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The purpose of this paper is to describe the currently experienced benefits and obstacles for enhancing facilties management (FM) with the currently available technological enablers.

This paper presents an integration of several studies conducted to identify the current benefits and obstacles of mobile technology as perceived by the Finnish FM professionals. The main intentions of the study were: to describe the current technological enablers for the utilisation of mobile technology at FM settings; and to interview the FM professionals on their perceived benefits and obstacles of the utilisation of the currently available technology.

The change of practice to support the exploitation of mobile technology is emergent. The findings of the empirical part include the currently feasible mobile solutions and their perceived limitations. The experiences benefits are discussed and critical success factors are nominated. The perceived benefits are mostly related to improved resource efficiency and quality control. The essential success factors and remaining obstacles are discussed.

The empirical part is limited to Finnish settings, but the observations are likely valid in several other developed countries as well.

The change of FM practice to benefit from the exploitation of mobile technology is emergent.

The paper gives experience‐based suggestions for both demand and supply sides of the service procurement to gain the feasible benefits and avoid the currently hindering obstacles, as the paper provides insight of the current and future tools for the mobile aspects of FM. The findings are relevant for the service providers and operators as well.

The paper aims to give an introduction to radio frequency identification (RFID) technology with near field communication (NFC) to enable users to access content and services with hand‐held devices. It also aims to give a general overview on RFID utilization, its obstacles, diffusion and expected benefits. Some pilot applications are already being used commercially. Finally, it seeks to summarize applications of the technology in the facilties management (FM) industry.

The paper uses literary research and also interdisciplinary specialist analyses to find out the usage of IT‐based services in the FM field and supply of service providers. Some real pilots have been made and analysed in cooperation with service providers (FM and IT), building owners and building users (customers).

Mobile phones are heavily used in the FM industry for speech and text messaging (SMS) communications, but usage of other mobile phone services has not been established as a part of operation processes. The exploitation of RFID in FM as well as construction industry seems to be rather low, in fact in an infant stage. Accordingly pilot FM service using RFID technology proved to be very usable.

IT‐based mobile services are common in many countries and in various industries but using a mobile phone as a RFID reader is familiar mostly in Finland (Nokia phone).

The use of RFID/NFC technology in FM and also in the construction industry seems to be very prominent with high potential technology adoption for improving services.

This paper brings forward a quite novel technology application for the FM industry and presents the experiences of real pilot projects.