Centra Credit Union Case Study

THE CHALLENGE

Struggling to manage hundreds of facility requests with email and Excel

Centra’s four-person facility team is based at the company’s Columbus HQ, and they field hundreds of requests from 29 branches located throughout Indiana every month.

Initially, the team was able to manage incoming requests with email and a spreadsheet. But as the company grew—and the volume of monthly requests grew with it—it became harder and harder to keep up. So when Sharon Taylor joined Centra as Centra’s Assistant Vice President of Facilities, she immediately knew that the company needed a better way of managing requests.

“Before OfficeSpace, our request process was very ad hoc. Employees would email the facilities team, and we would track requests with an Excel spreadsheet whenever we remembered to fill it in.”

“The old system wasn’t well-organized and it didn’t work well at all. I’ve got maintenance guys on the road all the time, and it was hard for them to pick up an Excel spreadsheet and see which requests were on there.”

Centra wanted to make requests easier for everyone—employees, facilities, and even external contractors who were coming in to deal with issues from time to time.

It took me a year to research our options and whittle our choice down to OfficeSpace. I looked at about 12 software companies and assessed their pros and cons. Out of all the companies that we reviewed, OfficeSpace was by far the easiest and most intuitive system to use.

Sharon Taylor
Assistant Vice President of Facilities, Centra Credit Union

THE SOLUTION

Dramatically improving the workplace request process for everyone at Centra

Sharon wanted to make requests easier for everyone—employees, facilities, and even external contractors who were coming in to deal with issues from time to time. After 12 months of researching every available option, she ultimately chose OfficeSpace because of its intuitive platform—a key attribute that would make onboarding, adoption, and day-to-day management a whole lot easier.

Here’s how Sharon and her team leveraged Request Manager’s features to make workplace requests easier for the entire company.

Helping employees submit requests from day one

Thanks to its easy-to-use design, Sharon was able to get employees using Request Manager in minutes.

“Request Manager is so intuitive, and the ease of use of this tool is remarkable. It’s one of the main reasons that I chose it. And I think it’s one of the main reasons people are willing to use this tool within the organization.”

“When I trained employees on using the tool, I simply demonstrated how to submit a request via a Webex call and then gave participants the opportunity to try it themselves. People loved it.”

Request Manager is so intuitive, and the ease of use of this tool is remarkable.

Sharon Taylor
Assistant Vice President of Facilities, Centra Credit Union

Streamlining workplace requests into a single, powerful platform

Centra’s 400+ employees are using Request Manager to notify Sharon’s team about everything from HVAC issues and plumbing issues, to requests for help whenever somebody needs a new office or needs a new chair.

“People have also started using Request Manager to notify us that somebody’s moved from seat A to seat B, which means I can keep our seating plans up to date in OfficeSpace. I’m really pleased about that.”

Saving time with real-time updates, location sharing, and image upload

Every request is tied to a location on Centra’s floor plan, and employees also have the option of attaching a photo to each request—two features that are saving Sharon’s team a surprising amount of time. 

“We’ve trained everyone in the company to submit requests via Request Manager, rather than sending an email to facilities. And a lot of employees have downloaded the OfficeSpace mobile app. Now, if they’re walking around their branch and they see an issue, employees can photograph it and then submit a request straight away. That’s a huge help to my team.”

“The automatic updates have also been a big time-saver for us. Whenever my team opens a request that somebody has sent in, it sends the requester an automatic email back to say, ‘We’ve received your request.’ The ability to keep people in the loop in real-time has been invaluable to this whole process.”

A lot of employees have downloaded the OfficeSpace mobile app. Now, if they’re walking around their branch and they see an issue, employees can photograph it and then submit a request straight away.

Sharon Taylor
Assistant Vice President of Facilities, Centra Credit Union

Making life easier for facilities, maintenance, and external service providers

Because Request Manager is cloud-based, Sharon’s team and even third-party contractors have access to new requests and request updates in real-time.

“Before OfficeSpace, our guys couldn’t access requests while they were on the road. Now, everyone can access and action requests from their phones or their iPads wherever they are.”

“And the fact that we can also add some of our external service providers to Request Manager has saved us a lot of time. For example, if I know I’ve got a plumbing request and I don’t have any plumbers on my team, I can send the request out to the right service provider from Request Manager, and they get a work order. And I just think that’s invaluable.”

It’s really easy to work with OfficeSpace. If I ever have an issue with a new floor plan, the response times are really good. With Centra continuing to open new branches, I will send new floor plans to the team and they will upload them for me really quickly. OfficeSpace always listens, understands my issue, and responds fast. I just don’t know that any other company would do that.

Sharon Taylor
Assistant Vice President of Facilities, Centra Credit Union

THE RESULTS

Streamlined workplace requests, total visibility

With OfficeSpace in place, Sharon and her team have made workplace requests easier for everyone at Centra. Today, 400+ employees, a four-person strong facilities team, external service providers, and even senior management are all benefiting from an improved request process—all thanks to the introduction of a powerful, easy-to-use tool like Request Manager.