ABM Leverages Avetta to Streamline Prequalification, Saving Over 5,000 Hours of Review Work

Industry
Facilities Management
Region
NORTH AMERICA
EMEA
Solutions
Contractor Management
Contractor Prequalification
ESG
Financial Risk
Contractor Compliance

About ABM Industries

Headquarters: New York, New York   

Regions: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Puerto Rico

Solutions: Janitorial, Facilities Engineering, Parking & Transportation, Electrical, Energy, HVAC & Mechanical, Landscape & Turf, Mission Critical, Integrated Facility Services, Specialty Services 

Avetta Customer Type: Hiring Client & Supplier

Website: https://www.abm.com/

Company Profile

Working in a wide array of industries, ABM’s purpose is to take care of the people, spaces, and places that are important. In practice, that ranges from janitorial services to airport shuttle service, wheelchair assistance, food and nutrition, and mission-critical solutions in hospitals. 

Challenges in Compliance Management

As a leading facilities management company, ABM provides services for over 19 industries and more than 20,000 clients worldwide. To manage such work, the company employs more than 124,000 and engages over 50,000 suppliers annually. With a need to effectively and efficiently align stakeholders and maintain their year-over-year growth trajectory, the company launched a multi-year strategic ELEVATE initiative to centralize procurement operations, enable data-driven insights, and improve flexibility. As part of this initiative, Avetta was selected as ABM’s preferred supply chain management and risk mitigation partner.

The Avetta Way

ABM opted for a phased implementation in the United States, focusing on three critical Business Units and over 3,000 onsite subcontractors added to the Avetta network in 2024. Avetta’s configurable platform and flexible pricing options allowed each subcontractor’s experience to be customized, ensuring they were only routed requirements applicable to their work type and risk level and only paying for the services rendered for the clients to which they choose to connect. Through the initial onboarding wave, Avetta’s dedicated Onboarding and Support Teams fielded over 38,000 support cases to drive subcontractor understanding and ensure a positive user experience – which in turn freed up valuable time for ABM stakeholders to dedicate to other critical parts of their job.

Avetta and ABM Teams engage in consistent communication on recurring calls to maintain alignment and continue collaborative discussions to strengthen the partnership. On-demand Analytics makes it easy for ABM stakeholders to access 40+ pre-built reports and dashboards, opt to push to their inbox for automated reporting, and/or dive deeper during annual strategic reviews. As part of their 2025 Avetta roadmap, ABM plans to expand and engage additional Business Units and regions, with the end goal of standardizing prequalification and ongoing management processes – allowing Avetta to act as the single source of truth for key information.

Benefits Experienced

Time Savings: Prequalification and ongoing management requires ample time and follow up to track down information and documentation to appropriately vet a subcontractor. By completing over 30,668 insurance certificate and safety documentation (ex: OSHA logs, Experience Modifier rates, etc) reviews in 2024 alone, it is estimated that Avetta saved ABM more than 5,068 review hours – equating to the workload of 54 full-time employees.

Digital Transformation: With employees around the globe seeking the opportunity to be self-sufficient in accessing relevant insights, ABM’s IT Team enabled single sign-on (SSO) with routing parameters based on location. This allowed hundreds of users to quickly and easily hone in on data for their relevant subcontractors and even create their own watch list to receive focused notifications. To further elevate goals surrounding the use of technology and data, ABM and Avetta Technical Teams have successfully enabled multiple bi-directional Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to seamlessly integrate with business-critical systems and workflows. In 2024, over 120,140+ API calls were generated, with the expectation that that number will further increase as ABM deploys additional integrations, use cases and engages additional subcontractors.

Cross- Collaboration: Avetta acting as a single source of truth has helped to unite ABM and put an end to disparate, manual processes. Fostering ownership internally across Procurement, Safety, Sustainability, Field/Sales Operations, Finance and Leadership has been instrumental in creating top-down support in striving towards a shared vision of ensuring everyone goes home safe each day.  For external partners, having a platform that clearly defines requirements and communicates expectations has allowed greater visibility for subcontractors to know exactly what is needed to maintain the relationship without disruption. In fact, nearly half of the subcontractors connected to ABM were recognized by Avetta in 2024 and received an Award(s) for various achievements such as maintaining a long-standing partnership with Avetta, achieving an exemplary safety performance and / or being a leader in the sustainability space.

Next Steps

As both a client and supplier in the Avetta network, ABM understands the criticality for streamlined prequalification and compliance to protect their multi-billion-dollar organization from preventable risks and exposure. After an incredibly successful first phase rolling out Avetta, ABM and Avetta are eager to press forward on 2025 goals to engage additional Business Units, regions, mergers and acquisitions, and various types of subcontractors and suppliers to take full advantage of data collection. Only just skimming the surface when it comes to risk mitigation, ABM’s various stakeholders and departments are challenged to look deeper beneath the iceberg and better leverage Avetta’s multi-risk solutions to monitor financial volatility, ESG trends, cybersecurity threats, and tier 2+ relationships to make better informed hiring decisions.

“We believe elevating the client and team member experiences through the use of technology and data will further differentiate us in the marketplace and establish a growth trajectory that is fueled by our purpose – putting people first and taking care of the spaces and places that matter most to them.”

Scott Salmirs
President and CEO