Outsourcing custodial operations is a threat every facility manager is familiar with, as well as a growing trend in this downed economy. It seems that there is always some building service contractor knocking down the door to offer improved cleaning at a significantly lower price. And more often than not, managers spend all their time defending their position and proving the worth of an in-house crew.

Thankfully, managers don’t have to fight alone. Many have turned to their distributors for help.

Distributors want to keep jobs in-house as much as managers do because the decision to outsource can directly affect a distributors’ bottom line if they are a supplier of the account. This is because that distributor may not have a relationship with the new BSC, or the contractor is large enough that they purchase direct from the manufacturer.

According to an article published in Sanitary Maintenance, a sister publication to Housekeeping Solutions, lower price offerings from BSCs might be deceiving to decision makers. BSCs might be able to offer lower labor costs, but special projects will often guarantee extra charges. Managers should work with their distributor to benchmark the costs for these services by outlining the scope of the work, staffing levels, and an accurate estimate of the cost to clean the building.

With this analytical data, the manager/distributor team has a starting point to identify areas that can be improved and offer a competing program to keep BSCs at bay. Distributors can then train customers on the most efficient ways to complete a task or clean a particular area, potentially saving thousands of dollars.

To learn more about how distributors have helped keep outsourcing at bay, go to www.CleanLink.com/sm.

 

 

 




POSTED ON: 9/6/2010