First National Bank Tracks Space, Leases, Work Orders, and Assets in One System

First National of Nebraska Inc. and its subsidiary, First National Bank of Omaha, have been on a growth trajectory and have been for some time. That growth has made them the largest privately owned banking company in the United States. First National and its affiliates have more than $21 billion in managed assets, and 5,000 employee associates. Primary banking offices are located in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Texas.

The desire to better manage First National’s growth has accelerated in recent years as they make a transition from leased to owned property, add space on an ongoing basis, and increase facility-related accountability. Those trends have all helped drive their expanding use of ARCHIBUS.

“Whenever we are challenged with a business need, we ask the question ‘Can ARCHIBUS be used for this?‘ ” says Curtis Crouch, Senior Manager of Facility Systems at the bank’s services group, First National Buildings Inc. (FNBI).

The answer over the years has been an emphatic “Yes.”

Prior to the implementation of ARCHIBUS in the late 1990s, FNBI’s space data was maintained manually, which often resulted in inaccurate or inconsistent information.

The maintenance and operations systems then in place, furthermore, did not tie directly back into the building portfolio information or provide the access and detail that was increasingly important for management purposes. In addition, the lack of a preventative maintenance system had them responding to exponentially more – and more costly – equipment failures. Another point of pain, parking management for over 2,500 parking stalls (in various Omaha parking garages and lots) also presented a challenge, as did establishing a reliable methodology for overall strategic master planning.

All of these functions and more were eventually centralized in ARCHIBUS, allowing the company to identify future budgetary and space needs, track work orders, and view portfolio inventory in order to, track more than 356 active lease profiles and manage over 400 service contracts.

“In addition to the out-of-the-box functionality, we liked the open architecture that allows us to work with our Business Partner, JLL, to develop entirely new applications that leverage ARCHIBUS core capabilities, ” Crouch points out. “As a result, we have built a truly multidimensional tool that is central to our business operations.

Today, ARCHIBUS is used to drive all of First National’s central facility management processes. The FNBI service group now manages building assets and space, capital projects, and on-demand and preventive maintenance work orders for over 197 major building and retail branch locations.

Additionally, the group uses ARCHIBUS to support related responsibilities that also fall under the FNBI management umbrella, including maintaining detailed employee location and emergency contact data, warehouse inventory (furniture and equipment), parking management, tracking First National’s artwork portfolio, and overseeing the large number of service contacts.

“Our web portal, which is accessible on the corporate intranet, is used to perform such diverse tasks as placing and managing maintenance requests, fulfilling warehousing transactions, requesting and reporting on capital project activities, and completing space forecasting surveys with the business units,” adds Crouch. “We have also recently enhanced our maintenance processes with an ARCHIBUS iPhone-based solution, to streamline maintenance dispatch and fulfillment.

FNBI believes a unique value of ARCHIBUS has been flexibility that has recently permitted enhancement of the basic system with wireless and other add-on and customized applications.

“Mobile implementation for FNBI’s engineers, for example, has offered a tremendous boost in responsiveness and efficiency to the work request experience,” Crouch confirms.

“All of this, plus ARCHIBUS basic capabilities and open platform, create a fully unified environment for us. We look forward to utilizing Web Central and expect the implementation of dashboard technology will help keep our users and management teams better informed with graphical views of real-time data to help them manage more insightfully and efficiently.”

ARCHIBUS is also delivering real savings. Because of the system’s centralized and accurate data and improved business processes, FNBI estimates that it is gaining from $60,000 to $70,000 annually in operating efficiencies. The Mobile work order maintenance solution is expected to add an additional $50,000 annual gain from improved productivity.

“Our occupancy tracking is now well over 95% accurate month to month, too,” says FNBI’s senior facility systems manager. “And ARCHIBUS has also allowed us to go to a monthly, rather than a quarterly, rent cycle due to our increased efficiencies. Going forward, we are especially excited to implement more applications in a Web Central environment, as well as expand our use of dashboards, implement new online floor plans, and utilize more survey functionality.