TESTIMONIAL
Channel Partners
SITUATION
The Entouch Channel Partner is a leading provider of integrated real estate management services, including facilities management, project management, energy and sustainability services, strategic workplace consulting, real estate services, and capital planning. The Entouch Channel Partner team is dedicated to inspiring better business performance and enabling clients to focus on their core business. The Entouch Channel Partner has a long-term relationship with a well-known North American financial institution with freestanding retail banking locations. One of the bank's leading business goals is to advance the low-carbon economy by 2030, and they identified improvements from within their physical real estate portfolio as a priority. The Entouch Channel Partner consulted with their customer on how to reduce their carbon footprint with a way that would be able to impact the many different types of buildings and real estate facilities operated by their customer. After reviewing many options, the customer decided to implement the Entouch energy management solution to reduce their carbon footprint and energy expense.
CHALLENGE
In commercial buildings, issues like faulty HVAC equipment, inefficient startup and shutdown procedures, and overlooked weekend and holiday scheduling issues can go unnoticed or unaddressed — driving up energy costs and leading to increased maintenance and capital expenses to replace faulty equipment. Generally, the customer has two types of locations, a 3,000 square foot retail banking location and a 20,000 square foot retail and regional office location, with each footprint needing a slightly modified solution. The more extensive retail and regional office location had previously implemented a building management system. Entouch developed the Entouch.gateway to integrate with the existing building management system. While improving efficiency will have a significant financial impact and deliver on their sustainability goals, any measures would need to be implemented without disrupting day-to-day operations at the sites or compromising their customer experience. A successful approach would require not only the visibility to identify opportunities to improve energy efficiency, but also the ability to make site-level adjustments remotely and in real-time. When the bank decided to address these challenges, they chose Entouch to provide a simple yet efficient path to managing their distributed multisite portfolio, saving energy, and doing their part to save the planet. After conducting a short and very successful ten site pilot evaluation, several opportunities for improvement were uncovered. For example, in many locations, heating and air conditioning systems were occasionally running simultaneously, and systems were heating or cooling during vacant hours when customers and employees were not present. The results confirmed that enterprise-level energy management with a 'single pane of glass' view of the portfolio was the right solution to implement across their retail banking chain.
SOLUTION
The Entouch Channel Partner and the financial institution's leadership team selected Entouch.one, Entouch.cloud, Entouch.gateway, and Entouch.360 integrated into The Entouch Channel Partner's Remote Command Center. The combined solution provides real-time monitoring, FDD (fault diagnostics and detection), control, and optimization of building HVAC and lighting systems. The data generated by the Entouch.one and Entouch.gateway solutions deployed at the customer's sites is transmitted in small data packets via a secured cellular network to the Entouch.cloud. Dedicated analysts located at The Entouch Channel Partner's remote command center utilize Entouch.cloud to view the buildings' energy metering and control data points and receive automated alerts, notifications, and recommended actions to improve efficiency. With continuous monitoring and remote control and triage capabilities, The Entouch Channel Partner can take a proactive approach to build optimization and facilities maintenance. The Entouch Channel Partner's customer expanded the deployment of the solution from the initial ten sites to more than 1,000 locations within its North American portfolio and is keen to complete the implementation across all of the locations. The Entouch Channel Partner now offers the Entouch solution to its entire customer base and has deployed the solution within three other North American banking organizations. The partnership provides a comprehensive approach to not only improve energy efficiency for financial institution customers, but also to reduce operational, maintenance, and capital expenses for its customers — all while minimizing disruption at the site level. Additionally, Entouch.cloud provides a central location to access critical data created by energy management and third-party building automation systems deployed across a multisite portfolio. This technology is ideal for portfolios that span multiple regions with large teams and contrasting HVAC and lighting control systems.
RESULTS
On average, a facility achieved a utility cost saving of more than 17% during the first year. The second most significant savings was in maintenance. In the first year, the bank accounted for $4.65 million of maintenance savings due to remote triage and FFD, which reduces the maintenance troubleshooting time. With these tools at their disposal, The ENTOUCH Channel Partner helped to improve efficiency dramatically and effectively reduce costs at the site level by: » Eliminating simultaneous baseboard heating and HVAC cooling » Optimizing equipment startup and shutdown procedures » Implementing aggressive after-hours temperature set backs when the building is unoccupied » Aligning operational schedules with holidays and weekends » Providing remote control and visibility to sites through a single pane of glass via ENTOUCH.one and ENTOUCH.gateway » Using remote triage and control capabilities to reduce service calls and time spent on maintenance This approach has saved more than $300,000 in energy cost across the first 74 locations. In addition to energy cost savings and a decrease in their carbon footprint, the remote triage capabilities reduced operations and maintenance costs. While added visibility extended the life cycle of critical equipment, it helped avoid capital investments in new equipment in the coming years. ENTOUCH and The ENTOUCH Channel Partner worked closely to secure $119K of utility rebates reducing the client's capital cost.
Full coverage inside a single quarter
1,745
Stores brought online
20
Weeks from first install to full coverage
16%
Average reduction in annual consumption
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