The ambitious goals of greenhouse gases emission reduction set out by European Union’s climate action and environmental protection policy are challenging not only European sector of industry, power generation and transport, but also for the other domains of economy, including retail. Several regulations require retail in general, and chain stores in particular, to improve energy-efficiency of their business or to introduce standards of sustainability and responsibility with regard to the use of environmentally harmful substances. For example, the directive no. 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency enforces energy-efficiency standards for new constructions and major refurbishments of existing buildings. And further, the regulation of European Parliament no. 517/2014 introduces measures to support reduction of fluorinated greenhouse gases emission.
The "SESCOM Business Intelligence Platform for Energy Saving and Smart Facility Management” project, which has been realized from September to December 2016, comprises four tasks covering investigation of EU regulatory context, gathering of technical requirements and design of system architecture, evaluation of operational capacity to deliver business intelligence services, and detailed analysis of business opportunity and assessment of economic viability of the project.
In order to organize the process of feasibility assessment and business planning, TELOS methodology has been adopted. This acronym stands for an analysis where Technical, Economic, Legal, Operational, and Scheduling aspects of a project are investigated. All results of the activities carried out have been included and summarized in extensive feasibility study and business plan document.
One of the most important conclusions resulting from this project is the diagnosis that digitization of the global industry radically changes methods of value creation in facility management. State of the art analysis shows that the industry evolves and changes business and technical landscape: the hitherto typical sources of revenue in facility management such as repairs, technical interventions, inspections, or maintenance are gradually superseded by increased automation and digitization of the industry. Reactive approach to maintenance is replaced by predictive techniques that help to foresee failures and faults and respond to them before they happen.