Panda Express Gains Efficiencies from Facilities Management Platform

Roger Goldstein, executive director of facilities with Panda Restaurant Group uses ServiceChannel’s Saas-based platform to source, manage and pay for maintenance and repairs at its 2,200 locations.

In the past, facilities management was disconnected and handled on the regional level, with each contact person managing about 150 locations, he explained. “With ServiceChannel, I have a global view into everyone and everything that is going on,” says Goldstein. 

With over 20 years of facilities management under his belt, Goldstein “remembers the old days when we tracked everything manually on yellow legal pads.”

Now with ServiceChannel, “the end result is much better,” he says. “There was no increase of effort from what we put into a spreadsheet.”

From janitorial services to kitchen equipment preventative maintenance “scheduled maintenance is required by code,” Goldstein explains. “Being able to track and make sure everything is completed on time or being able to dispatch someone to make sure it does is essential.” 

In addition to routine maintenance, store managers can easily use ServiceChannel’s mobile app or website to request emergency repairs to assets that are essential to up time.

With more than 40,000 work orders annually, “we generate more invoices than any other division at Panda,” says Goldstein who estimates without ServiceChannel, Panda’s ability to “go from work order to payment,” would require 34 more people working at corporate.

With a single system, one of the major benefits is the “collection of data and information we have to leverage in our future success,” Goldstein explains.

For example, Panda can use data and reporting to identify spending trends as well as outliers.

Being able to compare costs across the enterprise helps Goldstein manage services and costs effectively.  “In some cases, we can look at the data to get a better price,” he says. “It is has allowed us to collect data and report to operations what is happening in real time.”