The Company

Based out of Frisco, Texas, CAL’s Convenience, Inc. operates 207 stores in West Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico and offers the convenience of high-quality fuel, snacks, groceries, beverages, and spirits. It is a 24-hour operation that relies on everything from food fryers to registers to refrigerators to run smoothly. For CAL’s, an equipment failure often triggers an entire store disruption, so repairs must happen immediately in order to gain back any lost momentum in sales and customer satisfaction. “We can’t afford to get shut down. Time is money,” explains CAL’s Regional Maintenance Manager, Jim Pearson.

ServiceChannel for us basically changed our industry”
— Jim Pearson
    Regional Maintenance Manager, CAL’s Convenience, Inc.

 

The Challenge

CAL’s Convenience receives between 150 – 200 service calls a day about equipment failures. “Our biggest challenge is [handling] priority calls. I only have 27 techs, and we’re spread across 207 stores. Each tech has about 10 stores, but some of the distances between stores are significant,” says Jim. Before partnering with ServiceChannel, the call process was disjointed. Stores were using dated work systems like phone calls and one-way ticket systems, which made it difficult to move at the speed necessary to deliver the convenience customers expected. As a result, assets were down for long periods of time and ultimately resulted in lost revenue. Jim needed a system that could help the company:

  • Create a system of record for all information related to running its facilities operations across its 200+ stores
  • Prioritize emergency work orders
  • Improve asset uptime
  • Automate invoicing

 

The Solution

Jim’s investment in ServiceChannel’s platform gave him the ability to track, manage, and analyze work service calls all in one central location. By gaining more visibility into his operations, Jim was able to make more data-driven decisions about whether to send an internal technician or outside provider to the job site. In addition, he was able to quickly access other essential operations information like all 207 store locations’ spend, asset repairs requests, provider performance, and invoicing trends.

 

The Results

The Analytics tool within the platform proved to be a win for him and the company’s bottom line. Jim was able to realize a 79% decrease in service repair call costs by using insights that helped him identify which providers to move on from. “It doesn’t take long for you to figure out where money’s going out and not coming in. So, we had to make some changes. And some of those providers, quite frankly, we quit using,” says Jim. In addition to cost savings, he was able to improve asset uptime because he was using reliable service technicians. Jim and team enjoyed other gains as well including:

  • Improved provider relationships thanks to the the platform’s Payment Manager that allowed him to get payments out faster
  • Cost savings thanks to data that helped identify which assets to repair versus retire
  • Improved cross functional relationships due to his ability to proactively identify capital expenditure needs that help all teams budget more wisely