Med-tail Retailer

KEY OUTCOMES:
+43% Growth in Locations
0% Increase in Facilities Headcount
Unified, Scalable Tech Stack

Fexa worked with a nationwide casual apparel retailer to address major overspending that was related to unnecessary and redundant vendor calls. Thanks to Fexa’s flexible CMMS, the retailer saved $393,084 by implementing call avoidance strategies. This represented a significant reduction in work order volume, which in turn improved the company’s financial outlook. 

Customer Situation

A multi-brand med-tail group offering optical exams, eyewear, and contact lenses across hundreds of U.S. locations was experiencing rapid expansion. With a 43% increase in retail locations following a series of acquisitions, the company suddenly found itself managing a complex and fragmented facilities landscape.

Each acquired brand came with its own tools, vendors, and processes. The internal FM team—already operating lean—now had to oversee multiple platforms, inconsistent lease data, and uncoordinated workflows. Leadership made it clear: growth must continue, but without growing overhead.

The challenge was clear. How could this med-tail retailer scale operations while maintaining cost control, visibility, and service consistency?

The Challenge

When the med-tail group began acquiring new brands, the facilities team was suddenly responsible for a sprawling, multi-brand portfolio—with none of the infrastructure to manage it efficiently. The pressure was on to scale operations, control costs, and maintain performance—all without increasing headcount.

Redundant tech systems and vendor tools
Each acquired brand brought its own mix of tools, platforms, and vendor relationships. Instead of working from a single system of record, the facilities team found themselves toggling between multiple platforms to manage work orders, vendors, and store needs. The result? A patchwork of solutions that made it difficult to see the big picture, standardize workflows, or act with agility.

No centralized lease or landlord tracking
Tracking lease terms, landlord responsibilities, and property-specific requirements across hundreds of locations quickly became a logistical nightmare. Important details were buried in emails, spreadsheets, or siloed systems, leading to delays in resolving disputes, misallocated costs, and missed obligations.

Excessive discretionary spend and dispatches
Without a unified system for managing and approving work, store teams often submitted requests that triggered unnecessary dispatches. This led to an explosion in service calls, many of which could have been deferred, batched, or resolved more cost-effectively—driving up maintenance spend and straining the budget.

Inconsistent approval flows and reactive maintenance
Approvals for spend and service varied wildly across brands. Some were routed manually; others had no guardrails at all. Preventive maintenance was often skipped due to poor visibility or inconsistent policies, which led to an uptick in reactive issues that disrupted operations and hurt vendor performance.

No easy way to bundle or prioritize work across locations
Without centralized data or smart workflows, the facilities team had no way to bundle similar jobs, prioritize based on urgency or cost impact, or coordinate efforts across the growing footprint. Each store essentially operated in a silo, which prevented economies of scale and increased administrative overhead.

The internal systems simply couldn’t keep up with the demands of a fast-growing, multi-brand enterprise. Facilities managers were drowning in manual tasks, finance lacked real-time insight into spend, and onboarding new brands felt more like a reinvention than a rollout.

The company needed a single platform—flexible enough to accommodate multiple brands, robust enough to automate and scale workflows, and smart enough to drive cost control without adding complexity.

The Turning Point

As acquisition-fueled growth continued, operational cracks began to widen. A company-wide review of facilities performance uncovered the scope of the problem: overlapping vendor contracts, redundant software licenses, and inconsistent maintenance practices were quietly draining resources across the portfolio.

The facilities team was spending more time managing exceptions than driving strategy. With every new brand, the complexity multiplied—introducing new approval processes, data silos, and disconnected workflows that made it nearly impossible to operate at scale. Leadership saw the writing on the wall: the organization couldn’t continue to grow without rethinking how it managed facilities operations.

Critically, the analysis showed more than just inefficiency—it revealed missed opportunities. The company was paying for multiple systems that offered overlapping functionality. It was dispatching service calls that could have been avoided. And it was spending time reconciling data instead of using it to make proactive decisions.

The team realized that continuing with a piecemeal approach would only add friction, risk, and cost. What they needed was a centralized platform—one flexible enough to adapt to the needs of different brands, but powerful enough to unify operations, automate approvals, and standardize best practices across the board.

They chose Fexa.

The Fexa solution

One platform. Zero chaos. Total control.

As the company navigated the challenges of multi-brand expansion, Fexa delivered the tools, workflows, and visibility needed to transform facilities management into a streamlined, scalable function. Rather than layering on new technologies for each acquisition, the organization opted to consolidate everything under Fexa’s highly configurable, centralized platform. The impact was immediate.

Unified operations across all brands
With Fexa, the company established a single source of truth for facilities management. Newly acquired brands were seamlessly integrated into the existing Fexa environment—eliminating the need for additional tech spend or retraining cycles. Every location operated from the same playbook, enabling consistency without sacrificing flexibility.

Custom workflows & cost controls
Using Fexa’s flexible configuration capabilities, teams created approval workflows that aligned with internal spend policies across brands. Discretionary maintenance could be scheduled, deferred, or bundled based on budget thresholds, trade type, or urgency—helping to avoid unnecessary service calls and control variable costs.

Smart lease & landlord management
Fexa’s built-in lease tracking tools provided instant access to landlord contact information, lease terms, and site-level responsibilities. Teams could quickly determine whether a service was the company’s responsibility or the landlord’s—reducing confusion, accelerating resolutions, and avoiding misallocated costs.

Automated approvals & alerts
Predefined spend thresholds triggered automatic routing to the appropriate approvers, and real-time notifications ensured no request stalled in someone’s inbox. This automation helped keep projects moving quickly and reduced time lost to manual follow-up.

Certified support partner extension
To support continued growth without expanding internal headcount, the company partnered with a Fexa-certified third-party service provider. This partner acted as an extension of the internal FM team—handling after-hours emergencies, overseeing preventive maintenance scheduling, and conducting regular system health checks and optimization reviews.Call avoidance strategy that actually worked
By implementing Fexa’s intelligent dispatch filters, the company drastically reduced the number of low-value or unnecessary service calls. These avoided calls translated into fewer vendor invoices, faster issue resolution, and less disruption to store operations—all without compromising the customer experience.

Key Results

With Fexa, what had once been a patchwork of disjointed systems and inconsistent processes became a unified, highly efficient operation—capable of supporting aggressive growth without inflating headcount or cost.

• All brands now operate on a single Fexa instance, with shared workflows and visibility
• Legacy platforms were eliminated, cutting technology spend and licensing fees
• Facilities headcount remained flat despite a 43% increase in store count
• Onboarding time for newly acquired brands was reduced through standardized processes
• Finance gained visibility into real-time spend, approvals, and vendor activity
• Facilities leaders were freed from manual admin and empowered to focus on strategy

By consolidating tools, standardizing operations, and integrating vendor and lease data into one platform, the company gained the agility it needed to continue growing—without letting complexity slow them down.

Ready to Scale Without Chaos?

Fexa helps growing retailers standardize, streamline, and succeed—no matter how complex your operations get.

Schedule your personalized Fexa demo today.