Gaining a Foothold in a New Market Segment
After being spun off from the facilities management division of AssetWorks, FacilityForce is making a bold move into a new market segment – all with the continued guidance and backing of its parent company
Stepping into a CEO role for the first time can make for a daunting assignment, but when Frank Syma accepted the top position at FacilityForce, he was well-equipped to take on the responsibility.
It helped that, unlike some first-time CEOs, Syma wasn’t launching a startup with an uncertain quest ahead to find an elusive product-market fit. Nor was he parachuted into an unfamiliar company where he would start with little prior knowledge of the market or its customers.
Instead, Syma went into his new job with a head start – possessing extensive experience from his previous leadership roles at AssetWorks Facilities, a division of Volaris Group. Also giving him an advantage were: the stability of some long-standing customer relationships, a clear growth strategy reviewed by peers, and the confidence of being supported by a strong parent organization.
Before FacilityForce, there was AssetWorks Facilities
Syma started his career as a developer, and after the company he worked for was acquired by Volaris Group in 2008, his career opportunities began to snowball. He’s spent most of his 25 years within Volaris at AssetWorks Facilities, a company that offers an integrated workplace management solution (IWMS) targeted toward clients in research institutions within higher education and public sector organizations, such as state, county, and city agencies.
Typically, the buyers of AssetWorks Facilities’ software are facilities managers who are tasked with the complicated job of maintaining building structures and all the components within them, such as HVAC, plumbing, electrical, floors, and walls, and staying on top of preventative maintenance and long-range planning and replacement of assets (e.g. cyclical air handler replacement or replacing a roof).
Syma’s career path saw him gaining a deep understanding of a niche market and providing customers with mission-critical solutions. Over time, he benefited from the talent development opportunities within Volaris. Syma’s hard work and talent helped him advance into progressively more senior roles until he eventually accepted the Chief Product Officer role at AssetWorks Facilities in 2019.
The beginnings of FacilityForce
By 2019, leaders at AssetWorks Facilities saw an opportunity to split off part of the business so that they could better serve government and commercial organizations.
The catalyst for this proposed move? Some of the company’s existing customers were developing distinct needs from their core customers, and those needs weren’t being fully addressed in the market.
“Government and commercial organizations are much more spread out compared to the campuses that AssetWorks Facilities serves, so they are tracking their assets across a geographic region,” explains Syma.
AssetWorks Facilities leaders saw the need to add location and mapping data to the product for this group of clients. More importantly, they saw the opportunity to create a unique product roadmap that would more sharply focus on these customers’ needs, which would necessitate diverging from their existing business setup.
What’s involved in executing a business split at Volaris?
Although discussions about the business split started in 2019, FacilityForce took a gradual and intentional approach when it came to executing the split. The first phase of the split happened in 2021, at which point Syma became Chief Operating Officer. It wasn’t until 2022 that the split was fully completed.
During phase one, rebranding discussions were a major topic for deliberation. “We realized that we didn’t just need to split, we had to rebrand and change our name,” Syma recalls.
“With the support of Volaris, we went through strategic planning exercises that helped us focus internally on building the brand and achieving market awareness,” he says. “We went through the exercise of renaming all the different solutions and coming up with a theme that we felt met the market.”
After the split was officially initiated, both FacilityForce and AssetWorks Facilities were able to provide new opportunities that included new CEO roles for both Frank Syma and Randall Walsh, who was previously the Chief Sales Officer at AssetWorks Facilities. Beyond the new CEO roles, the split also created growth opportunities for several senior-level managers within both companies.
Once we moved past some growing pains, we created several opportunities for people to step up and move into leadership positions.
-Frank Syma, CEO, FacilityForce
Putting the right functional leaders in place for each role was another major consideration. Syma held several discussions with leaders across different areas of the company before making any personnel decisions.
His reasoning: “If we were going to take a third of the staff at AssetWorks Facilities and re-orient them toward operations at FacilityForce, we wanted to make sure we had all the major functions staffed with the right types of expertise, while also creating growth opportunities for those individuals.”
The sales, marketing, and professional services departments were among the first to undergo the split. Especially during this time, Syma and Walsh were careful to avoid disruption to clients and prospects during the transition. As a result, they spent some time waiting for projects and sales opportunities to run their natural course before making the move to re-orient staff toward new goals.
“The challenge with long sales cycles, as well as long and extensive implementations, is that it’s not ideal to rip out an account executive who’s been in a role building a relationship in a higher education account and ask them to become a government-focused account executive,” reflects Walsh on the decision.
Other priorities immediately after the split included updating contracts to enable government purchasing, and ensuring security and data compliance.
Above: FacilityForce’s ambitious growth strategy was acknowledged at a Volaris portfolio event in 2023.
Reflections after the business split
Only two years after the business split was completed, the FacilityForce team can confidently say they are introducing products that better meet customer needs.
“Our new features are more focused around being able to track and present data more graphically, using a geographic information system (GIS),” Syma says.
In addition to the more specialized product offerings and map integration that the team envisioned from the beginning, FacilityForce now offers customers direct integration with their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, allowing for seamless interoperability with their financial, procurement, and human resource functions.
“The integration gives our customers the best of both worlds,” says Syma.
FacilityForce is also set up to more closely observe and act on emerging market trends.
“We’re learning that there is a need for government to consolidate,” says Syma, whose team plans to expand the customer base to more agencies within state and city government entities.
Above: The FaciltyForce team marked the success of their first year as a new business unit with a celebratory mini-golf game.
Reasons to be optimistic for the future
Now that the newly formed company has established a strong foundation for growth, Syma and his team see a bright future ahead, and they are already targeting double-digit growth.
We are definitely growing. We’re seeing the compound growth between FacilityForce and AssetWorks Facilities that would not have been achievable if we’d stayed together.
-Frank Syma, CEO, FacilityForce
While FacilityForce staff are implementing new software for customers, they are taking the opportunity to line up sales calls with adjacent agencies that can benefit from their solutions and services. By satisfying their existing customers, the FacilityForce team can earn positive references that could help them gain new customers.
“Because of the business split, we’ve put ourselves in a position to meet high growth projections and expectations for the user,” says Syma.