The Key to Revenue Growth: How Performance Data Helps Reduce Total Cost of Ownership
In today’s competitive business landscape, every business, from retail to restaurants, can benefit from embracing a more data-driven approach. Equipped with the ability to gather and analyze comprehensive performance data, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of operational costs. This enhanced insight fosters efficient operations, precise capital planning, and ultimately, a better bottom line.
Taking a data-driven approach has never been easier
IoT technologies are maturing to the point where businesses of all sizes can leverage asset-generated data to support proactive maintenance, which in turn helps minimize operational costs from materials and equipment. Collecting data from assets is just the first step though. One of the biggest challenges many businesses face in relation to digital transformation is breaking data out of siloes, both at an organizational level and a platform level.
“With an IoT management platform, you can begin to unite operational condition data from all your mission-critical assets,” says Leum Fahey, principal product manager at ServiceChannel. “Though we have preferred partners, almost any IoT platform can securely share data with ServiceChannel through simple API integrations.”
“Once your asset-generated data is integrated with ServiceChannel and the rest of your tech stack, you can cross-reference that data with maintenance spend, asset depreciation, and many other metrics,” continues Fahey. “Having all your data in one place creates a common ground for collaboration across teams, including construction, real estate, maintenance, and operations.”
Data as a path to more efficient operations
When your business has portfolio-wide visibility of how energy is being used on equipment such as lighting and HVAC, you can see where waste is occurring and take steps to mitigate unnecessary spending. And incremental improvements made at each individual location can quickly add up to a lower total cost of ownership for an entire portfolio.
In addition to improved budget allocation, reducing waste offers the added benefit of strengthening a company’s sustainability profile and brand reputation. Leveraging asset performance data can even help businesses appeal to new customer segments.
“One of our clients is a well-established retailer with a loyal base of older customers, but they wanted to increase their appeal with younger shoppers, who perceived the brand as somewhat old fashioned,” shares Fahey. “By leveraging performance data to become more energy efficient, that customer now has verifiable proof points that help them promote the eco-friendly shopping experience that is important to many younger customers.”
Maintaining opening day standards
Your locations are the face of your brand and are critical for building customer loyalty. Once the construction of a new or remodeled store is complete, it is largely up to facilities teams to keep the location looking fresh and inviting for as long as possible.
Part of the job of maintaining opening day standards requires planned maintenance and onsite inspections of store conditions. But with more data to work with, maintenance teams can start to see into the future, which supports preventive maintenance, improved asset uptime, and an optimal guest experience.
By looking at what has and has not worked in the past, historical performance data helps businesses make strategic decisions that ensure new and remodeled locations function efficiently.
Ensuring the best customer experience
Once you can leverage asset performance data at an operational level, it becomes easier to automate tasks and reduce the maintenance team’s workload. Then, maintenance has more capacity to deal with any unforeseen emergencies that do occur, mitigating the risk of lost revenue due to the breakdown of mission-critical equipment.
Preventing problems before they occur can also improve relations between various business functions. When the operations team doesn’t have to chase maintenance to get things fixed, there’s less internal conflict, and they have more time to focus on customer experience.
“When all the assets in your stores are running at top performance, you can deliver a better customer experience, which in turn increases customer loyalty and profit,” shares Leum Fahey. “That’s the ultimate value of location performance data.”
Want to find out how ServiceChannel can help you make the most of your asset, location, and provider data with accurate, predictable reporting? Learn more at servicechannel.com/products/analytics