Take Inventory of Your Cleaning Business!

It’s hard to make some business lessons exciting.

This is one of them: Take inventory

In other words, know what you have AND where it’s at.

Why?

Well, of course, the obvious reason is you own the asset – and whether it be an auto scrubber, vacuum cleaner or hi-speed burnisher, it’s up to you to keep track of it.

(Lord knows, if you don’t… no one else will)

But, there’s other just as important reasons to take inventory.

First, the things you keep close track of don’t seem to ‘disappear’ as often – AND

stay in better shape!!

I don’t know if anyone’s taken the time to do a study of it, but we certainly found it to be true!

The equipment we didn’t ‘watch’ just seemed to come up ‘missing’ a lot more than the things we tracked.

And, the equipment we didn’t ‘watch’ just seemed to be poorly maintained compared to — the condition of the equipment where we knew where it is and whose using it.

It injects a degree of much needed accountability.

Make sense doesn’t it.

In fact, you can probably confirm the same thing happens in your company too.

Next, we had a system to know the location of

every set of equipment – as well as one for tracking vacuums being brought in for repair.

And we learned a lot from those systems.

For example, we may have found someone is putting a vacuum belt on incorrectly, or not emptying the
bag often enough.

By tracking inventory, we knew who to talk to and re-train on the proper way to maintain the equipment.

Another reason keeping track of inventory is so important is because – it allows you to maximize the use of your equipment!

Years ago, we would land a new account which needed us to provide, let’s say, a 36″ automatic scrubber.

Can you see this coming?

Yep, we actually went out and bought, or leased, a new machine, not realizing we had an extra one, in perfectly fine shape, just sitting at another account collecting dust;

That’s right, not even being used!! And, all because we weren’t keeping track of inventory.

It’s hard to put a dollar figure on how much you can save by moving equipment to where it’s needed most, by keeping it in better shape, or by reducing how many times equipment gets “lost”.

But it can be BIG.

So, even though ‘taking inventory’ isn’t exciting… increasing your profit is… so be sure to do it!

End of sermon.

Discover the Guru in YOU,

Dan