Top CMMS KPIs Every Retail Facilities Leader Should Track

We all know that leaders in retail facilities management operate in a very demanding environment. It’s a world where a signal equipment failure can cause a ripple effect throughout an entire organization, damaging both customer experience and revenue. 

Delayed deliverables from a vendor? That can cause a serious backlog in maintenance work. Unexpected budget overruns? Now your finance division is breathing down your neck. 

The complexity of the work of facilities management means that leaders find themselves responsible for a huge workload, including: 

• Budget management
• Routine and preventive maintenance schedules
• Emergent maintenance response
• Work order management 
• Vendor relationships
• Compliance reporting
• Countless facilities management software solutions
• And a lot more

How can a facilities professional stay on top of their day-to-day workload and make strategic improvements to their multi-site operations? That’s where your CMMS KPIs come in. 

If you’re in food service, check out our guide to restaurant CMMS KPIs. While retail and restaurant operations share some common ground, food service facilities face unique challenges around kitchen equipment maintenance, health compliance, and specialized refrigeration that require tailored KPI approaches.

CMMS KPIs can give you unique, actionable insights into what’s working–and what’s not

Every aspect of this job generates massive amounts of retail data, which you may or may not be successfully capturing and analyzing. When you understand which KPIs to monitor, you can use that information to improve your operations, eliminate redundancies, strengthen vendor relationships, and increase the company’s revenue. 

Your retail CMMS KPIs can help you transform your department, but you have to know what to track and what to do with that information. Your facilities management software should play a big role in your day-to-day decision-making and your long-term planning. 

When you’re managing multiple locations, the difference between tracking the right metrics and tracking everything often determines whether your facilities run smoothly or constantly put out fires. 

A solid, configurable CMMS provides the foundation for understanding how to leverage technology and optimize operations. 

According to industry research, organizations implementing retail data-driven CMMS solutions can achieve up to 250% ROI within the first year. The difference lies not just in having a retail CMMS, but in tracking the metrics that actually move the needle for retail operations. Understanding what metrics should your CMMS be tracking ensures you’re measuring what matters most to your business.

What core CMMS metrics should retailers monitor? Why are they important?

The first group of essential CMMS KPIs to track includes anything that directly connects your facilities’ performance with business outcomes. (We’ll get to the customer experience impact next.) 

Let’s look at some of these metrics. As you go through the list, ask yourself how much information you are currently capturing about these metrics, and what improvements you could make if you had better retail data at your fingertips.

Work Order Management

Work order completion times reveal how quickly your team responds to issues that could disrupt store operations. Think about when a refrigeration unit fails at a grocery location–every hour of downtime translates to lost revenue and spoiled inventory. How quickly are your internal and third-party vendors addressing these issues, and how much damage is downtime doing to your bottom line? 

SLA Compliance 

SLA compliance rates show whether vendors meet contractual obligations for response and resolution times. Tracking these metrics helps retail facilities management teams identify underperforming providers before small delays become major operational disruptions.

Cost Per Site

Cost per site metrics enable budget forecasting and identify locations requiring additional attention or investment. A store that consistently shows higher maintenance costs may signal aging equipment, inadequate preventive maintenance, or vendor pricing issues that need investigation. Resolving these issues could be as simple as providing better training to in-store staff, or it could be an indicator of a major budget commitment in the coming months. 

Repeat Call Rates 

Repeated calls for the same issue indicate that a problem may not be truly resolved. A temporary patch is rarely a long-term solution.  High repeat rates suggest either inadequate repairs, underlying asset problems, or the need for capital replacement rather than continued maintenance spending.

Asset Uptime and Downtime Rates

Asset uptime percentages measure how often critical equipment operates as intended. For retail multi-site operations, even brief downtime for HVAC systems, point-of-sale equipment, or refrigeration can damage brand reputation and customer satisfaction. Anticipating asset depreciation over time is an important part of the equation when analyzing uptime. 

Which KPIs directly impact customer experience?

Customer experience and revenue are permanently fused together. You can’t protect or increase revenue when you’re giving your customers a negative experience. Retail facilities management is, at its core, focused on giving customers a great experience. 

Customer-facing retail CMMS KPIs give you insights that will help you create an excellent experience for your on-site customers. The more comfortable and satisfied a customer is, the more likely they are to stay in the store longer and spend more money per visit. 

These include: 

• Lighting and electrical downtime metrics
• HVAC and refrigeration comfort levels
• HVAC/R vendor response times 
• Pest control issues, including pest activity reports and treatment effectiveness 
• Follow-up visits for environment-related service calls 
• Health department visits and rates 
• Cleanliness scores

Faith Espinoza, Facilities Director for Industrious, explains how her team uses these customer-focused metrics from Fexa: “Fexalytics is something that drives my decision-making every day, in small and big ways. I’m using it to measure our team’s performance. I’m using it to measure our vendor KPIs with our vendor scorecard.”

How can CMMS dashboards help retail leaders see issues faster?

At Fexa, we have made major improvements to the simple concept of a retail CMMS dashboard. Our role-based dashboards transform CMMS retail data into actionable intelligence. When you have a customizable dashboard in front of you, you can make the right decisions at the right time. 

Who benefits? All of the decision-makers in the company, as well as those affected by important operational decisions. 

Store Operations Teams

Store operations teams need immediate visibility into active work orders, vendor arrival times, and issue status. Their dashboards prioritize real-time information that helps them manage day-to-day operations and communicate accurately with customers about resolved or pending issues.

Facilities Managers

Facilities professionals require a broader view of retail data, including vendor performance, budget tracking, and preventive maintenance compliance across all locations.  Their dashboards highlight trends and outliers that demand strategic attention rather than tactical responses.

Customizable reports allow them to analyze spending patterns by trade, location, or time period to identify optimization opportunities.

Regional Managers

Regional managers benefit from comparative analytics showing performance differences across their territories. These dashboards reveal which locations consistently outperform or underperform their peers, enabling targeted interventions and best practice sharing.

Espinoza describes the transformation that proper data visibility creates: “The before-and-after was definitely Fexalytics. It’s about visibility—having more of it. I’m able to carve up the data the way I need to see it. I love that Fexa has customizable features. What works for me may not work for another provider. So having that ability to manipulate the data how I need it is huge.” 

How can Fexa support retailers in scaling visibility across all stores?

Fexa CMMS unifies vendor tracking across retail portfolios, regardless of size or geographic distribution. Designed with multi-site operations in mind, the platform centralizes communication, documentation, and performance data for all service providers. 

The benefits are extraordinary: 

• Automatic SLA monitoring 
• Standardized workflows to ensure consistent processes
• Location-specific customization to meet your organization’s unique needs
• Data-driven insights from Fexalytics

• Budget management with real-time spending visibility and forecasting
• Asset depreciation tracking for proactive capital planning 
• Vendor consolidation insights based on portfolio-wide performance data
• Equipment replacement timing recommendations that minimize emergency outlays

When you track the right CMMS KPIs with the right tools, facilities management shifts from reactive firefighting to strategic advantage.