboration and effective productivity.

Our challenge will be to deliver value to our clients from that workspace in the bookends of the week when people tend to work from home while responding to evolving occupant service expectations.

We have fully embraced technology as part of our service delivery, to understand the demands of occupiers and workplaces, and we make sure that we stay flexible to meet those needs. Ultimately, IoT tech will be a powerful tool to achieving this, particularly for the higher demand of a ‘right-first-time’ quality environment that delivers bang for the buck every time you’re at the office.

Our Anabas journey

Since January, we’ve recorded double digit growth of almost 18% with this incredible momentum set to continue into 2023. We have secured in excess of £5 million per annum of new business, including a hat-trick of new high profile financial clients; two award-winning Middle Eastern banks and a leading global investment firm.

Over and above the new clients, we’ve also secured a contract extension with a global biopharmaceutical leader with a contract value of £1.3 million per year for five years.

These wins reflect our focus on customer advocacy and people development which includes strengthening our team with appointments across our HR, marketing, IT, and help desk divisions.

We also launched our sleek new website earlier this month to help us tell the story of what makes us the FM partner of choice for corporate office occupiers and show just why Anabas took home two trophies at this year’s P&FM Awards: Account Director of the Year for Tim Hysom, and Partners in Corporate, for our work with our client, RWE.

We know that our success comes from the diligent and dedicated work of our whole team, and I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved so far. Our most recent Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a market research metric based on recommendation – has placed us in the top percentile.

With resilience cultivated during the pandemic, we look forward to tackling the challenges of 2023 head on. The attention to detail, which is part of our DNA, will continue to underpin Anabas as a world-class service provider delivering tailored facilities management and elevating service standards for clients and their workforce, visitors, and customers.