Nuvolo > Case Studies > Convenience Retailer Transforms Store Maintenance Process with Unified IoT Solution

Convenience Retailer Transforms Store Maintenance Process with Unified IoT Solution

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
Functional Applications - Inventory Management Systems

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods
Retail

Applicable Functions

Maintenance
Procurement

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Retail Store Automation

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

The client is one of the largest company-operated convenience retailers in the U.S., with over three hundred stores located across seven states. They are committed to providing excellent customer service and experiences, while also expanding and innovating their business. In order to continue scaling up and meeting customer expectations, they began an initiative to optimize their store operations and maintenance processes. They use maintenance services from over 60 different vendors and over 4,000 technicians, many of whom are small, self-performing maintenance specialists.

The Challenge

The client, one of the largest company-operated convenience retailers in the U.S., was facing challenges in optimizing their store operations and maintenance processes. They used different processes and systems across all their locations, making it difficult to gain quick access to information like the status of their work orders and which vendors were responsible for maintaining each asset. The client uses maintenance services from over 60 different vendors and over 4,000 technicians, many of whom are small, self-performing maintenance specialists. This made it challenging to get a holistic view of performance. They needed a way to capture data such as performance on service level agreements (SLAs) for any urgent corrective maintenance or scheduled preventive maintenance at their stores, accurate technician labor hours, including travel times and return trips, and replacement parts used during repairs.

The Solution

The client implemented Nuvolo Connected Workplace for Retail, a unified retail store maintenance system that provided one system of record across all stores, assets, vendors, work orders, invoices, and contracts. This solution offers a single source of truth and provides full visibility into all store maintenance activities, making it much easier to collect and visualize performance data for both internal and external vendor technicians. With Nuvolo, they can see SLAs and metrics, highlight costs, track where they are over and underutilizing resources, and identify process improvements based on business data. They built a digital quoting and vendor invoicing system, enabling them to process 2,000 vendor invoices monthly. They also used Nuvolo to manage their central warehouse and 24 remote mobile stockroom vehicles, implementing a more transparent process for distributing parts, and simplifying their inventory auditing process.

Operational Impact

The implementation of Nuvolo Connected Workplace for Retail led to several operational improvements. The client was able to optimize their store maintenance processes, streamline their inventory auditing process, and improve the time needed to obtain parts. They also optimized their processes for evaluating work orders and troubleshooting issues. They applied timestamps to work orders, so store managers can better track completion times. They implemented a vendor rating system based on a scale of 1-5, which gives teams better insight into how vendors are performing. They added troubleshooting checklists to some service requests to help streamline the maintenance process. Store managers are guided through on-site reset steps for about 10% of assets, and they are given the support to try and troubleshoot known issues before creating work orders which incur trip charges. This means many common issues are resolved much more quickly—without having to involve vendors and the costs associated.

Quantitative Benefit