Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 25th April 2024 Issue no. 1111
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SmartTask celebrates record year with significant growth in cleaning sector
The rapid adoption of employee scheduling and workforce management software SmartTask gathered pace last year with record levels of growth in the UK and internationally.
In particular, there was 81% increase in the number of field service businesses using the system, which now includes 40 cleaning service providers. It was launched in this sector during 2017.
"Over the past few years we have worked hard to understand the needs of the cleaning industry to develop a solution that possesses the right mix of employee scheduling and workforce management functionality," explains Paul Ridden, CEO of SmartTask. "This has enabled us to achieve impressive growth last year both domestically and worldwide, with our software now being used in 15 countries and successful trials underway in mainland Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia."
The number of facilities that are now coordinated using SmartTask grew by 160% in 2017 to over 16,000, across a 17,000-strong employed and subcontracted workforce. In fact, the variety of managed sites expanded significantly to include: Football stadia, national museums, retail developments, industrial estates, science parks, schools, universities, factories, airports, banks, hospitals and even a F1 racing team.
SmartTask continued to help soft service providers to gain visibility and control over customer sites with more than 250,000 rounds / patrols monitored, over 5.5 million NFC checkpoints scanned, and 50,000 electronic smartforms processed during 2017. Meanwhile, the intelligent rostering functionality is now being used to schedule almost one million hours of work per month, as well as calculating £40million of employee pay and £50million of customer billing over the past year.
A number of new innovations were introduced in 2017 in response to changing needs within the cleaning marketplace. Using its established expertise within the sector and taking advantage of the latest technological developments, SmartTask introduced a new cleaner on boarding / vetting capability to simplify appropriate employee screening and background checks. A comprehensive trial of Smartbeacons was also undertaken as part of a project to extend workforce monitoring and proof of presence options.
"2017 saw the number of businesses depending on SmartTask expand by more than 80%," adds Paul. "This record growth is down to our ability to develop a highly adaptable, scalable and affordable cloud-based solution that achieves proven business and operational benefits for cleaning services providers.
"We are looking forward to building on this success and expect to continue this growth trend through 2018 and beyond."
SmartTask's growing presence with the marketplace was further underlined during 2017 when it was named alongside University of Wolverhampton as the winner of the Best Use of Technology category at the European Cleaning and Hygiene Awards. The accolade recognised the industry best practice and high standards of excellence that the university was achieving using SmartTask. This included an increase in jobs per day by a third, as well as better performance managing staff and improving employee accountability.
The joint initiative from SmartTask and the University was recognised for the development of an advanced employee scheduling and remote workforce management solution. Since being implemented across the University's team of 25 cleaners, it has achieved an increase in jobs per day by a third, as well as helping better performance manage staff and improve employee accountability.
1st February 2018