Industry Leaders Forum: Martin Callan, CEO, Freshops

How was 2020 for FreshOps? What were the highlights? What were the challenges?

2020 was a tough year for many, but with the adoption of digital tools for monitoring remote workers it has been a solid year of growth. We have also used this year to rebuild some of our key features and are excited to be bringing them to the market now and help our clients grow strongly into 2021.

This year we saw our 10,000th mobile app user come onboard. Expansion of our team of developers internationally and the recruitment of a business development manager in Barry Williams. We keep adding bigger and better pieces of the puzzle as all businesses do, and this year we have our sights set on key international markets.

We are growing quickly and we’re expanding the team for sales as well as our technical team with new developers. And this is a bit boring, but we just finished a major overhaul of our system architecture that will allow us to speed up delivery of new features and improvements over the coming year to better support the growth of our clients businesses.

How did FreshOps adapt and respond to the impact of the pandemic?

With clients across the globe, we had to respond based on how the pandemic was affecting clients in each area. Some clients we helped to deliver COVID reporting and ensure disinfection and cleaning principles are adhered to. And others needed help with their bills while things got tough.

We found many clients leveraged our proof of service delivery and task monitoring to track who was on site at various times.  Our task management and verifications was perfect for that. And others needed subscription relief over periods of complete lockdown while their whole business was no longer able to operate.

We have often spoke about how it is a special privilege to be able to help clients do their work at a high standard in the face of the pandemic, while also being able to help others get by with some relief on their bills until things picked up again.

What will be the immediate focus for FreshOps in 2021?

We have been building our suite of tools now for five years and it is starting to come together. In no small part to the ongoing and close feedback from the clients, we talk to daily.

This year we will be adding communication tools and auditing to our existing scheduling, rostering, time & attendance, task management & verification, timesheets and payroll integrations as well as launching brand new mobile apps for the cleaners in the field.

Running mobile operations is not easy, but with these tools together help us deliver a culture of quality and commitment across the team, whether in the office or in the field. team chat and quality audits/Inspections provide a top and tail to our solid operational support for a cleaning business.

What do you see as the major opportunities for FreshOps over the next 12 months?

Deepening our service offering and expanding our geographies. We have a tool that can help cleaning companies around the world and this year we get to take our solution on the road.

COVID has highlighted the importance of ensuring that work is done thoroughly and correctly. Our job is to make sure that is the case first time, every time.

How do you think COVID-19 will impact the cleaning industry in 2021 and beyond?

COVID has and will continue to ask questions of hygiene management of the work environment. If we are to keep people healthy and well, they need to come to workplaces that are healthy and well. Cleaning companies using software to support the team can be clear about what is due to be done, when and where.

Reports are empirical and proof of performance can be provided if needed. COVID-19 will drive the audit requirements of many remote field workers, but few more so than cleaners who are responsible for the completeness and correctness of the work.

Importantly we can also check that the contracted work is sufficient for use. If the work is being done, perhaps the site needs more work to maintain an agreed standard and we want to provide the proof of that for an objective discussion. We want freshOps to be the key to making that work well end to end.

What do you expect to be the big trends of 2021?

With COVID we have seen remote working impact other industries and it has highlighted how much work is needed to clearly provide instructions to staff in the field. In Commercial Cleaning we have been doing this for years.

We do, however, anticipate that site owners and clients are going to demand more transparency and accountability. We are working with our clients to ensure they are ahead of this curve and the quality and consistency of their work stands out from the crowd.

What is one issue the industry should urgently address in 2021?

Ensuring accurate payment for workers and providing safe work practices and on-site training for staff. We fundamentally believe most people go to work to do a good job.

As business leaders, we need to ensure that our teams know what a good job entails, and we also need to give them the tools to perform their cleaning well.

The tools needed is no longer just the latest microfibre product or auto scrubber, but digital technologies that also help them deliver excellent work every time.

What additional advice or guidance do you have for the cleaning community now and after the pandemic?

Manage what you can measure. 2020 has been extremely hard for lots of our clients and your readers. To remain competitive in tough times we need to lift the standards of our management.

The best way to do this is to measure more of your business’ activity and using software to measure your teams is the easiest way to do this. The analytics we capture via mobile operations software gives users a distinct advantage. More decisions made more quickly without making errors is the goal.

Is there a message you would like to share with the industry?

Simple data points help us make better decision more often. Our industry’s best leaders are already looking for better data to be better managers.

The days of running your team from a coffee-stained diary or onboarding new team members “on the job” are over. We help clients do so much better than that from day one.

The importance of the right data can be shown with a simple example. Let’s look at monitoring of footsteps. By aiming for 10,000 steps each day people get a clear and simple goal.

By monitoring the right data point we see people be more proactive and keep going to achieve their daily goals. They can work out how to get to their goal, and we want to measure that they have done so. management software can deliver the same simplicity for you and your team.

This article first appeared in the January/February issue of INCLEAN magazine. 

Read the original article here.

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