Not exactly the most glamorous area of focus, facility management is one of the heartlands of any company with a bricks-and-mortar presence - the larger this footprint, the harder the challenge in managing and keeping up with it.

Into this comes Portuguese startup Infraspeak, aiming to solve this by approaching it from a single entry point for facility managers and all support service providers of all things in a given site.

Founded in 2015, Infraspeak has raised nearly $20 million to date, and has landed big clients such as KFC, Intercontinental and Primark. And to take the startup, based in Porto, to the next level of growth, it announced on Monday that it has taken on an additional €18 million ($19.5 million) of Series B funding.
 A lot of moving parts.
A health firm has several departments, equipment, and contractors who may fall under a specific category or discipline, such as maintenance and cleaning; thus, many things need to be coordinated and managed.

"Managing all these moving parts is very challenging, and the stakes are quite high," says Felipe Ávila da Costa, co-founder and CEO of Infraspeak. "They [facility managers] have to follow everything from preventive maintenance schedules and work orders to cleaning tasks and contractor communication, air quality management, service level agreements, room preparation, and performance reporting-all under strict health and safety standards.".

Of course, companies managed all this for a long time before the digital era; however, the task was still very heavy in manual processes and unconnected systems that were open to errors by humans. Even into more recent history, companies could combine spreadsheets with disparate software that had been designed for individual tasks.

This speaks into what Infraspeak builds: connecting all the dotting systems and processes between them to be on a single page of operation under one system.

It all does that with a common workspace Infraspeak Network enables facility managers to address internal work such as building operations and connect teams with that of external service providers-to manage the process by request and quote from suppliers and inboard them for an assign work order. Even monitoring the progress made; On the other side of service providers, it makes provision for sending quotes communicating their clients, and further can share operational data as a way of operating the said service.

As a collaborative facilities management platform, Infraspeak enables the facilities team to manage all aspects of the operation cohesively-it allows facilities managers, staff, and contractors to collaborate in a shared digital workspace, da Costa explained. Whether sharing real-time data, managing work orders, or tracking job execution, every stakeholder is connected, reducing miscommunication and bottlenecks.

With the rise of remote work, one would be able to quickly surmise that the need for technology that can manage commercial buildings must have subsided with times. Without factoring that most companies are now requesting that their workers return to their office desks, in reality, there are countless other facilities which need management except for offices- from malls and hospitals to airports and factories.

"The trend of remote work hasn't affected our business much," da Costa said. "If anything, remote work has made cloud-based facilities management software even more essential-it allows operational managers to control several facilities without needing to be constantly on-site.". And if we think of one of the main drivers of remote work in the first place, i.e., the pandemic, then the value of such software becomes all the clearer, as it allows you to manage occupancy in the building, enforce health and safety protocols, or adjust your cleaning schedule according to your space usage. Complexities
Infraspeak competes with other startups like MaintainX, Upkeep, and Facilio, all of which have recently attracted large venture investments -- the best proof of growing demand for better facilities management tooling. Da Costa also said some factors that could be pushing the demand, like increasing complexity in managing buildings since they now have more devices and data pouring through them than ever before.

Companies are under more pressure to operate optimally to meet the severe sustainability and ESG targets.
"Generally, buildings now have more complex systems, higher regulatory compliance, larger supply chains, increasing concerns for sustainability, and cost-effective and transparency pressures on building users," said da Costa.

The firm counts about 182 employees, or "Infraspeakers," as it likes to call them… spread across offices in Porto, London, Barcelona, and Florianópolis, and some employees work remotely elsewhere in South America and Europe. With fresh cash of $19.5 million, the firm plans to increase its headcount by another 100 people next year, with that includes C-level jobs such as chief revenue officer.

For now, the company remains focused on Europe, but it is also starting to expand into South America and Africa. The company isn't formally operating in the U.S. market; however, it claims it has "a small number" of customers stateside, which could serve as the genesis for expansion later-it may well need to raise more money for that.

"We plan to raise our Series C by 2025, and entering and conquering the U.S. market will definitely be the plan by then," da Costa said.

Infraspeak's Series B round was led by Endeit Capital, with participation from Bright Pixel Capital, Caixa Capital, Innovation Nest, and Indico Capital Partners.