Perfect timing
Rising wages, a dwindling supply of migrant workers, increasing supply costs, immovable cleaning budgets – are contract cleaners facing a perfect storm? James White of Rawlins argues that now’s the perfect time to stand out from the competition.
Contract cleaners don’t see it that way, but competition in their market is near as dammit ‘perfect’.
The economist’s ideal of perfect competition envisages very many firms offering identical products or services, using the same kind of labour, with little or no regulation, or barriers to entry.
So, suppliers are mere price takers – they have to take the price dictated by the market. All the contractor can do is cost a tender as keenly as possible and hope to win some, and with luck, maybe more than the other guys.
Fortunately, not all contract cleaners are interchangeable. Canny contractors differentiate their services and gain a competitive advantage – by becoming more efficient than their rivals and/or charging more for enhanced or additional services. But setting yourself apart from the herd takes commitment to truly cost-effective cleaning and openness to new ways of doing things.
This is not to suggest contractors gain an advantage by posing as a company that aspires to invest in the most advanced kit, ‘green’ cleaning and paying the living wage, laudable though these may be. Instead, here is a hard- headed business case that more professional cleaning delivers greater value for money.
Cost-efficiency is still key. Whatever the wage rates, you can make better use of the labour that accounts for most of the cleaning budget. There are cleaning systems for toilets and washrooms, for example, that are two-to-three times faster than manual mopping and wiping.
Similarly, a simple yet automatic floor cleaning system can match the performance of a more sophisticated scrubber- dryer, while again, paying for itself in efficiency savings.
The return on innovative investment in such labour-saving equipment is relatively rapid and makes the cleaning provider more competitive.
Controlled dosing, combined with this innate efficiency, translates into lower consumption of cleaning agents and consumables. Another cost saving and competitive advantage is that it’s more sustainable too.
The other dimension of innovation should be cost- effectiveness: cleaning that’s not only cheaper but achieves higher levels of cleanliness.
These alternative cleaning systems produce more hygienic results. With ‘no touch’ toilet cleaning, all soils are dislodged and wet-suctioned away along with the sprayed cleaning solution. The low-cost, relatively low-tech scrubber-dryer also removes soils, leaving a floor that’s safely dry to walk on.
Moreover, these results can be proven. Contractors can show – by testing with ATP meters – that they achieve consistently superior levels of hygiene. Not only is this a differentiating factor, it can justify higher service costs to facilities managers concerned about the wellbeing of their building’s occupants.
More effective routine cleaning can also obviate the need for periodic deep cleans that tend to be costly and disruptive. This further strengthens the client’s business case for a premium service.
Our mindset – which more contract cleaners are buying into – is to constantly ask: what can do the job better, more quickly and at lower cost to the owner and the environment?
Sometimes, the answer is not the most hi-tech, sophisticated solution. It may be a cleaning pad, dipped in cleaning fluid, which combs the congealed dirt from escalators. Or lightweight carbon-fibre poles that allow high-level areas to be cleaned from ground level – a task made even easier with a built-in wireless camera to check progress.
These are also examples of how a contract cleaner can offer added value to clients with complementary services that save money and avoid disruption – while also delivering consistently better cleaning.
In a crowded, cutthroat market, this is the way not to just to win contracts, but keep them; which is far more cost- effective than moving from contract to contract with all the associated TUPE and mobilisation costs. It makes perfect sense, or near as dammit.
www.rawlins.co.uk
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