Artificial intelligence is starting to influence the way South African facilities managers choose technology, even before it has fully changed the way many buildings are run.
MRI Software’s latest South African facilities management research found that 52% of respondents say the absence of integrated AI capabilities in their next software release would influence them to look at alternative solutions. Just 23% say it would have no bearing on their decision.
That is an indication of how quickly expectations are changing. AI is becoming part of the criteria organisations use to judge whether their technology will meet future operational needs.
AI moves onto the procurement checklist
Almost 70% of the professionals in our South African research regard AI as important or extremely important to their organisation, while 41% are prioritising AI or automation for adoption over the next 12 to 18 months. Predictive maintenance platforms rank even higher, at 54%.
Those priorities make sense considering the challenges FM teams are already facing. 43% identify managing ageing equipment as their biggest obstacle, while more than six in ten respondents report that budgets have remained flat or declined over the past three years. Against that backdrop, AI has a simple test to pass: can it help facilities teams make better decisions with the assets, people and budgets they already have?
Predictive maintenance offers a useful example. Rather than waiting for an asset to fail or relying only on fixed servicing intervals, intelligent systems can use operational information to identify patterns and flag emerging issues earlier. Among respondents who see potential in Agentic AI, predictive maintenance is the leading anticipated benefit at 42%, followed by automated decision-making and workforce optimisation.
The data beneath the AI matters
There is still a considerable gap between interest in AI and the readiness to use it well.
Only 18.3% of respondents are very confident that their current facilities management data can support AI or automated decision-making. Another 36.6% are somewhat confident, while the rest are either unsure or have limited confidence in the information available to them.
That is important because AI depends heavily on the quality of the data behind it. If asset records are incomplete, maintenance histories are scattered across different systems or teams record information inconsistently, the usefulness of any AI capability will be limited.
Facilities leaders therefore need to look beyond the headline AI feature. The more useful questions are what information a system needs, whether that data is reliable and how the resulting insight feeds back into maintenance and operational decisions.
There are practical constraints as well. A third of respondents say the cost of new technology is their biggest barrier to adoption, while 25% point to skills gaps in the workforce.
What AI must prove in practice
As AI becomes a more prominent part of technology procurement, facilities managers will also need to become more specific about what they are buying it for.
The most useful applications are likely to address problems teams already recognise. Can the technology pick up signs of equipment deterioration before there is a breakdown? Can it draw useful conclusions from years of asset and work-order information? Can it help a facilities manager faced with a long list of outstanding work identify what needs attention first?
Cybersecurity must also be considered. More than half of respondents regard cybersecurity as a high priority, yet only 20% report using data encryption and just 5% conduct regular penetration testing. As facilities systems connect more equipment and draw on larger pools of building data, organisations will need to understand not only what an AI-enabled system can do, but how that information is protected.
The finding that 52% of respondents could reconsider their software if AI capabilities were absent is significant, but it should not be read as a rush towards any technology carrying an AI label. If anything, it suggests buyers are likely to ask more of their providers. They will want to understand the problem being addressed, the data required and what improvement they can reasonably expect once the technology is in use.
86% of South African professionals surveyed expect smart technologies and automation to shape facilities management over the next five years, while 68% believe data-driven decision-making will become central to their role.
The focus is therefore shifting to what AI can realistically improve within facilities management. For teams already dealing with ageing assets, limited budgets and heavy workloads, its usefulness will become apparent in fairly practical ways: identifying problems sooner, giving people better information to work with and helping prevent avoidable disruption.
