In the past, it may have been easy to conceptualise laundries simply in terms of their core deliverables: washing and delivering. Now, however, as commercial facilities become more advanced, commercial laundry management is a distinct aspect of everyday operations.
Management is an all-encompassing term that includes almost every activity that takes place inside your facility. Ad hoc procedures and processes, therefore, can bring all your hard work crashing down, especially if your business is in a stage of growth.
In our post today, we dive into a few commercial laundry management tools, strategies and tips that help you increase your output significantly, organise your processes methodically, and streamline your approach to service delivery.
Control costs and improve efficiency with commercial laundry management systems
Technology and automation have advanced to a point where laundries now have tools to organise and run their operations for them.
So much so, in fact, that certain aspects of everyday operations are now being relegated to the purview of these systems. These systems monitor and control employee productivity tracking, linen tracking, resource usage, equipment utility and activity, and other, equally crucial elements of laundry operations.
While many systems on offer today are fairly comprehensive, certain add-on features and services add that extra touch in terms of what you can do. Certain software, for instance, allows you to remotely monitor and manage multi-site laundries over the internet using IOT as the core communications tool.
Others even optimise laundry delivery routes, helping you track your deliveries and cut down on travel and driver time and fuel!
Spend extra and invest in energy-efficient washing equipment
Energy efficiency is a buzzword, trend, and now a bona fide strategy to help commercial laundries use their resources more efficiently and stick to leaner budgets. Fortunately, water-saving, solar-based equipment are not only becoming more effective but also come with a more affordable price tag.
Some are even implementing water reclamation programmes, where wastewater is collected and reused for a variety of purposes. Here, the treatment systems used significantly reduce water usage and process and recycle around 90% of greywater the laundry generates.
Wondering how this helps you improve commercial laundry management?
By eliminating much of the cost associated with easily the most significant energy consumer, you can redirect spending to areas that require investment and prepare your budget more optimally.
Do a professional energy audit of your laundry premises
One important aspect of commercial laundry management is controlling energy costs in your commercial laundry.
This isn’t as simple as switching off lights or reducing your wash cycles by hook or crook; it means getting a professional vendor to audit your energy usage and provide customised recommendations on how you can cut down on energy wastage.
Depending on energy policies in your area, you may be able to enjoy subsidised services or tax credits for taking this step. Combined with the resource savings your commercial laundry system provides, you can manage your expenditure and direct your business in new directions and to greater growth with ease.
Turn to commercial laundry data and customer insights to enhance your operations
One strategy that’s particularly useful for constantly optimising your operations is turning to customer data and the insights arising from your own operations (laundry processing time, resources used for a month, laundry loads processed per day, and related metrics), to finetune your service delivery.
By taking a look at customer data, in particular, you can predict and leverage future trends to improve what you offer for more intuitive customer service. This helps you understand where you need to reduce or increase spending or which of your services are no longer in demand.
Commercial laundry systems that comprise CRM features, where the collection of customer orders, requests, and related information is done systematically, will mine this data and help you access insights with ease.
Follow best practices in commercial laundry management to turn your business around
Commercial laundries are complex, multi-faceted, and are often multi-location businesses that require seamless commercial laundry management. In the absence of this, the results are telling. Disorganised services, disgruntled clients, and sky-high costs are common scenarios for laundries that adopt an ad-hoc approach to crucial management processes.
Here, commercial laundry systems and coherent strategies can help you avoid these issues and change the way you do business.