case study
Efficient Facilities Management
Expansion is a common goal for most companies looking to grow their business beyond the confines of their existing operations. For retailers, opening new stores is a costly endeavor. To sustain its competitive advantage while growing its market, this retail company needed to find ways to cut cost, increase its efficiency, and manage its growing retail operations.
Member Profile
Fashion Forward* is an innovative clothing retailer based in California. The company has been in business for 17 years and continues to add retail stores in the West Coast. It is looking to penetrate markets throughout the rest of the country.
Background
When Fashion Forward embarked on expanding their retail operations, it decided to turn to Prialto to find cost-saving solutions that would enable them to meet their goals. The company needed a partner that could create process efficiencies, and optimize employee productivity.
The company previously had one person who was charged with the responsibility of handling facilities issues in addition to managing store openings and special projects. With 24 stores (and growing), Fashion Forward’s operations manager had his hands full. This meant that operational problems were dealt with inefficiently and reactively. There were no processes in place that could produce timely resolutions and no tracking system that could help establish proactive measures to avoid future problems.
Solution
After consulting with Fashion Forward, Prialto identified areas where operations could be streamlined. A key area was facilities management and the need to establish a standard operating procedure for better management of the company’s store facilities. Working closely with Fashion Forward, Prialto integrated processes that aided in the efficient handling of the company’s operational problems. A Prialto representative was assigned to handle all service calls; a web-based tracking tool for trouble tickets was implemented; and a central phone number was provided to all employees for reporting maintenance issues.
Conclusion
With Prialto managing Fashion Forward’s retail facilities, maintenance calls are now dealt with more efficiently and proactively. A Prialto assistant handles all trouble calls, and an escalation process has been established resulting in quicker turn-around time and follow-through. Problems can now be avoided using the tracking tool to identify patterns and common issues that occur. These processes have also freed the operations manager from the task of resolving store issues and has enabled him to focus on coordinating store openings and special projects. And by outsourcing this operation, the company realized immediate cost savings, achieving $30K of annual savings to the bottom line.
Today, the company has considerably reduced the amount of time it spends on facilities management, freeing valuable resources to focus on expanding Fashion Forward’s retail operations. It is also continuing to work with Prialto on adopting additional solutions to help with the company’s continued growth.
*The client’s name has been changed to protect its privacy.