As a floor care or commercial cleaning operation, your equipment is essential to success. Here is what we have learned from helping our cleaning clients with equipment. Time spent properly managing your equipment is worth more to your business than you may think.
You know equipment is valuable. You are the one who paid for it. But it is the strategic management that can make all the difference for your business long term. Your equipment is integral to multiple aspects of your day to day operations.
Equipment Affects
- New job opportunities are based on availability of functioning equipment
- Project timelines and estimates are based on functioning equipment
- Employee usage and effectiveness relies on proper equipment
- Employee safety can be affected by lack of functioning equipment
At Moody, we help floor care and commercial cleaners insure equipment that moves job to job, even state to state. There are many discussions about appropriate valuation for equipment and scheduling lists of equipment. But insuring, although important, is only one part of managing.
Creating an Equipment Management Plan
There is no need to make the management plan complicated. The key is to implement one and then execute it. We can confirm from years of working with cleaning businesses that they own more equipment than they realize. Clients are shocked when they see the value of a list of equipment they own. A simple plan to protect this investment can include the following: audit, tracking, maintenance, and communication.
Audit – An audit does not have to be elaborate to be successful. Even if it is paper logbooks or spreadsheets, obtaining a baseline of what equipment you have available is the starting point. Some basic information to capture in your audit could include:
- Description
- Serial # / Model #
- Current Location
- Owned or Leased
- Value
Tracking – An important next step after the audit should be a method for tracking the movement of the equipment from job to job. Tagging the equipment with QR codes or RFID tags can make managing the location of your equipment easier. The price point for quality tracking technology continues to drop and is now an option for most cleaning businesses.
Maintenance – Clients who have excelled in equipment management include a sometimes overlooked data point in their plan. This data point is the maintenance history of the equipment. It is not enough to have equipment at the job site. It must be in good working order. By including the maintenance history in the equipment management plan, you can stay in front of routine repairs and maintenance.
Communication – Once the audit information is put together and processes to track and maintain the equipment are in place you must communicate the plan to the team. There should be training on how to properly check in or check out the equipment at locations. Guidance should be given to team members on how to use the equipment and what maintenance issues should be looked out for when setting up or taking down.
Utilize Technology
Get some help with heavy lifting. Technology is assisting cleaning operations of all sizes in being able to methodically execute their equipment management plans. Yes, you can still use log books or spreadsheets but there are numerous database and logistic platforms that can simplify your efforts and create more usable information for your team.
Technology applications provide dashboard views for your equipment, including where it is located, who last utilized it, where it might be needed next and even maintenance reminders. Below is a list of just some of the applications on the market.
Popular Equipment Management Software
Get the full value out of your equipment investment. The specialized nature of your work requires that your equipment be mobile and ready to use. Insuring the value of this investment is wise, but also having a plan in place to manage for the long term will maximize your business.