Any business that houses equipment that can break or requires maintenance can benefit from facility management software. All assets and their activities are tracked, monitored and reportable in real-time. Smaller companies with a handful of locations, in particular, can leverage the technology to keep operations organized and efficient, ensuring the company is positioned well for development and growth.
Optimize Efficiency
Serious operational inefficiencies can happen when restaurants and retailers don’t efficiently track their assets or streamline their repair and maintenance processes. In a real sense, you may be operating blindly and continuously working in a reactive instead of a proactive state.
Facility management software can help you take the reins by itemizing your assets down to the component level while customizing invoicing and service request workflows. It can help you optimize efficiency by:
- Allowing your operators to submit a service request in under 30 seconds
- Automating the invoicing process, allowing EDI for R&M vendors
- Storing W-9s and certificate of insurance and getting notified when they expire
- Automating preventive maintenance schedules
- Aggregating data to help businesses understand where their R&M dollars are going and why
- Identifying opportunities for you to reduce expenses
Data-Driven Decisions
Asset tracking software allows you to gain valuable insights from maintenance and repair expenses. For example, is the repair expense high one month because the HVAC unit went down, was it because the refrigerator was not cooling, or was it because the lighting needed repairs? Those details may get lumped into one general ledger category, making it difficult to understand your company’s true performance.
Facility management tools rely on hard numbers to help you determine whether you should continue to spend money fixing a piece of equipment, or buy a new one. For example, if the cost to replace a refrigerator is $5,000, but it’s only $300 to repair it and the repair history is minimal, a colorful gauge will recommend repairing it, which streamlines decision making for operators. These insights are
COVID-19 Considerations
When COVID-19 became a pandemic and dramatically slowed sales, restaurants and retailers needed answers to tough questions:
- What scheduled maintenance services can we postpone/cancel?
- What in-progress repairs can be put on hold?
- How can I control R&M expenses with my new budget?
Facility management software offers visibility into where your money is going and why it’s going there, allowing you to make better data-driven decisions. Additionally, the software can set controls to help reduce spend. For example, if you ask your operations team to hold off on any minor repairs, they may still call the vendor directly, have the work done and you won’t find out until you receive the invoice two months later. With facility management software in place, you will be able to stop the request before the vendor even knows something needs to be fixed.
Warranty Realization
Asset tracking results in warranty realization. Capitalizing on warranties for equipment, service providers and parts offer significant cost savings. You may have a broken oven that has a 5-year warranty, but no one remembers, and everyone is too busy to dig through emails, spreadsheets or files to find it. Likely, you’ll pay the $500 repair invoice and move on. Facility management software will alert you that the warranty is still active and automatically route the work order to the manufacturer, saving you $500. Our clients realize a 5% reduction in repair and maintenance costs through warranty realization alone.
Ecotrak: A Cost-Savings Facility Management Software Solution
Ecotrak, a OnePoint partner, offers a 5x ROI and the software typically pays for itself within the first 6 months due to warranty realization and service-call avoidance. Plus, according to our clients, the additional savings potential gained from operational and time savings can be as high as 10%.
During the pandemic, when sales are declining, facility management software can give you instant savings. Book a demo to learn more about streamlining your facilities today.
By: Matt Singer
Matt Singer is Chief Financial Officer at Ecotrak Facility Management Software.
