Cleaning management and inspection programs created a buzz at the recent Building Service Contractors Association International Trade Show, this March in Dallas.

“Technology is impacting the cleaning and maintenance industry at an ever-increasing rate,” says John Jurich, BSC marketing manager for 3M Commercial Care. “In the face of increased materials costs and reduced budgets, cleaning professionals are constantly looking for ways to do more with less.”

Here are some of the new solutions contractors found:

S.M.A.R.T. software
One option was 3M Commercial Care Division’s new S.M.A.R.T. software program — designed to help with workloading, budgeting, scheduling and inspections. The system targets building service contractors and in-house medical housekeepers, but can be used in other facilities.

The Maintenance Analysis portion of the program is compatible with hand-held computers. It compares costs, measures tasks and estimates labor hours, as well as preparing and analyzing quality control inspections.

There also is a training module that offers a variety of computer-based lessons in English and Spanish. For more information, call 651/733-7266.

Online inspection records
Attendees at the BSCAI show also were talking about a new monthly-fee-based service called TangoPoint. Cleaning executives use a hand-held computer to enter inspection data which can be wirelessly transmitted to the TangoPoint Web site for storage and reporting.

The twist here is that all an executive has to have is an Internet connection to access a wide variety of inspection forms or to store data on TangoPoint’s server. This allows supervisors in individual buildings or on different shifts to remotely connect and update information though a password protected-system.

The program has been in the field for about a year and so far, operations using the service have experienced between 40 percent and 75 percent savings from their previous paper-based inspection processes, says Timothy Sheehy, president and CEO of TangoPoint Inc.

TangoPoint, incidentally, is an offshoot of Team Financial Management Systems, a software provider to the janitorial industry. Team Financial, in turn, is a spin-off from FBG Services Inc., a BSC based in Omaha. FBG is not the only contractor to form its own technology company. Mitch Murch’s Maintenance Management (MMMM), St. Louis, formed Network Specialists in 1996 as a provider of voice and data networking solutions. More information on MMMM and Network.

A WORD ABOUT WIRELESS
Hand-held, wireless devices such as 3Com’s PalmPilot are becoming more common for BSCs and in general industry, and they might soon become more convenient to use.

Some office buildings, hospitals and schools are installing campus-wide wireless networks, so anyone with a compatible device can effortlessly access the network and the Internet from anywhere in the building, without a cellular modem.


B2B or not to be?
A number of businesses still are uncomfortable making purchases on line. Almost one-half of those surveyed by Jupiter Research in a March report expect to do less than 20 percent of their purchases online for the next two years.

Purchasing agents complain that referred vendors and suppliers are not online; buyers are reluctant to learn how to use the Internet sites to buy online; and buyers do not trust sites to deliver the correct goods and services on time.

The survey did show some benefits to e-commerce; 71 percent of those queried cite lower product costs as a primary benefit, while 56 percent cite faster product finds.


JanCentral Launches Matching Service
Computer dating services seem to be falling out of favor, but online matchmaking services for BSCs are just starting to take off.

Facility owners and managers can log on to cleaning and maintenance portal JanCentral.com and post cleaning and maintenance requests. The request is then sent to pre-qualified contractors. JanCentral will deliver notifications of new service requests to contract cleaners and other providers via email, fax, and wirelessly to their Palm Pilots and other communication devices.


EPA Publishes Pesticide Info
Several new Web-based pesticide resources are available from the the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The agency has published its pesticide product label system on the Internet. The system provides images of pesticide labels that have been approved by the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) under Section 3 of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

Cleaning contractors who work in schools, hospitals and day-care centers might want to take a look at four new documents designed to help reduce children’s exposure to pesticides and other poisons.

“Learn About Chemicals Around Your House” provides parents and children information through a virtual tour.

The three other texts, “Read the Label First! Protect Your Kids,” “Ten Tips to Protect Children from Pesticide and Lead Poisonings Around the Home,” and “Pesticides and Child Safety” are available for viewing.

These texts also can provide some refresher first-aid information.


Cleaning on eBay?
Following portal Yahoo!’s lead, online auction provider eBay plans to offer eBay-branded storefronts to small businesses, according to a news item in Revolution magazine. Businesses can use the storefronts to acquire new customers and sell products and services. No launch date has been set, and costs and payment terms haven’t been worked out yet, so keep watching.

Yahoo!’s storefronts have been available for a couple of years, but it appears building service contractors aren’t using them. A search of “cleaning contractors” on shopping.yahoo.com yielded eight hits, including books, a pressure washer and vacuum cleaners, but no BSC sites.

MRO Dealer Consolidates Sites
Maintenance, repair and operations giant W.W. Grainger Inc. has consolidated its online businesses FindMRO.com, TotalMRO.com and MROverstocks.com into a separate organization named MaterialLogic.com. Also, the company’s main Web site at www.grainger.com has been revised to reduce the cost of order processing, contract administration and customer service.




POSTED ON: 5/1/2001