FEATURE SEAMLESS INTEGRATION
As Regular Cleaning Services looked to find a new, integrated system to manage their business, they turned to TemplaCMS. Here, we learn how the contract management firm helped to create a seamless management system for the contract cleaners.
THE CHALLENGES Three years ago Regular Cleaning Services faced challenges that are familiar to many similar sized cleaning companies.
The first was how to run a contract- based business using a variety of unconnected systems, each managing a different element of their business. These included Target Control for pay and billing; Sage for accounts; Microsoft Excel for variation work, ad hoc jobs and stores; Oxygen, a free- standing Helpdesk solution and paper- based quality auditing.
Why is this a challenge? Because these systems couldn’t share data for transactional, budgeting or analysis purposes. For example, when Regular Cleaning Services wanted to deliver washroom products to a client they would order them from the supplier’s website, key the detail into a budgeting spreadsheet, then again into the purchase ledger to raise an official supplier order, and one final time to generate a client invoice – the same transaction recorded in four separate systems and all requiring manual reconciliation.
Further down the line, when Regular Cleaning Services 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.
The third challenge was using payroll software that didn’t operate in real time. Julian Lingham, Financial Director, said: “We would export timesheets from our software to spreadsheets and send them out to field managers. Of course they were already out of date. So our managers would have to update them with details of new starters, changed hours, absence, and in some cases recently started contracts, before returning them to payroll for the changes to be re-keyed into the software.
94 | Tomorrow’s Cleaning May 2016
“The process was time consuming and even then there was no way of highlighting budget variances until after the pay run took place.”
WHY WERE THE
DIRECTORS CONCERNED? For Regular Cleaning Services the problem was not so much lack of financial control as the high cost of delivering it. “With so much turnover going through work bills and consumables sales in particular, we had no option but to implement a raft of manual checking procedures,” Julian added.
“Just when the company was targeting rapid sales growth, the directors could only foresee overheads rising in tandem with sales, rather than proportionately reducing. At which point they began their search for fully integrated business management software.”
THE SOLUTION After reviewing several options, Regular Cleaning Services chose TemplaCMS, identifying four critical benefits.
1. They wanted the same contract data to be shared seamlessly across all their business processes, removing the admin cost of re-keying data from one system to another and the associated risk of mistakes.
2. They wanted their contract management system to integrate fully with their accounts and billing, enabling them to budget and analyse all revenue and costs at any level within the company.
3. They wanted their field management to complete timesheets in real time from their mobile devices, seeing data that was right up to date, so as to deliver an accurate and on- budget payroll. At the same time they wanted to retain control over the process with a built-in electronic system to sign off variances up front. They also needed full consolidation
of staff pay at individual level to accurately budget and cost ERC and holiday entitlements.
4. Finally they wanted full client- facing functionality, including quality audit templates designed to match client’s specific building configurations, a Helpdesk and a secure client portal through which clients could view key contract documentation and KPI reports.
THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS Three years later and Regular Cleaning Services are enjoying the strong financial control that comes with automated processes, built-in authorisation procedures and real time reporting. They have been able to control their central overhead during a period of 24% revenue growth.
Most importantly they are using the software to aid client retention by empowering field managers and by promoting transparency in their client relationships through the sharing of key contract data.
As Julian said: “TemplaCMS has enabled us to grow the business significantly, while actually reducing central overhead. Over the three years we have worked with Templa to develop the software’s functionality, providing us with a tool that is without comparison in the contract cleaning market.”
www.templacms.co.uk twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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