How to Increase Return on Investment in the Cleaning and Security Industries

Before investing in a project or while reviewing contracts, calculating return on investment (ROI) can help with understanding profitability. One of the easiest ways to calculate return on investment is by subtracting the initial cost of the investment from its final value, dividing this new number by the cost of the investment, and multiplying that sum by 100. 

Even though a more complex ROI formula for a business may factor in long-term projections or goals, analyzing this key metric may jumpstart a conversation on how to increase return on investment, while factoring in measurable goals that are both achievable and realistic. 

Answering the question of how to increase return on investment for businesses in the security and cleaning industries can involve better-evaluating costs, better managing those costs effectively and using software to perform real-time monitoring by making timely adjustments on the spot to improve efficiency.

Better evaluate return on investment

For cleaning and security professionals, the cost of labor is typically the largest expense. That sum usually includes wages, benefits and payroll tax. Indirect labor costs can include expenses related to accounting, training and operating a human resources team and other operational duties. 

Approaching the question of how to increase return on investment in a labor-based business begins by examining labor costs. For example, a company may sign a contract on a job that requires 50 hours a week of labor costs associated with a specific budget. But in reality, that company is spending 60 hours a week there on-site. In that instance, that company is most likely losing money, which means the ROI for that account is diminishing.

Having the tools to better understand payroll costs, like how much time was devoted to a job in terms of budgeted hours and the rate that employees were paid, can help improve ROI. In particular, the data from job costing can help companies evaluate if they are billing enough for their services, or if that business needs to invest more or less into a contract. 

ROI software tools

Utilizing technology to help reduce the amount of manual processes is a proven method to help businesses save time on administrative tasks, which can be allocated back into the business. Additionally, running relevant reports via software tools can help business owners better understand and eventually increase return on investment.

Job Costs Analysis Report

Business owners can use this report to list the current period and year-to-date comparisons of actual budget figures for select jobs. With budget filters, it is possible to examine the percentage over or under budget a company may have been on a particular job.

Scheduling Activity Report

This report displays billing and payroll figures based on the information from personnel scheduling during specific periods. For example, supervisors can review the current or previous week. Alternatively, the report can show information for specific job types. This tool is particularly useful for analyzing the amount of overtime pay workers accrued. 

By better understanding and then managing overtime pay, companies can minimize unnecessary overtime to ensure the business stays profitable. Increasing return on investment involves preventing the distribution of too much overtime pay, and software tools like the Scheduling Activity Report can help identify problems with overtime before they even occur.

Timekeeping Review Report 

Timekeeping is a major factor in understanding how to increase return on investment. To ensure that supervisors and managers have the resources to thoroughly review their labor and make daily changes in real-time, this report can be used to review timekeeping hours for a specified date range, and it helps with matching a pay period to get the properly calculated results.

Distributing the correct amount of pay via payroll is essential to increasing return on investment as it pertains to preventing fraudulent acts of time theft, such as ghost employees, buddy punching, workers rounding their clock-out time up to gain additional pay, extending breaks, or unscheduled breaks and spending time socializing during work hours.

How to increase return investment with software

Learning how to increase return on investment begins with better understanding labor costs and managing relevant expenses. Investing in a software tool that will create detailed reports to help managers review job costs, timekeeping and schedules can help contractors achieve measurable goals, such as increasing return on investment by 25%, as opposed to simply increasing ROI in general. 

In the past, companies have used ROI formulas to measure their return on TEAM Software by asking how this solution will help increase return on investment. TEAM Software can help companies eliminate using paper-based resources and instead support uploading photos, capturing numerical data and minimizing manual data entry. 

The software can also help with job costing, reducing overtime pay and making scheduling changes before issues occur. To work out how much your business could save and learn how your company could use software tools to achieve more return on investment, contact us today.