i-buildings – How To Win And Maintain Commercial Cleaning Contracts

We caught up with Tony, a veteran of Australia’s commercial cleaning landscape, to find out how the inception of the i-building concept has helped to display innovation to win and maintain contracts.

When it comes to successfully bidding on tenders within the commercial cleaning world, it can be difficult to differentiate yourself from the crowded line-up of competitors, leverage your unique selling point and win the contract.

Today’s subject, an industry veteran with nearly two-decades of experience has recently implemented what he calls the i-building concept with his key clients, which features a line-up almost exclusively made up by our range of i-team products. As you’ll soon discover, implementing the i-building concept has improved their cleaning results, reducing the time spent on certain tasks to free-up time for other cleaning activities. It has also proved an influential selling point that allows him to leverage innovative products and services that out-perform his competitors to win and maintain contracts within the cleaning industry.

“I’ve been with a large commercial cleaning company for nearly 10-years, now, having previously worked with a large contractor as part of their team for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, five-years with a large exhibition centre, and before that, I had fifteen-years in the hospitality industry.”

With this depth of experience, one major problem within the commercial cleaning sector has become achingly clear, and that is the lack of innovation within the industry.

“Cleaning really struggles when it comes to innovation,” he says. “Most of the innovation seems to come from Europe or North America, and Australia is always left down the track.”

This becomes increasingly important in the context of bidding on competitive commercial cleaning tenders. Rather than a problem, though, Tony believes this is an area that cleaning outfits can leverage their investments in new, innovative technologies to highlight the superior cleaning results and time-savings to their clients.

“Cleaning really struggles when it comes to innovation, I think that leveraging that theme of innovation has, and will continue to, help us when it comes to applying for different tenders. I want to show that we’re an innovator in terms of what we can do.”

“Any time you go to tender or are bidding for business, one of the key questions always centres on innovation. I got a couple of i-mop floor scrubbers three-years ago, and we really liked them. I got another couple, and that’s when i-team came around and introduced me to the full range of i-team commercial cleaning equipment. I definitely think that leveraging that theme of innovation has, and will continue to, help us when it comes to applying for different tenders. I want to show that we’re an innovator in terms of what we can do, and how we can do it.”

Tony says, “One of our clients at the time absolutely loves innovation, and that’s when I had the thought of installing some i-buildings. 90% of what we use in those buildings are i-team products,” he added that “I sent a couple of i-mops to our regional areas, and the client had a look at the work that was being done and said the results were absolutely amazing.”

In terms of the specific tools in the arsenal, Tony says that they’ve invested in the i-mop xl, i-mop xxl , i-team vacuums , the i-spraywash disinfectant foaming guns, i-land cleaners trolleys, i-drive ride-on floor scrubbers, i-matt and i-fibre microfibre products. He’s also ordered a number of i-cover 1.0 disinfectant spray machines, which he believes will “become absolutely essential, because touch-point cleaning is going to become a very necessary part of cleaning moving forward.”

The results provided by the i-team range of products have transformed cleaning times and enabled his team to take their cleaning results to a new level. “The i-mops are brilliant walk behind floor scrubbers,” he says, adding that “the whole range is, to me, something that is worthwhile us taking onboard.

''Typically, cleaning 300 square-meters could take as long as 40-minutes with a conventional spaghetti mop. With an i-mop xl floor scrubber, we’ve dropped that down to around 11-minutes. That doesn’t mean that I've saved 29 minutes, but it means they’ve got more time to do some attention-to-detail cleaning, things like dust and glass cleaning that sometimes we miss, or only do once a week that become a chore.”

Tony also helped illuminate a common problem facing businesses that are in the research and sales pipeline, working alongside business development reps that tend to focus on the square-meter rates and cleaning times, rather than taking a holistic approach to cleaning.

“The reality is that if people aren’t walking through the building, looking at different floor surfaces, furniture types and the layout of the area, quite often, you’re struggling to be able to meet those per-hour rates,” he says.

“A lot of the time they want to make sure that the profit margins are up, but for me, when I saw the range of i-team products, I realised that it can give my cleaners back some time to do what we need to do, in their four-hour shift.”

Tony added that “this is about giving my cleaners back time. I don’t judge this stuff on profitability, necessarily. With the innovation in there, and using our time to make sure we’re meeting all of our KPIs, next time we come up to tender it’s going to be extremely difficult for anyone to challenge us.”

“We’re using one at a large facility with probably 6 or 7 different floor surfaces, and the i-mop has been working really well... We’re also using the i-spraywash and the i-scrub in the bathrooms and change rooms of a sports centre with great results.”

As we wrapped up our conversation, Tony concluded that “I’ve been in the industry now for 16-17 years, and I just see that there are real benefits for cleaning companies that get onboard with i-team.”

If you’re planning on expanding your operations in the near future, it’s essential that you give yourself the best possible chance when coming up against the competitive tendering process. As we’ve discovered in this conversation, innovation within the commercial cleaning landscape is an often-forgotten yet essential consideration when putting in your application.

Read: Orbot Sprayborg the premium solution for cleaning and restoration.

If you can display to your prospective client that you’re an innovative, progressive and effective cleaning team with the right equipment under your belt, it’s likely that those on the receiving-end of your application will respond positively to your tender.