Company Report: ISS: Conquering the facility services market
ISS: Conquering the facility services market During 2008, ISS formulated the strategy 'The ISS Way,' a strategy which will guide its business in the coming years. ISS CEO Jorgen Lindegaard tells Exec Digital more

With more than 200,000 business-to business customers worldwide, ISS is one of the world's largest commercial providers of facility services. Headquartered in Denmark, the company has operations in 50 countries in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia.

However, it wasn't always this way and the firm has changed considerably since the turn of the millennium.

It now has a vast global presence, while its revenues and margins have grown significantly.

JØrgen Lindegaard, CEO, says: "ISS is one of the most successful global service companies, with an impressive historical performance. We are present in many countries around the world, which give us a competitive advantage in that we are a lot less vulnerable in an increasingly global market. "During the past years, ISS has been trans-formed," he admits. "We are now much more than a cleaner - we are a broad-based service provider."

Lindegaard, 57, formerly CEO of SAS Group, KTAS and GN Great Nordic, continues: "Today we offer services in cleaning, catering, security, office support and property services. That's not bad for a firm that has been historically concerned with cleaning.

"What's next for us? Well, we decided that the time is now to strengthen our position even more and to achieve it we have developed the ISS Way as a means for leveraging our international footprint."

ISS is, says Lindegaard, no longer "exclusively" a cleaning company and he is excited by the company's future prospects.

ISS Way
The 'ISS Way', to which Lindegaard refers, was developed during 2008 and is a strategy which, he believes, will guide the business in the coming years. It is also hoped it will help the firm gain a greater share of the facility service market.

"Globalisation is changing the industry and we now have new standards to live up to," says Lin-degaard. "But this is an opportunity too - we can gain market share. This is why we have the new strategy; the ISS Way is our way of doing it and will enable us to grow both individually, as countries or regions, and collectively, as a group.

"The ISS Way is all about us developing a cul-tural and strategic platform," he adds, explaining that it is much like a "guide" to all things great and good about ISS. By following it, he hopes the firm can fulfil its vision of "Leading Facility Services globally - by leading Facility Services locally".

"The ISS Way is helping us to change along with the market, but at the same time we aren't losing what is special about ISS and the things that have brought us to this stage," explains Lindegaard.

"I suppose we have scaled down significantly on acquisition and are now focusing more on offering a consistent service and product every-where," he continues. "That is true."

Knowledge is power
To help with the implementation of the ISS Way, the firm has "upped" its level of internal training, as it tries to get the most out of every single employee. In Lindegaard's words, it is "optimising existing assets". "How are we implementing the new strategy?" he asks. "Well, we are in the middle of doing so globally and utilising our university - the ISS University - which has been in existence since 2001. That school is committed to assisting managers across the group in executing strategy. We always send new managers to the ISS University within the first few months in order to learn the ISS Way as soon as possible. We then do follow-ups to ensure everything is as it should be.

"We also have global Knowledge Forums, where people from the different lines of service meet and exchange best practice, and this is where the ISS Way has grown from - it is our way of creating a standard guide or best practice for all employees and managers to follow.

"We want to share more knowledge both locally and globally," he adds. "We are also implementing all the new things and retaining as many customers as possible."

What crisis?
With the current financial crisis, there are obvious challenges ahead for many organisations, including ISS, and Lindegaard is the first to acknowledge that. He is also quick to state that no matter how harsh the economic climate becomes, there will still be demand for many of ISS's services.

"We have a number of secured contracts for the coming years," he explains. "We have been discussing the financial meltdown for some time though and the first thing we did was slow down on acquisition.

"The big challenge for us is retaining customers and helping customers maybe save on cost, demonstrating also that outsourcing can be beneficial to their business. We can see that happening in many places, even in the public sector. They see the need for outsourcing, i.e. expertise. We know we will be pushed hard on price, but of course it is impossible to deliver the same quality at a cheaper price, so we are trying to offer better value, which is different. It is about saying, 'Okay, maybe you need catering or whatever, as well as cleaning', in essence integrating our services more, which is a key part of the ISS Way.

"We want people to see that they can get more out of ISS, reducing the need to deal with multiple people paying varying prices for each service," Lindegaard continues. "We want better integration basically, so we can offer people more."

Lindegaard sees lots of growth and potential in integrated services, both locally and internationally. "We are really the biggest in the industry, but we have major competitors in each of our service areas," he explains. "However, we are the only major player with the ability to offer several services across the globe and we definitely see an opportunity to move ahead with existing and new customers to offer integrated ISS services."

ISS offers a stronger and more consistent service mix than any competitor in the world and has successfully grown from a company with cleaning dominance into a firm with broad competency - cleaning, catering, security, office support and property services.

"We are able to deliver value-added services by expanding from single service excellence to multi-service," concludes Lindegaard. "We are also the only global company to offer integrated facility services."

FACTS AT A GLANCE
Company name: ISS Group
CEO: Jorgen Lindegaard
Operations: Provider of facility services
Established: Entered UK marketplace in 1968
Employees: 43,500 worldwide
Headquarters: Copenhagen

www.issworld.com

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