UT Southwestern’s Animal Resource Center Sees 600% Increase in Efficiency With Coast

It’s crucial to have a system that works when you oversee the maintenance and support of 258,000 sf of facility space. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for the operations team at the Animal Resource Center (ARC), which manages the animal care program at UT Southwestern Medical Center. That includes more than 500 animal housing rooms and support spaces spread across seven facilities used for lab animal research.

The ARC’s operations team was previously using ServiceNow, but the software proved to be time-consuming and inefficient. It required extensive information before service requests could be submitted, slowing down the process. Plus, only the person submitting the work order could track it, leading to duplicate requests, inaccurate reporting and overall inefficiencies. It was also only available on desktop, so it limited the team’s ability to communicate about work from the field.

Looking for a New CMMS

Zeb Freeman, the ARC’s assistant director of operations, knew that ServiceNow’s user experience overall was a huge pain point, especially because they couldn’t track specific pieces of equipment and their maintenance history. It also wasn’t set up for scheduling preventive maintenance.

Freeman started looking for computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software with a simple Google search. He looked into some of the bigger brand names like Fiix and other facilities management software that had CRM systems, but they were too cumbersome for the ARC team’s needs. He wanted something simple, inexpensive and, most importantly, customizable. 

That’s when he found Coast. After a quick demo, Freeman started testing the software in late 2022 and officially launched it in April 2023. The ARC now has 35 users in Coast, and they use it primarily for asset management and work order tracking, but they’re also starting to develop their parts inventory. To date, the team has completed about 3,000 work orders.

Key Benefits of Using Coast

Coast delivered a mobile-first, all-in-one solution that helped address a lot of the team’s initial pain points. Some of the key benefits allowed the team to:

• Centralize their assets and data storage in one place
• Streamline work order management and real-time communication
• Label equipment so anyone could create a service request in under 30 seconds
• Create a priority system based on urgency, importance and potential impact
• Easily access historical data to identify trends and make key decisions

Completing Work Orders Faster With Coast

Because all their assets and work order management data are now stored in one location, the team can work much more efficiently. Supervisors can track work orders and have a clear picture of where their technicians are at any given time, while technicians can provide updates from the field, helping move the work orders through the system quickly.

“Before using Coast, it was a matter of weeks before we would complete a work order,” Freeman says. “Now, in general, we’re completing work orders the same day or within a few days.”

That’s a 600 percent increase in efficiency, not to mention a significant improvement in  customer satisfaction. 

Because ServiceNow didn’t allow the team to tie work orders to a specific piece of equipment, it was basically impossible to track costs. But with Coast, they can, which makes it easy to see how much they’ve spent on a piece of equipment and whether or not it’s worth purchasing a new one instead of continuing to repair it.

“With Coast, we can actually track costs and get some insight into problematic pieces of equipment or the need for more parts on hand to minimize downtime.”

Jessica Cook, the ARC’s supervisor of operations, adds that she likes Coast’s color-coded visual priority levels, so they can complete the most urgent tasks first.

Getting Creative

After two years of using Coast, the ARC team has some advice for others considering Coast as their CMMS solution. “Just do it, have fun and be creative,” Cook recommends.

She adds that setting up Coast has been a fun project to build out, and it’s ever-evolving because they continue to make the system better and, most importantly, their own. 

Freeman adds, “Everyone on the support side has been great. They also help us from getting locked into a certain way of doing things. They actually listen to understand what we do and then offer a way that actually works better through what Coast provides.”