Share • •
Equipment Wholesale and Distribution Chain Makes Strategic Use of FM Analytics to Increase Work Order Efficiency, Reduce Costs, and Improve Vendor Performance.
October 26, 2023 from 7,000 to less than 600 for improved budgeting/planning and vendor performance management through enterprise mobility for all users
0%
REDUCTION OF WORK ORDERS REQUIRING NTE PRICING INCREASE
0%
INCREASE IN FIRST-TIME WORK ORDER COMPLETION RATES
0%
INCREASE IN CONTRACTOR ON-TIME ARRIVAL RATES
“Management was absolutely amazed at how easy it would be to use ServiceChannel data to make data-driven decisions and establish best practices such as NTE pricing. Data is king; if you can prove it and show it on paper, you’re ahead of the competition. In terms of budgeting, what we get from ServiceChannel is miles ahead of whatever else is available in the market today.“ Hank Van Gieson
Ferguson Enterprises is the nation’s largest distributor of residential and commercial plumbing supplies and pipe, valves, and fittings. As a diverse distributor that spans multiple businesses including HVAC/R, waterworks, and industrial, it’s grown over 63 years from a local distributor to a $13.8 billion company with more than 1,400 locations nationwide.
Ferguson evaluated service automation as a way to migrate from a fully outsourced facilities management operation and internalize the function as a department. The rationale for this was to overcome a number of key challenges including:
“Using ServiceChannel, we get time back in our day because the system basically manages itself. It has given us the ability to prioritize, track everything and be more efficient overall. Using the system to our advantage and to our specifications has been a huge help and has changed our world.” Hank Van Gieson
In making this shift to service automation and centralization of the FM team, Ferguson identified a number of short- and long-term goals to define its success. Short-term goals included:
Longer-term project goals included:
Ferguson chose to deploy the ServiceChannel Service Automation platform after carefully evaluating several options. One of the factors in selecting ServiceChannel was the wide familiarity with the platform among the thousands of service providers on which Ferguson relied. Other ServiceChannel solutions deployed include: Arguably, the most important benefit of the ServiceChannel deployment at Ferguson was the the team gained through the platform’s embedded analytics. Having with the ability to generate custom reports on-demand has improved many areas of the company’s FM operations including:
Ferguson is rolling out ServiceChannel through a systematic, multi-phase deployment plan. The FM team has deployed Service Automation in almost 800 stores so far and reports highly positive feedback, with “not a bad word said” from any of the users. Significant results and insights gained to date include: Using ServiceChannel has decreased the need to generate proposals for work orders by 57% in just eight months. Additionally, the number of work orders that require NTE pricing increases has also decreased by 77% during the same time period. First time completion rates for work orders has doubled in just four months while on-time arrival rates for vendors has gone up by 107% during the same time period. Overall, Ferguson’s scorecard grade for service providers has improved from a “D” to a “B”.
