How LCM now has all relevant information centralised in one place

Challenge

With more than 30 years of experience LCM slowly but steadily established itself as one of the biggest Facility Management providers in Spain. So it only made sense they started to expand in 2013 to other countries as well, also offering their services in the Netherlands and Germany, deciding to make Berlin their new head office. In 2024, a bit more than a decade later, they have more than 400 employees working with clients like Zara, the Inditex group, Decathlon and New Yorker all over Germany. In charge of controlling and the internal communication is People and Culture Manager Jorge Pascual. He ensures that all working times are recorded correctly. In Germany it is mandatory now that working hours are recorded digitally and stored for at least two years. But at LCM the timesheets were still written on paper until last year. So Jorge Pascual went and searched for a solution to digitalize their processes. “We were searching for something specialized in the field of facility management because normally other apps are more general, so they are not very adapt to the specific challenges we face every day” explains Jorge Pascual. To achieve that, they stumbled upon the all-in-one software PlanD at the CMS fair with which they work now since September of last year.

Originally coming from Spain, LCM has a lot of Spanish employees not familiar with the German language. “Our employers are mainly Spanish speakers. Maybe 10% of our employees are able to speak German”, says Jorge Pascual on why it was so important that PlanD was eligible in Spanish as well as in 20+ other languages. Another main point Jorge Pascual and his team wanted to achieve was to centralize their internal processes and make them more transparent for everyone. Having to do the planning via Excel, communicate back and forth via E-Mails and collecting all the timesheets on paper at the end of the month was costing him a lot of time and nerves. Now with PlanD that is different. But of course that only works when all the employees are on board with using the PlanD app especially when you have people that are not very familiar with the technology: “At the start we had to explain that it's better for everybody because they also don't want to lose time in doing all these things by paper or sending emails. With PlanD all these processes will be automatized and it is very transparent. You can actually have access to the same information that the company has. So it’s all about speaking with them about that. It's a win-win. All of us are going to win.”

Solution

With PlanD LCM now plans all the different operations and keeps track of all the working hours of their employees through one centralized system. The employees record their hours with the mobile PlanD app on their smartphone instead of having to write them on a piece of paper, minimizing mistakes and saving a lot of time. “The timesheets on paper were often not correct. So we had to correct and sometimes lost some information. With PlanD we don’t have to work on paper anymore”, explains Jorge Pascual. It is also easier for possible government controls. “Legally the timesheets need to be always accessible, so they need to be in the workplace. With PlanD it's different because it is of course accessible very fast.”

the other main challenge LCM and Jorge Pascual wanted to overcome was the centralization of the internal processes. That was one of the main reasons why they opted for the all-in-one software of PlanD because it centralizes all of the processes in one system. “All the processes are more fluent” says Jorge Pascual and continues: “You have everything in one system and everything is easier because all the information is in the same place.” With PlanD he can see all of the operations in one system and whether they have been completed yet or not. By installing the software it also enables him to integrate new employees into the company way easier. They just get a link to the PlanD app sent to them where they can enter their information and are basically ready to start from the get-go.

Results

But what are the main advantages Jorge Pascual sees in using PlanD? “I would say saving a lot of time and way better accessibility of everything”. Especially in his position having to control all the hours of the employees it is important to always have a good overview over all of the employees and their operations. Before LCM worked with PlanD that was difficult: “It was nearly impossible to control if the employees were doing the hours and controlling the tasks because they had their own Excel and weren’t of course actualizing every time.” Now with PlanD he can see everything in real time and ask immediately if something is missing. Furthermore they have a better transparency and communication with clients. If a client complains that a cleaner didn’t show up, Jorge Pascual now has proof in form of PlanD that a cleaner indeed was at the site due to the integrated GPS-tracking in the app. All in all, LCM and Jorge Pascual now have a way better control over their internal processes and save a lot of time to expand their business even further.

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