In building management, unifying information is the key to success. Here’s why, and what you can do to benefit from the single pane of glass offered by Freedom EMS/BMS
Being able to access information about the performance of all the different systems in your building via a single, consolidated dashboard delivers many quantifiable benefits. If you’re not already able to do this, it’s a step you should consider taking immediately. To find out why, read on…
If you’re a facility manager, you’re tasked with overseeing an extensive range of systems and programs (for example, HVAC, lighting, security, energy management, occupancy, automated demand response, and others) which contribute significantly to your overall success in the job. It’s these systems that enable you to streamline operations, improve decision-making, and optimize performance.
Unfortunately, even if these systems are operationally interconnected, that doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically be able to access a holistic view of their performance. That’s bad news, because a centralized dashboard providing a consolidated view is what’s really necessary for you to monitor, analyze, and control functions within the facility as effectively as possible. In other words, you need a single pane of glass view, from which you can see all relevant inputs in one place.
What are the benefits of the “single pane of glass”?
Let’s call such a dashboard a “single pane of glass.” The calculable benefits of having such a dashboard are many and will almost certainly be significant in terms of cost savings, energy efficiency, and operational efficiency, so they’re worth spelling out.
Operational visibility and control
The single pane of glass gives you real-time visibility into all building systems. This means you have a one-stop shop to assess and understand performance across HVAC, lighting, security, and beyond. The resulting centralized control and monitoring window allows you to eliminate the need to switch between different software interfaces, streamlining your daily tasks and simplifying troubleshooting.
Data-driven decision making
When you’ve integrated data from multiple systems into a single platform, you’ll have access to insights previously unavailable that will help you make more informed decisions. Aggregated data leads to better trend analysis, improved predictive maintenance, and increased energy optimization. These advantages are far more difficult to achieve when data is siloed across different systems.
User experience and training
As you’d expect, the single pane of glass reduces complexity…your team needs to learn and manage only one system rather than several (each with its own unique protocols and user interfaces). Not only does this make your facility easier to manage effectively, but it also simplifies your user training requirements and helps to reduce operator errors. As a result, you’ll benefit from more consistent building operations performance.
Maintenance and repairs
Also, with the single interface, you can get alerts and diagnostic information from systems across your infrastructure in one place. That means any issues that arise will be more quickly identified and resolved. This reduces equipment downtime, improves occupant satisfaction, and helps to prevent minor issues from becoming major problems.
Compliance and reporting
The unified dashboard also makes regulatory compliance and reporting more straightforward because it enables automatic tracking and data collection across all building systems to be consolidated in one place. This is data that you can use for audits, certification (e.g., LEED), or adherence to standards. It thus enables you to save time and reduce the risk of errors.
In summary, we can quickly see that the consolidated dashboard confers significant benefits across multiple areas of performance. But are these benefits quantifiable in terms of the payoff?
Can the advantages be quantified?
The answer to that question is “yes!” To understand how and why - what are the measurable rather than theoretical gains – let’s dig deeper.
- Energy Savings and Reduced Utility Costs
Having centralized control means it becomes easier to optimize, monitor, and adjust multiple systems effectively because you have unified performance data. This can result in significant energy savings.
An example: adjusting HVAC and lighting based on occupancy data can reduce energy consumption by 10-30%. Centralized control also facilitates participation in ADR programs. In measurable terms, you can adjust multiple systems in real-time to reduce peak demand charges when opportunities to do so arise.
- Lower Maintenance Costs and Longer Equipment Lifespan
Integrating data from multiple systems means, as we said earlier, that you can analyze usage patterns and detect early signs of equipment wear, enabling better predictive maintenance.
Better predictive maintenance reduces the need for emergency repairs and lets you address issues proactively. Experience tells us that improved predictive maintenance can reduce maintenance costs by 10-20% and extend equipment lifespan by 5-10 years.
- Operational Efficiency
With a centralized dashboard you’ll spend less time accessing and analyzing data from multiple sources, improving your workflow efficiency. And with automated alerts and centralized control, large on-site teams can often be reduced in number, as functions can be monitored and managed remotely.
To summarize, a single, multi-site dashboard offers not vague but hard, calculable benefits. Being able to access an integrated, real-time view of all your systems means you’ll be able to not only better optimize building performance, but also to reduce costs, and create an improved environment for occupants.
About NexRev
NexRev is the leading provider of cloud-based, multi-site energy management systems, backed by AI and delivered by SaaS models, that help businesses eliminate energy waste and reduce costs.
Our innovative Freedom™ EMS/BMS solution brings process-driven intelligence and AI to facilities management, providing complete remote control and centralized visibility of your energy-consuming devices across complex, nationwide property portfolios for leading brands in retail, theatres, restaurants, commercial, and industrial facilities.
With NexRev Freedom, our customers reduce waste, optimize energy management, and generate permanent cost savings by making the right decisions. To begin a discussion on how we can help you to reduce energy costs and waste please email us at