Case Study: Freshpet
Cut Out Middlemen for Asset Management, Improve Operations and Increase Customer Satisfaction.
ServiceChannel
Highlights
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Eliminated manual data entry and tracking through centralized data repository to generate executive-level reports on-demand
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Management by key performance indicators including cost per asset, cost per location and vendor performance
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Improved customer satisfaction resulting in expanded business opportunities in-store and in new locations
Quantifiable Results
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Reduction in issue resulution time
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Increase in work efficiency in terms of assets managed
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Reduction in product spoilage
“We went from having almost no process to new relying on a seamless one to manage all of our valuable assets in the field. And with the higher quality data available to us, we know how much we’re spending on any asset and making smarter [R&M] decisions based on real data.“
Vladimir Vuka
Director of Retail Assets
As its company’s name indicates, Freshpet is a manufacturer and distributor of fresh, refrigerated foods and treats for dogs and cats using natural ingredients. Freshpet products are available in over 20,000 stores as refrigerated kiosks and displays in mass-market stores, natural food retailers, pet specialty stores and major retailers including Target, Whole Foods, Petco, Petsmart and Walmart.
Facilities Program
Freshpet operates with a minimal in-house facilities and asset management presence. The company manages the repair and maintenance (R&M) of its refrigeration systems through a national network of pay-as-you-go and retainer-based contractors.
Challenges
Before deploying ServiceChannel, Freshpet had outsourced all R&M responsibilities to a third party company, who used a highly manual data input and tracking process for tracking work orders including a spreadsheet to log information. Consequently:
- Running analytics and tracking results by key performance indicators was nearly impossible
- Correlating data was difficult with a lot of time spent on manual data entry
- Contractor check-in processes at any of its locations was a “nightmare,” with no clear idea who initiated a work order and why
“The data that was available to us before deploying ServiceChannel was not precise or easily accessible. Now we can analyze every customer, vendor, asset, and employee instantly with everything in one place.”
Vladimir Vuka
Director of Retail Assets
Goals
Freshpet decided to take a more hands-on, self-service approach to R&M requirements to improve results as well as reduce outsourcing costs. Having a better way to create and track data was another important factor for the company. Other goals included:
- Accelerating service dispatching including after-hours services, which were often dispatched the following day in the old process, jeopardizing inventory and unnecessarily increasing costs
- Consolidating and centralizing data analysis, which could speed up reporting for senior leadership (including a monthly meeting with Freshpet’s COO)
- Elevating the importance and quality of data in general, including the ability to better define the key performance indicators that the company wanted to track
Solution
After evaluating several technology solutions, Freshpet selected ServiceChannel because of its integration capabilities and sophisticated data and analytics. As a result, Freshpet’s R&M process is information-rich with data-driven decisions being the norm. Details of its solution deployment include:
- ServiceChannel Integration through open APIs to enable a deep and customized integration between ServiceChannel Service Automation and other corporate systems including its primary CRM (Salesforce). This integration enables the company to perform daily data capture and flow of KPIs, such as open work order status, contractor performance, location-based info, etc.
- Analytics to capture and track real-time and historical data in order to generate reports for company executives and other corporate departments. Freshpet uses the information to not only keep costs in check but also for its budgeting and planning
- Asset Manager including its Warranty Management & Tracking capability that automatically routes work order requests based on the warranty status of the assets. This saves Freshpet money by limiting warranty “leakage” costs
- Call Center, a 24×7 service that helps Freshpet initiate necessary work orders for R&M of assets when needed, including after store-hour services. This value-add service is important because the company does not have in-house technicians at any of its store locations
Benefits
In general, Freshpet reports that going to a self-service model through ServiceChannel has provided newfound levels of visibility into its asset management that it lacked before. This visibility in turn has provided
numerous other benefits including:
- Higher customer satisfaction across the stores due to asset issues being resolved must faster and more reliably. This has helped Freshpet expand businesses both in-store and in new locations
- Unprecedented after-hours R&M services, which meant that broken units (and their corresponding refrigerated inventory) no longer had to wait until the next day for servicing. This has resulted in a significant
- reduction in lost sales and product
- More accurate (higher quality) data due to elimination of manual data
- entry and tracking
Results
Freshpet now manages the R&M of all of its assets based on specific KPI including:
- 50% reduction of time required for issues resolution – from an average of eight to four days
- 53% increase in work efficiency – the same number of Freshpet staff and contractors who had serviced 13,000 refrigerated units now service 18,000 to 20,000 units
- 18% reduction on product spoilage/loss due to more prompt issue and work order resolution
- Asset uptime now operating at maximum capacity
