Regular Cleaning: Tackling Contract Management With a Comprehensive Cleaning Management System

Prior to implementing a bespoke cleaning management system from TEAM Software, Regular Cleaning leveraged a variety of unconnected systems to manage different elements of their business, including individual payment and billing, accounts, work variations, ad hoc jobs, stores and quality control auditing software. Why was this a challenge? Because the above systems were not built to share data between each other for transactional, budgeting or analysis purposes. For example, when Regular Cleaning wanted to deliver washroom products to a client, there were a number of steps that had to be taken to do so. Regular Cleaning would first purchase the products from the supplier’s website and then key the details of the purchase into a budgeting spreadsheet. From here, they would key the details once again into the purchase ledger to raise an official supplier order, and then one final time to generate a client invoice. That’s the same transaction recorded in four separate systems, all requiring manual reconciliation.

ANALYSING CONTRACT PROFITABILITY THROUGH ACCOUNTS AND BILLING

Further down the line, whenever Regular Cleaning wanted to analyse profitability at any level: site, contract, area or region; they couldn’t do so without first downloading data from the different systems onto a single spreadsheet. As Julian Lingham, Financial Director of Regular Cleaning stated, “In a very competitive market, it is important to be able to constantly review detailed contract performance in real time, allowing you to keep control of all cost elements, no matter how small.”

REAL-TIME, BUSINESS-CRITICAL INFORMATION

Because payroll software was consistently out of date, managers needed to go in and manually adjust hours. “We would export timesheets from our software to spreadsheets and then send them out to our field managers,” said Lingham. “Our managers would then have to update them with the correct details for new starters, changed hours, absences, and in some cases, recently started contracts, before returning them to payroll so the changes could be re-keyed back into our payroll software. The process was time consuming and there was no way of highlighting budget variances until after the pay run took place.”

The Solution:

Regular Cleaning chose TemplaCMS, powered by TEAM Software, to achieve four key benefits of a cleaning management system:

1. Seamless data share. Regular Cleaning needed a solution to ensure their contract data could be shared seamlessly across all of their business processes. With TemplaCMS, they were able to remove the admin cost of rekeying data from one system to another as well as the associated risk of mistakes that came with that process.
2. Integration with accounts and billing. TemplaCMS enabled them to budget and analyse all revenue and costs at any level within the company, seamlessly.
3. Real-time field management tools. TemplaCMS gave field managers the ability to view timesheets via their mobile devices, seeing data that was completely up to date. This not only gave them the ability to deliver an accurate and on-budget payroll but allowed them to retain control over the entire payroll process with a built-in electronic system to sign off on variances upfront. It also solved their need to fully consolidate staff pay at the individual level so they could accurately budget NIC ERS and holiday entitlements.
4. Support functionality for the client. Last but not least, Regular Cleaning was looking for a solution to reach full client-facing functionality. By leveraging quality audit templates designed to match a client’s specific building configurations through TemplaCMS, as well as a Helpdesk and a secure client portal for them to access, clients could now view key contract documentation and KPI reports.

THE FINANCIAL BENEFIT

Several years after implementation, Regular Cleaning is enjoying the strong financial control that comes with automated processes through a cleaning management system, built-in authorisation procedures, and real-time reporting. They have been able to control their central overhead resulting in a period of 24% revenue growth. Most importantly, they are using the software to aid in client retention by empowering field managers and promoting transparency in their client relationships through the sharing of key contract data. “TemplaCMS has enabled us to grow the business significantly whilst actually reducing central overhead,” said Lingham, “It is a tool that is without comparison in the contract cleaning market.