Get Your Fix by Vixxo: Recent Episodes
Vixxo
Welcome to Get Your Fix, a podcast bringing you insights and expertise in facilities management, brought to you by Vixxo, changing the way the world sees facilities Management.
Partner relationships make businesses successful, and those trusted partnerships are more necessary than ever in the modern business landscape. But when that partner promises value, can they actually deliver?
In Partnership with U.S. Vets, over 40+ Vixxo volunteers installed kitchenettes, countertops and sinks as part of the Vixxo Gives Back philanthropic program in Phoenix, Arizona.
Partnering with Hands on Hartford, Vixxo debuted its “Vixxo Gives Back” philanthropic program on September 22, 2016 by bringing together over 30 associates to paint shelves, build planters and donate 570 pounds of non-perishable food. The rewarding day marks the first of many Vixxo initiatives that will give back to the local communities in which we live and work.
Our coffee technicians do great work for our clients. See what their typical day looks like.
At Vixxo you can have impact. We're building something really special and finding the best talent across North America to join our growing team. Explore our open opportunities at vixxo.com/careers.
Vixxo associates team up with the Boy & Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale. Two great organizations and a little paint go a long way for creating a fun and friendly environment for these fantastic kids.
Vixxo is a facilities management partner focused on providing a seamless, intuitive experience for a vast portfolio of brands, across the United States and Canada. Specializing in integrated facility management and facility maintenance, Vixxo maintains over 2.2 million revenue-generating assets for many Fortune 500 clients in the restaurant, retail, convenience store and grocery industries.
Vixxo designs facility maintenance solutions to revolutionize and optimize clients’ multisite portfolios by improving service delivery, reducing costs and providing strategic insights – all aimed at lowering total cost of ownership.
Having everything go right in an installation isn’t always possible. There are many moving parts and gaps between the manufacturer and end-user. That’s why many organizations rely on installation partners to streamline, scale and manage these projects. To offer feedback on this subject, Ryan Baumgartner and Eric Warner of Vixxo joined Get Your Fix and host Shelby Skrhak.
Baumgartner and Warner both have extensive technology experience across many industries and have seen their fair share of installations. Some went well, and others failed.
Baumgartner said many small and midsize businesses run into issues without an installation partner.
“They take on large projects but don’t understand the operational footprint need to execute, putting the burden on the retailers to manage the project,” he said.
Warner agreed that projects can quickly go awry. “There are schedule and logistics issues. Quality drops many times to make up time. Then, you begin to lose control of costs.”
Baumgartner noted that singular installation partners offer “one voice and one direction.” A professional project management team, he said, helps find “the sweet spot of ensuring consistency.”
One of the most valuable things that installation partners provide is documentation, including smart sheets, pre and post pictures, signoffs, and training.
“Documentation is how you live and die for success. The client can see what you’ve done through the end. There’s also history in the documentation so that, down the road, everyone can see the process,” Warner added.
“Without documentation, a lot of time is wasted trying to determine what happened. With it, all stakeholders have access to the information,” Baumgartner said.
There’s a lot to be said for specialized vendors capable of getting your most specialized, niche equipment back up and running in no time flat – but there are also repairs and maintenance challenges facilities managers face that are much more straightforward.
When their facilities are experiencing an issue, most commercial business owners or managers simply hand off the work to the company in charge of managing the building.
However, there’s a lot more work to these projects than meets the eye. For instance, how are these repair and maintenance projects priced? How do companies balance the need for high quality work with fair costs for all parties involved?
Finding a service provider is never easy. Facilities need someone who will be a partner, will be on site when needed and won’t create any additional headaches.
Vixxo not only works with top-class service providers but has assembled a quality service provider network in cities all over North America.
Assembling that network requires a lot of vetting, plus a fair amount of recommendations via other trusted service providers or clients, said Chad Schroeder, Director of Service Provider Relationship Management. Those service providers also must be committed to the task at hand.
Kelly Fitzroy, Director of Operations for Vixxo’s Coffee Brew & Grind Division, and Luc Poirier, Sr. Director of Enterprise Performance with Vixxo, continued their conversation on beverage equipment maintenance as part of a holistic facilities maintenance program strategy. This episode is the second part of a two-part discussion.
There are many moving parts to a facilities maintenance program, and an integral piece of that puzzle is beverage equipment maintenance. Kelly Fitzroy, Director of Operations for Vixxo’s Coffee Brew & Grind Division, and Luc Poirier, Sr. Director of Enterprise Performance with Vixxo, brought their insights and experience to unpack which industries and market factors are expanding beverage equipment to different facilities.
Like all other areas of a business, facilities need to look at their options from time to time. And, with so many things happening today in the world of facilities maintenance and myriad vendor options to explore, now may be the perfect time to take advantage of a request for proposal (RFP).
Convenience stores, for the most part, have remained open during the pandemic. But with travel light and many working and learning remotely, sales are spiraling downward.
Sumit Kar, Sr. Director of Operations, and Matt Wholley, Sr. Director of Client Relations at Vixxo, know managing facilities during this unprecedented time can be a maneuvering balancing act. The offered insights and guidance for c-store facilities managers on how to successfully navigate this difficult time.
For those who don’t know, facility managers are by and large, the men and women who are responsible for keeping equipment up and running and keeping costs down. In short — they make a building work. While technology can make all of our lives easier, it can also make things more difficult. Facility managers have experience with this first hand.
Jim McCarthy, Chief Technology Officer at Vixxo, illustrated how technology can raise their job expectations. “Well, first and foremost, the facilities manager's job isn't getting any easier, right?” McCarthy said. He used gas stations as an example, as some of his customers are in the convenience gas station space. 25 years ago, if you went to a gas station there may have been a rack refrigeration unit with some cold beverages. You might have a microwave to heat up a burrito or a simple setup like that, but technology and advancements have taken that simple arrangement and stepped it up a notch. “Now today, you walk into some of these big, mega complex gas stations. It's a quick service restaurant, so they're dealing with ovens. They're dealing with soda fountains, they're dealing with espresso machines, ice cream machines, you name it, it's in these convenience stores. So the mere fact of a facilities manager in that space from 25 years ago to today, it's completely changed,” McCarthy explained.
Now that gas stations are also mini restaurants and convenience stores, the complexity of managing a facility increased in part because of the type of equipment required. “Now you take on the complexity of each piece of equipment, you can't just have an HVAC tech on staff, and a fuel guy on staff and fix all your problems in your store. Now you need an oven specialist, you need the espresso guy, you need the soda fountain guy, you need the ice machine guy, you're gonna need all that. Those are problems that they're facing today,” McCarthy said.
OEMs and manufacturers handling large product launches often struggle with operational efficiency and installation. Fortunately, an operational partner can ease that inefficiency.
Vixxo Director of Construction Eric Warner and Vice President of Projects and Partner Development Ryan Baumgartner explored with host Daniel Litwin how a partner like Vixxo can bring both increased speed and scalability to OEM and manufacturer workflows.
Typically, Baumgartner said, product deployments that see retailers attempt to use their own install groups, project managers and more cause thrash, as retailers aren’t prepared for that level of bandwidth. That’s where Vixxo comes in.
An outsourced partner can complete such projects in significantly less time, bringing an increased speed to market without sacrificing the capabilities to get the job done right or ballooning costs.
“It’s a much more cost-effective solution, and it removes that thrash from your internal organizations,” Baumgartner said.
In essence, adding an outsourced operational partner brings that increased speed, even for high-velocity, high-volume projects, helping companies realize revenue faster, reduce their operational burden and overhead, and protect customers and uphold reputation by having complete visibility into logistics and scheduling that allows for oversight and accountability.
Facilities managers always need a plan to deal with natural disasters, such as fires and hurricanes. But throw in a pandemic and add social unrest into the equation and, suddenly, what disaster preparedness looks like for a business’ facility manager is a whole lot different.
Vixxo’s Penny Carter, Vice President of Operational Excellence, and Johannes Guese, Director of Service Provider Management, spoke about today’s disaster challenges and what companies can do to get proactive with preparedness.
“COVID has added another variable when planning for disasters, because it is, in and of itself, a type of disaster that businesses have to plan for,” Guese said.
Many things took businesses by surprise, from infrastructure changes, i.e., installing plexiglass protection shielding, social distancing markers and signage, to the scarcity of resources from employees to vendors and materials.
And, when firms and stores began opening back up, disinfection cleaning supplies became high in demand.
Are facilities managers not proactive enough in terms of disaster preparedness?
“Depending on the knowledge of a facilities department or the customer business owner, we find they either approach it right up front and, together in partnership, we work right through it," Carter said. "Or they come to us at the last minute saying, ‘I don’t understand what to do, can you help me?’ It’s being an active player in their business and guiding them as you’re watching the situation per season.”
It’s no secret the pandemic’s brought many economic and logistic challenges to every single industry. On this installment of Get Your Fix, Vixxo’s Sr. VP of Sales & Marketing, Rick Upton, and the VP of Solutions Architecture, Michael Sutherland, focused their attention on four specific verticals (retail, restaurants, convenience, and grocery.)
What procurement challenges do these verticals face, how have these issues intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic, and how can robust data analysis help procurers tackle these challenges?
“There is a lot of complexity that everyone in procurement is dealing with,” Upton said. “Everyone has a growing workload with continued cuts. They are trying to do more with less.”
“I see procurers taking on more and more categories,” Sutherland added. “Where they may have been on the re-sale side, now, potentially, they are focusing on the not for re-sale side. Instead of buying goods and services and fixtures, they're challenged with whole new categories.”
While Sutherland knows the procurers Vixxo partners with are up to the challenge, they are looking for guidance.
Looking at vertical specific challenges, the wide variety of offerings in grocery stores is a big one. The grocery store is akin to the retail experience, with many dining options and delivery services layering complexity into the procurement department.
In addition to adding COVID-19 to the mix, stocking issues and finding new ways to make the grocery experience safe are the new concerns.
“I think grocery stores face certain procurement challenges that are spilling over to facilities,” Sutherland said.
And while convenience, retail and restaurants all share similarities to the challenges faced by grocery stores, each one has its unique procurement issues to solve.
One constant remains: they all need experienced partners to guide them through this pandemic and help create solutions that will give procurement the tools they need to be successful and innovate.
In a time when mental energy is expounded on even the simplest tasks, it may be easy to forget about refrigeration.
Since it involves some of the longest-lasting equipment in a store, it can slip the mind. However, there’s a list of things that need to be done to make sure the system is still running properly and not developing issues that could cost business owners down the line.
“A preventative maintenance program is definitely at the top of that list. Let’s fix things before they cause cascading failures and you really end up spending a lot of money that you could’ve gotten in front of,” said Nick Krusch, Director, Client Relations at Vixxo. “That’s a big piece of it, especially the basic pieces of those preventative maintenance programs like filter changes and coil cleanings in order to keep the efficiency of the units operating optimally.”
Keeping a close relationship with the facilities manager and understanding what some of the challenges they’re facing are also can be critical for good upkeep.
“We bring experience and recommendations from really trusted business partners and implement business practices, so we can go to our customers with suggested scopes of work that may be really comprehensive,” said Bryan Hartnett, Vixxo’s SVP of Service Center Operations. “We can point out the pros and cons, like, ‘Here’s your risk if you don’t include these things. Here’s what you may expect to spend. Do you really want to include refrigeration on a full-scope PM program, or do you want to keep that broken off separately?’”
There may be advantages and disadvantages to various courses of action, so working with the experts can make sure that your refrigeration maintenance is taken care of and sucking up as little of your mental energy as possible.
On this Vixxo video podcast, Vixxo General Manager, Sign, Lighting and Projects Tim O’Donnell joined host Daniel Litwin to outline the shifting landscape of signage and lighting – and provide best practices for facility managers looking to keep pace.
First, O’Donnell said, it’s critical to realize just how important the role these solutions play is to overall success.
“Signs are the most important advertising product a business can have,” he said. “And they’re often overlooked. When folks decide to open a business, they’ll design their logo, they’ll work on their environment within the facility … But they’ll often not think about the sign until it’s a little bit too late.”
A signage partner like Vixxo can help educate customers, ensure that there is sufficient time for approval and construction, and craft a holistic signage plan to ensure the customer receives maximum benefit.
Still, there are challenges to be navigated. In particular, O’Donnell said planning early enough helps overcome challenges regarding power, installation and support, project management, regulations and approval and more.
Litwin and O’Donnell also explored how COVID-19 has impacted and elevated those challenges and barriers, steps the industry is taking to mitigate that impact, and emerging technologies helping shape the future of signage and lighting.
Get your Fix by Vixxo host Tyler Kern was joined by Ryan Baumgartner, Solutions Architect at Vixxo, to discuss best practices and key considerations for facilities managers regarding HVAC.
Baumgartner went into detail about the value of implementing a long-term HVAC program.
“Putting in best practices and standards across an organization is extremely key in order to have the most effective total cost of ownership,” he said.
He expanded on key points that need to be a part of any facilities manager’s strategy, such as initial HVAC system and program evaluation, the value of collecting data over time, and the importance of compliance and execution of an optimized preventative maintenance program to impact the bottom line.
The pair also discussed some of the biggest challenges that facility managers face when it comes to maintaining HVAC systems.
They highlighted that facility managers are often faced with limited resources and constrained budgets that can result in reactive repairs and replacement instead of a predictive approach that reduces overall cost and extends the life of HVAC systems.
Other key topics that Baumgartner spoke to included common mistakes that facility managers make with regards to their HVAC programs and the importance of partnering with a proven and experienced HVAC program provider like Vixxo.
As the United States grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, virtually the only certainty is that the landscape will shift.
That’s certainly true for retailers. First, all stores were closed. Then, some were allowed to open. Others went to curbside pickup or started utilizing contactless payment. Now, exactly how retailers are operating and what they’re doing to keep their facilities safe depends largely on where they are.
Kyle Freeman, VP of Client Relations for Vixxo, said that constant change means it’s difficult to know how to manage a facility.
“What’s made it really challenging is the variability that is across local and state governments. The mandates fluctuate, they’re up and down, and it makes it very tough to manage,” Freeman said. “Local governments are really stressing what those requirements are, so they’re really creating the behaviors and helping the retailers, but when they bounce up and down it makes it tough to manage.
“I think the facility managers, as well as the store teams, are [facing challenges] when it comes to making sure they’re in front of those.”
What the next step is from a local or national political leader hasn’t been the only tough step for retailers and facilities managers to predict. In a time of extreme mental stress, it’s tough to know exactly how customers are going to react and what their perceptions of a retail space will be.
They’ll look to see if a space has measures in place to keep them safe, said Nikki Boone, VP of Customer Success at Vixxo, but there also may be unease with even the most typical of retail displays.
“It goes back to the customer perception. I think the unknown for retailers right now as they’re planning for Halloween and Christmas and Thanksgiving is how customers are going to respond.” Boone said. “How much do we want to celebrate? How much do you want to put in a store to talk about festivities? And how do they balance that with, again, that kind of comfort and security that we also have all the products you need to ensure a safe environment in your home.
“We’re working closely with the retailers we work with to be very, very flexible, because they may find that the customer response is different than what they anticipated and need to shift configurations, shift space layouts and maybe even pull back some elements they took out to accommodate the seasonality.”
One of the most visible economic victims of the coronavirus pandemic has been the restaurant industry, which has struggled to cope with stay-at-home orders. Even with dining rooms in some regions of the country, many diners choose to stay home as the pandemic continues to grow.
Many of the most innovative restaurants were able to quickly pivot to a to-go focus, leveraging technology like delivery apps or offering grab-and-go meal kits or home cocktail options. Now, after battling through a difficult recent past, some restaurants are even thinking about the future and what it will bring.
“There has been a ton of thought leadership put into what the new norm is going to be because they’re thinking they know what they’ve done now - and a lot of the restaurants have done a great job with what the safety is today, but they still have to pivot and say, ‘What’s our growth going to be?’” said Arin Alexander, VP-Client Relations for Vixxo. “If we’re going to grow, what’s that going to look like? You’re going to see less big buildings being built and more small-footprint sizes. I think restaurants also are learning what their menu sizes can be and what they need to be.”
Restaurants that were already innovative in their use of technology were more successful adapting once the pandemic forced them to modify their way of doing business, said Gary Stevenson, the Western Division President of Vixxo. Now, those same restaurants must continue to think about how they can improve, with Integrated Facility Management playing a role in helping them understand their back end and how best to manage it..
“I think a progressive facilities manager is clearly focused on data, how they’re going to get the data and what they’re going to do with that data,” Stevenson said. “They need to be focused on having a top-class facilities service partner to help make sure all that equipment and all those issues are functioning they way they’re supposed to and they can focus on the in-store experience with their clients.”
To many consumers, the convenience store represents just that: convenience shopping. But Sumit Kar, Sr. Director of Operations, Vixxo, and Eric Warner, Director of Construction, Vixxo, both know there’s a lot that goes into making the convenience store experience engaging for the customer. Kar and Warner stopped by Get Your Fix for the first in a two-part series on what makes the convenience store experience valuable.
Kar noted three important variables convenience stores rely on to stay relevant and in business during a shifting landscape of consumer behavior and a pandemic that has impacted all facets of retail. “How do we control costs, stay competitive in the environment, and adapt to the customers' changing needs?” Kar said. “I think those are the things everyone in the convenience store industry is trying to solve.”
In recent years convenience stores have found themselves, with increasing fashion: adapting more and more to the shifting needs of the consumer. “It’s gone from a traditional convenience store model, selling beverages, and basic commodities, to a more retail model,” Kar said. “The consumer today is much more demanding. They want healthier, organic, and more high-end products.”
“The biggest shift I’ve seen over the past five-to-ten years is probably the size of the facilities,” Warner said. “They’ve increased from the standard twelve hundred, fifteen hundred square foot boxes up to five, six, and seven thousand square foot.” Stores are maximizing the lot space to include more gas pumps on the outside and an elegant, inviting décor on the inside. Increased offerings and capabilities inside and outside of the store are all drivers to increase foot traffic.
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In the second part of their conversation on the convenience store industry, Sumit Kar, Sr. Director of Operations, Vixxo, and Eric Warner, Director of Construction, Vixxo, focused on some of the science involved in addressing layout and aesthetic challenges of today’s ever-evolving stores.
Warner noted the changes in the past ten years in terms of internal store design. “In the old days, there was some paint on the wall and some FRP up to help protect the wall,” Warner said. “Today, you see ceramic tile on the floors. Instead of VCT, you see ceramic or porcelain tile on the walls. Now, when you walk into a convenience store, you’re not left to your own devices; you walk in, look up, and see exactly where you need to go.”
“The entire convenience industry is transitioning from the art to the science of it,” Kar said. “The physical layout is scientifically planned. The design stimulates buying and increases sales on products with higher margins. What is important to customers is how does their experience feel? Are they comfortable, do they feel safe, is the environment clean, and is everything operational?
With COVID-19 impacting every facet of the business world, how has the convenience industry dealt with the changes? “Convenience stores have been aggressive in instituting safety protocols,” Kar said. “The convenience business has responded proactively and effectively in an adverse situation to support the customer base.” And to satisfy some of the new customer needs during the pandemic, many convenience stores have adopted online ordering and delivery practices, much like larger grocery stores.
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In this second installment of a 3-part conversation on the pandemic’s effect on the grocery store industry, Arin Alexander, VP of Client Relations, Vixxo, and Michael Sutherland, VP of Solutions Architecture, Vixxo, focused on the evolution and changing role of the grocery store facilities manager.
Alexander said the facility manager's role at a store was always that partner in crime, the go-to person to fix something broken. But now, with the onset of the pandemic, that facilities role is so much more. “Now that partner in crime is helping me do so many more things. From cleaning my store to making sure the parking lot is extra safe, walking in, and to the back and the restrooms,” Alexander said. “I can tell you; facilities have been a heightened focus in the grocery organizations more than ever because of the value they provide to stores.”
“Historically, the store personnel were in charge of the customer experience,” Sutherland said. “They were focused on making sure the shopper had a good experience and facilities was responsible for the equipment and the building.” But that role is changing. “I have seen across multiple grocers now; facilities departments are also responsible for customer experience.” A clean store, which was always a function of facilities, now has a different connotation on the customer experience resulting from the pandemic.
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In this third, and final installment of a conversation on the pandemic’s effect on the grocery store industry, Arin Alexander, VP of Client Relations, Vixxo, and Michael Sutherland, VP of Solutions Architecture, Vixxo, discussed the challenges of maintaining a great grocery shopping experience for the customer while reducing operational costs.
In terms of planning for the future, the past several months has thrown out the rule book for grocery stores. The items people are looking to purchase, in what amounts, and the way they want to buy grocery items are all different now, and it changes day-to-day and week-to-week. How does a grocery store tackle making changes to meet the needs of the customer experience today, keep an eye on future needs after the pandemic, and still maintain cost efficiencies?
“I see the successful grocers planning for the long-term consequences and long-term expenses of the changes they're making today, and coupling that with an intentional change to their brand,” Sutherland said.
Some services that can create additional revenue streams for stores, such as online ordering, grocery pick-up, and delivery, saw quick adoption during the early months of the pandemic.
“Everyone has the grocery pick-up now,” Alexander said. “Even the grocery stores that didn't have it before this happened; it was amazing to see how quickly they got on board to do it, and how much investment they put in to make it happen. They may have planned to do that a year from now, especially some of the smaller grocery stores that we even have in our backyard here. They never had it before, and all of a sudden, now they do.”
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Arin Alexander, VP of Client Relations, Vixxo, and Michael Sutherland, VP of Solutions Architecture, Vixxo, talked about the myriad changes and challenges in the grocery industry related to the onset of COVID-19. This episode of Get Your Fix is the first installment of a 3-part podcast conversation.
Delivering a satisfying customer experience while maintaining profitability is always a challenge for grocery stores, but the pandemic has made it even more difficult. “Whether it’s brand identity, floor space, distribution, or personnel, things are going to be different,” Sutherland said. “Grocery stores need different safety factors, self-serve products are moving to prepackaged, and the equipment, and how stores maintain and deliver those products are all impacted as we go through this transformation.”
While a clean store environment is always a concern, the pandemic applies additional challenges to a store’s facility department to maintain safe, sanitary conditions in a fashion not seen before the pandemic. “Consumers have to see us being clean,” Alexander said. “They have to see us wiping down the conveyor belts. They have to see us cleaning extra in the store. We have to make sure we have safe chemicals and that they’re visible to our consumers. The realistic expectation is consumers won’t shop unless they feel comfortable.”
Sutherland noted many grocery stores that invested in self-service technology, from check out to buffets, racking, and distribution of baked products, or dry goods, have had to revert to older methods during the pandemic. “Now, stores need fixtures and floor space to distribute these products and services.” All of the economic benefits stores were expecting, from improved self-checkout scenarios, are on hold now. “We are seeing investment dollars that were set aside for new products and equipment, now consumed by the need to restage existing products.” And, as stores wrestle with these unavoidable factors, they are looking at which products make sense to maintain, and which products should go away.
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