How Al Copeland Concepts Makes Facilities Management Easier With Ecotrak

Challenge

Al Copeland Concepts was using email, phone calls, and Excel spreadsheets to manage facility and equipment repairs across 7 corporate-owned restaurants. Coordination between the facilities management team, individual stores, and external service providers was challenging, with work orders sometimes missed, duplicated, or delayed. The facilities team didn’t want store managers to spend their limited time on tedious maintenance recordkeeping, but the organization was also struggling with accurate equipment spend tracking.

Strategy

The team at Al Copeland Concepts wanted to simplify restaurant and equipment maintenance management. The facilities team searched for a way to minimize the administrative burden on store managers with easy work order submission and record keeping, while also centralizing equipment and vendor information.

Solution

To improve operations, Al Copeland Concepts chose Ecotrak as their Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) solution. Their goal was to centralize facilities management on one platform that could:

• Empower store managers to quickly submit work orders with equipment names, pictures, and preferred vendors mapped to locations.

• Organize communications and scheduling between service providers and restaurant teams.

• Support unplanned equipment and facility repair as well as preventive maintenance scheduling.

• Manage regular inspections and audits, storing information and seamlessly supporting related work order submission.

Results

• Transparency in work order status, increasing service provider accountability, providing visibility for any facilities team escalations, and empowering store managers to spend more time in the restaurant instead of the back office.

• Centralized information about equipment and vendors, easily accessible for everyone from accounting to store managers.

• Requiring using Ecotrak as a “non-negotiable” for any potential service provider due to streamlined communication and easier payment processing.

• Reporting that supports data-driven repair vs replace equations, issue logs by equipment manufacturer, and spending trends for capex planning.

• Ease navigating the Ecotrak platform quickly using AI-powered EMA tool.

• Future plans to leverage vendor pricing comparisons and service provider response or repair time KPIs.