Cleaning supplies typically range from 6% to 8% of your budget, and a lot depends on whether you include paper products in it. Calculating cleaning chemical usage is complex, takes a fair amount of setup and very few cleaning management software packages do an adequate job of predicting usage. Few cleaning software packages offer the range of analysis tools that we do in this regard.

The ability to estimate cleaning chemical usage is not common among programs of this type. Even among programs offering this capability, we feel INFORMED is outstanding in its power and ease-of-use.

Informed cleaning software, on the other hand, offers a full range of tools that allow you to manage this aspect of your operations. This can enable you to determine where saving can be made, realizing that the whole equation is one of process. Process includes the labor, equipment and chemicals you use. Although chemicals may be a relatively small portion of your budget directly, they can make a HUGE impact on your overall process and productivity. This is because chemicals can drive the labor—a poor choice of chemical systems can lead to large increases in labor needed to maintain a given cleanliness level.

Equipment used is directly impacted by choice of chemicals and both of these taken together drive your labor input. Informed cleaning software allows you to separately analyze all three—and then put it all together in the form of cleaning tasks done at certain frequencies with task times determined by equipment AND chemical system used.

This is easily done if you break it down into its separate components, the overall goal of maximizing productivity and cleanliness for any given budget is attainable. When looking at improving your overall process, we recommend you start first with the chemical system. Any given system has a set of tasks, and these tasks can then be optimized by available equipment. Since labor is the largest chunk, first assume a chemical system and set up an area type based on that system.

Use the available equipment choices, given the proposed chemical system to determine the base times of the tasks and, using the five levels of cleanliness slots, set up the alternative sets of frequencies that should result in differing cleanliness levels. Some investment in equipment may be needed, but ROI analysis on this is very easily done using tools in our janitorial software.

First, determine approximately what the cost changes in labor are expected to be given the proposed system, since these savings must be substantial to justify the cost and risk of change.