How a lawn care company upgraded, became more efficient, and realized just how much money they were losing…

My brother and a couple other investors bought a lawn care company, that had 300+ monthly clients, but very few systems. 

This was two years ago. 

Last year, I told him about a custom web app I had built for another client. And that got him wondering if it was possible to build a web app for the lawn care company.

His idea was to bring technology and systems to an industry which didn’t have a ton of technology in it. The barrier to entry for competitors was very low.

So, we discussed the details, and the build he wanted would cost him $325 a month. 

Basically, if you have heard of SAAS (software-as-a-service), the model I did with him is similar except it is custom SAAS. So, the company pays monthly for the use of software that has been custom built for his business.

Immediately, the results were substantial to the business. 

1. The manager (Tim) now had real-time data on the progress of the cutting of the lawns. 

2. He could easily create new job lists, or move lawns around as needed.  (There are 3 teams, with each team having its own vehicle)

3. Because the data is now all captured in the app, instead of taking 12-17 hours a month creating and sending invoices… he just has to press one button and the invoices are all created and sent out.

4. The invoices are created in Quickbooks (via the web app), so all their data is ready for bookkeeping and taxes.

And the benefits go on.. team communication improves, notes on the client profiles, and improved customer service.

Building on a platform

So, during the first year of use, I had an idea. 

I thought, we have all this data now. We have the addresses of the jobs. We have the jobs broken into lists. We have the employees broken into teams.

I wondered if I could build a routing process, to order the jobs in the list better to reduce travel (reduce fuel costs, man hours, wear and tear on vehicles).

So, I did some research, found someone who could build me an algorithm and tested it out. 

What I found was that I could reduce their 292 miles per week down to 151 miles per week. (3926 miles reduced in 6 months).

So, I told him how much it would cost for me to build it out, and he said yes. 

Just to point out something.. 

Every mile saved is a few minutes of time. 

Every mile saved is cash saved on fuel and repair costs.

BUT!

It also allows each team to take on more jobs. It increases the capacity of each team, because they spend less time traveling. 

 Second year ends

After running their business for a couple of years with the software, they looked back at the data and saw just how much money they lost by not getting 100% of the lawns cut each week. 

The estimate: $115k

The reasons why were plenty: employees taking time off, rain days, not working a minimum of 5 days a week, machine breakdown, etc.. 

Also, mainly…

The majority of the lists were getting cut each week. So, it seemed like it wasn’t that much money being lost when not all the lawns were cut. 

So, they have again asked to have some new features built on to show exactly how much money is being lost when lawns are not cut. 

The new dashboard is being built as we speak. 

So far, it shows where each crew is at versus where they should be for the week. It shows a warning if they are behind, and how much money that crew is losing. 

 The goal will be to lose $0 for each crew this year.

Birthday Party

Anyways, I was telling my brother’s father-in-law about the web app last night. (at my nephew’s birthday party) 

And this morning, my brother told me that when he was listening to me talking last night, he started thinking of all the ways it was saving them time and money. 

And he was coming up with more and more ideas of ways they could build in automations to the software.

Each saving them more time, saving money, and increasing profitability. 

So, that is about it. 

That’s the story.  If you want to chat, enter your info below and I will call you. 

 Also, after you hit the submit button you will see a little explanation of what happened when you clicked submit. (A software process for my business).