The Unlikely Predictor of Retail Success
What 200,000 maintenance requests reveal about the health of a retailer — and why the cheapest rate rarely reflects what maintenance actually costs.
What 200,000 maintenance requests can tell you about the health of a retailer — and why the cheapest maintenance rate rarely tells you what maintenance actually costs.
There are plenty of sophisticated ways to assess the health of a retailer. Sales growth. EBITDA. Foot traffic. Inventory turns. Customer sentiment. I'd add another, slightly less glamorous one: how they maintain their stores — and how they pay the people who do it.
Ticked Off now supports around 150 brands across more than 12,000 retail locations in Australia and New Zealand and has completed more than 200,000 maintenance requests. That gives us an unusual view of retail. We don't see daily sales or management accounts. But we see what happens behind the shopfront. And after 200,000 jobs, you start noticing patterns.
150 brands · 12,000+ locations · 200,000+ maintenance requests
The warning signs
Well-run retailers generally behave differently. They make decisions. Maintenance gets approved. Safety and compliance are taken seriously. Problems are fixed properly. Suppliers get paid.
When a business comes under pressure, that behaviour can change. Approvals slow down. Essential work gets deferred. Invoices start ageing. Temporary fixes become permanent ones. Problems get passed around rather than solved.
We saw this with Cue before it entered receivership. Payments to Ticked Off had become late. When we questioned overdue invoices, we were told that a director needed to approve their payment. Alarm bells. Why had payment of ordinary overdue operating invoices reached director level? We didn't know exactly what was happening inside the business, but we believed it was a serious warning sign. Unfortunately, it was.
We're seeing similar behaviours at some other retailers today. That doesn't mean they're going to fail — but when established behaviour suddenly changes, we pay attention. Maintenance turns out to be a surprisingly useful barometer of organisational health.
Poor information can be just as expensive
Country Road Group presented a very different problem before moving to Ticked Off. There was an incumbent facilities contract with premium rates and service that wasn't delivering a corresponding premium outcome. But there was a bigger problem: there wasn't meaningful, accessible data available to properly understand what was happening.
Without data, how do you benchmark performance? Challenge costs? Identify repeat visits? Understand workflows? Or determine whether your incumbent represents value? Eventually, organisations can become paralysed. The contract continues because the contract exists.
Fortunately, Country Road Group's Head of Real Estate got curious. She sought data, compared alternatives and deeply investigated our operating model against the incumbent and others. Country Road Group ultimately achieved approximately 30% savings after moving to Ticked Off. And those savings weren't simply the result of finding cheaper electricians.
The cheapest electrician isn't necessarily the cheapest maintenance
This is where procurement can get facilities maintenance badly wrong. What's your hourly rate? What's your call-out fee? What's your margin? Can somebody do it for $10 less? They're reasonable questions. But the more important question is: what does it actually cost to maintain our network?
Ticked Off's scale provides a good example. Across 150 brands and 12,000-plus locations, we might have several clients needing similar work in the same shopping centre. Our technology allows us to see that. Instead of three handyman visits, three trips and three call-outs, we can potentially batch them. One handyman. One shopping centre. Multiple clients. Everyone saves — and sometimes a lower-priority job gets completed earlier than requested simply because we're already there.
Our technology can similarly identify recurring faults, combine ad hoc work with upcoming programmed maintenance and highlight repeat repairs that might indicate replacement is now more economical. None of that appears on an hourly-rate comparison. That's why I think the distinction matters: you can procure the cheapest trade rate, or you can procure the lowest-cost maintenance outcome. They're not necessarily the same thing.
Don't believe our savings? Test them.
We recently discussed the Country Road Group savings during a procurement conversation. The result was questioned. Good. It should be.
We regularly offer prospective clients a simple exercise: give us 20–30 historical jobs across a representative range of maintenance activities and let us show what those same jobs would have looked like through Ticked Off. Job by job.
Interestingly, in one recent conversation, enthusiasm for examining the evidence appeared to decrease as our willingness to provide more of it increased. Endorsements from senior retail executives who had actually experienced the model were similarly dismissed as having little relevance. It reminded me of an occasionally useful procurement principle: never allow additional information to interfere with a perfectly good assumption.
I say that with a smile. Because great procurement does precisely the opposite. It is curious. If a supplier claims it can save you 30%, don't accept the claim. Challenge it. But challenge the whole operating model, not one cell in a rate card.
What great retailers do differently
Nike is one of our favourite clients for exactly this reason. Their property and facilities people are decisive and strategic. They want data. They expect visibility. They ask questions. Then, when they have enough information, they make a decision and commit. They're easily one of the best store development and facilities teams we've encountered.
And perhaps that's the bigger lesson from 200,000 maintenance requests. Maintenance isn't just an operating expense. It's data about the organisation itself. Does it make decisions? Does it understand its costs? Does it take safety seriously? Does it have visibility? Does it challenge established processes? Does it pay its bills?
No single maintenance request can tell you whether a retailer will succeed or fail. But collectively, the patterns can tell you considerably more than you might expect.
Sometimes the first indication of what's happening in the boardroom isn't found in the boardroom at all. It might be an overdue invoice, an approval that suddenly takes three weeks — or an air conditioner everyone has decided can survive another summer.