Due to the risks posed by the coronavirus, procurement teams responsible for managing facilities services are currently experiencing quite a change. Services such as janitorial have quickly gone from transactional contracts established based upon cost to highly strategic relationships that must be in place and meet a new high standard for a facility to operate or even open.

Arthur Piszczor is a Consultant at Corcentric, where he has been helping organizations manage their facilities services spend since long before our current elevated requirements went into effect, and he has helped a number of clients manage not only the transition, but the process of planning for the future.

In this interview, Arthur shares his point of view with Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner on:

• Whether smaller localized or large national players are more commonly used, and how a company’s existing supplier base and contracts affected their ability to respond to the COVID-19 shutdowns
• The combined involvement of HR and procurement in cases where employees not only need to be kept safe by third party janitorial and sanitation providers, but need to feel safe as well.
• How the elevated standards that we expect to be in place going forward may be restructuring not only facilities services markets, but also the relative leverage of the buyers and suppliers in those relationships.