Every April, a major sneaker retailer captures and analyzes every store location across its U.S. and Canada portfolio in a single, coordinated cycle. The program started with one question: how does a lean Facilities team maintain a reliable, consistent view of store conditions without traveling, burdening store managers, or depending on information that is out of date by the time it arrives?
After more than four years, the answer has held. The two-person Facilities team now understands current on-site conditions across all locations from their desks year-round, by relying on a shared visual record built in Phygii, Immersion Data Solutions’ retail property optimization (RPO) platform.
Multi-location Facilities teams carry a wide mandate with limited resources. When a district manager flags an issue, the default response is a follow-up call, a request for store-sent photos, or a scheduled visit. That cycle adds time, introduces interpretation gaps, and puts Facilities in a reactive posture it rarely gets to escape.
For this retailer, the underlying problem was not a lack of effort. It was a lack of a single, validated view of what every store actually looks like and a way to answer questions as they arose, without generating new work.
The program the retailer built is intentionally simple. Once a year, in a single coordinated cycle, they work with Immersion Data Solutions to capture the full U.S. and Canada retail portfolio. Immersion Data Solutions delivers 360 VR Tours, site surveys, and consistent photography that can be compared year over year. The data is composed into a Phygital twin in Phygii, and the resulting from each capture becomes the shared reference for any question about current store conditions.
No additional travel. No dependence on store managers to document conditions. No version of the truth that varies by who you ask.
“It lets us be more efficient because we finally have visibility,” said the retailer’s senior Facilities manager. “What used to take five days now takes five minutes.”
A district manager and head of Operations recently asked the Facilities team about a proposed change to a store’s back-of-house area. The conversation was heading toward guesswork, assumptions, and scenarios built on incomplete information.
Instead, the senior Facilities manager opened the store’s Phygital twin in Phygii and shared his screen. He walked the group through the actual space. He was able to show how Receiving connects to the sales floor, where the constraints were, and how the space actually functions. Questions that would normally have triggered follow-up visits and delayed decisions were answered on the spot.
“Instead of guessing or asking the store for photos, we were able to see it immediately and answer the question in real time,” he said.
The reaction from the room reflected what happens when everyone can see the same validated information at the same time: the debate stopped, and the decision moved forward.
Once other teams inside the organization discovered the Facilities team had this visibility, Phygii became a shared reference point across Security, Operations, Visual Marketing, and Construction without any change to the program’s scope or cadence.
“Facilities leaders are being asked to be proactive on top of fragmentary, out-of-date store information. That keeps them in fire-drill mode instead.”
— Tia Kachman, COO of Immersion Data Solutions
The value of this program is not the volume of data it produces. It is the confidence that comes from knowing the information is current, consistent, and comparable across locations. Phygii creates a living, validated record tied to actual capture dates of each property called a Phygital twin. When a question arises six months after the annual cycle, the Facilities team can answer it with confidence.
That structure is what separates a Phygital twin from a folder of photos or a set of static floor plans. Photos age. Plans drift from reality. The Phygital twin is time-aware, auditable, and built to be reused across initiatives rather than commissioned anew each time a team needs to understand a space.
“What makes this work for Facilities teams is not that Phygii gives them more information, it’s that it gives them information they know they can trust,” said Nick Bonko, an Immersion Data Solutions account executive. “When the senior Facilities manager can answer a question from Operations in five minutes instead of five days, that’s not a technology win. That is a leadership win.”
After four-plus years, this retailer’s two-person Facilities team manages a full U.S. and Canada portfolio with the kind of visibility most teams three times their size cannot claim. They respond to questions rather than chasing information. They align stakeholders in real time rather than scheduling follow-up visits. And they do it through a single annual investment that compounds in value each year as the portfolio record grows deeper.
The program captures the full portfolio once. Phygii makes sure that capture is reusable everywhere.
See how Immersion Data Solutions helps multi-location Facilities teams replace reactive workflows with validated site intelligence. Watch the demo at immersiondatasolutions.com.