Why Real-time Data is Essential for Efficient Cleaning

Dan Teare, sector director for the mpro5 field service management platform from Crimson Tide, explains how data can unlock value during cleaning operations.

The pandemic has been an eye-opening experience, with millions of us now questioning just how clean our everyday environment is. In a time when personal health should be a number one priority, public hygiene levels are under constant scrutiny as the fear of catching a virus on un-sanitised surfaces plagues everybody’s minds.

For facilities management (FM) companies, this means an extra responsibility to assuage fears and put minds at ease. These can be simple acts of trust – the British Cleaning Council report that even just the sight of disinfection or cleaning taking place assures customers. But with the added pressure from clients making difficult choices about their financial plans, how can cleaning companies offer greater value and efficiency at a lower cost?

Dynamic cleaning and smart platforms

The answer for FM is dynamic cleaning. By pairing real-time data alongside intelligent automation, customers can feel assured that your approach is reacting and responding to their needs directly. Whilst this might sound complex, the simple set-up of a network of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors linked to works management software can guide you into the next step of innovation without heavy costs.

Using such a smart platform ultimately has a knock-on effect on all of your operations. In uniting all facets together under one network, a smart platform can use the resulting data in many different ways – all to better aid you in streamlining your processes.

How does work management work?

The complex workings of a work management system can be broken down into several key components. Initially, an app provides employees with a checklist of key tasks for their day, as well as updating with any immediate adjustments.

Another function acts as a central command hub, which can create workflows, audits and reports. A database stores all the data – both active and passive – and adjusts as the IoT sensor network further provides information to your teams in real-time.

Finding optimal efficiency with IoT data

Without a dynamic cleaning approach, finding the perfect cleaning solution can be extremely tough. On a rigid schedule, you might indirectly find that you are overcleaning or, even worse, under-cleaning facilities. This works wonders for the customer surrounded by a recently scrubbed facility, but for the unlucky soul arriving after the storm of a peak time crowd, it becomes a nightmare situation. This kind of planning cannot account for all scenarios, which is why effectively analysing and reacting to data in real-time is the key.

This is where IoT sensors become incredibly useful. By placing them on stall doors, one use becomes easier to approximate, and alerts can be sent to team members for spot cleaning at specific thresholds as per your preferences. The system will then automatically update the uses rule to find the most effective times for future spot cleans after a weekly audit. Gradually, the most efficient rule can be discovered as the system balances each audit score against the necessity for cleaning.

Long-term reporting provides compelling information

The results not only help to efficiently solve your immediate cleaning needs – they also provide hugely valuable long-term information for your company, both from a business value and customer reassurance point-of-view. To give your customers back that sense of personal security and reassurance that they need, dashboard displays can be created to give a snapshot of operations, adjusting relevant data as it changes in real-time.

Customers can trust in your ability to provide them with the best possible service. Not only are you directly displaying how your team becomes more and more effective based on adjusting to where they are needed the most, but deploying data-driven dynamic cleaning makes it easier to demonstrate meeting SLAs, reducing response times, and improving operational efficiency.

These dashboards can additionally be used for your own business expansion; by clearly and cost-effectively displaying your value and potential, expanding FM means winning new business.

Restoring confidence with the consumer

With the return to a pre-pandemic lifestyle in sight, cleanliness is a key factor in reassuring workers that it is safe to return to the office, as reported by recent surveys from the British Cleaning Council. Cleaner, closely-monitored sites should result in higher usage, in turn helping grow the businesses that you provide services for.

By leveraging a digital platform with dynamic cleaning works management, it becomes that much easier to create and deploy teams that provide the higher quality of service needed to combat pandemic fears. Real-time information gathering and analysis will give your company the edge needed to stay ahead of operations, and restore faith that the needs and concerns of customers are are your business’s number one priority.