Many people would have been content with this level of success but the cleaning bug had bitten and, following the sale of Prestige, Lockwood moved to the UK where he set up what would become Cleanright with his son, Richard. The family theme now continues with Lockwood’s nephew, Simon Duke, who joined the company in 2005, and this looks to be a winning formula, because Cleanright has seen its business grow by a massive 240% over the past five years.
Cleanright has always tried to offer its clients the very best service possible, with robust and responsive internal processes forming the backbone of its offering. With an aspiration to triple its size in the next five years, Cleanright decided to make sure that those processes would be fit for purpose and decided that they needed to update a number of areas:
- Payroll system
- Organisation and access to site information
- The capture and recording of the results from quality audits
- Budget management
- Financial reporting at a site level
Its search to find a tool that delivered in each of these areas led the company to CleanLink, and Cleanright adopted its specialist cleaning industry software just under a year ago.
“It was important to me that we found a software package that integrated all our key tasks so staff didn’t have to learn and operate a number of different systems,” explains Cleanright’s managing director, Simon Duke. For Cleanright, CleanLink’s Site Manager software combines payroll, quality management, stock orders, budgets, asset registers, site, client and employee information. “I believed that our staff would immediately benefit from the ready supply of information and functionality, quickly becoming familiar with its use, and find it an indispensable tool. Whilst I’m not always proved right, in this instance my prediction was spot on,” continues Duke.
“The second aspect that attracted me to Site Manager was that key information from CleanLink’s desktop software could be made available on an iPad, effectively putting a powerful tool in the hands of all our contract managers. Because we constantly strive to provide our customers with the best service possible, I saw huge advantage in providing our managers with easy, on-site access to cleaning schedules, staff and client contact numbers, and risk assessments. The ability to carry out quality and health and safety audits, create stock orders and record staff training and appraisals directly on the iPad, was also massively attractive.”
By using Site Manager, Cleanright’s customers benefit from quality audits completed on the iPad and signed off in double quick time; historical analysis of audits, identifying trends and actions taken; and ready access to a wide range of reports, including a list of consumable purchases by month. Cleanright itself has also benefited in a number of ways including:
- Better control of site budgets
- Reduction of chemical and material spend (0.75% increase to pre tax net profit)
Contract information now easily accessible to each of its managers, thus minimising requests made of Office staff:
- Increase in sales (customers love the iPad auditing system)
- Asset register controls
- Better management of periodic tasks (alerts sent to prompt the arrangement of works)
- On site staff appraisals and recording of training modules completed
- Contact numbers (clients and employees) readily available when required
- Improved visibility, at senior level, of cleaning performance and customer satisfaction at each site
“We constantly strive to be at the cutting edge of our industry and believe that by making use of new tools, our customers benefit,” concludes Simon Duke. “Equally, we believe that this demonstrates that we are passionate about service and improving our proposition. CleanLink has been invaluable in this aim and has proved a massive success, both for our company and our clients.”
