Work Question: Asset Management

MrNightly

Ok, so I just started my new job two weeks ago, and I absolutely love it! It's the best thing that's happened to me in work, in a long long time. I'm a project manager of a commercial flooring company. Pretty high flow of jobs, I'm still learning the ropes, but already in 2 weeks have dealt with over 9 new projects. Freakin' busy, but lovin' it.

I already was asked by the boss (Founded the company 7 years ago) to write SOP (Standard Operation Procedures) for a bunch of the processes we use... and have almost completed quite a few of them.

He then mentioned to me yesterday, that he really wants our company to step into the Asset Management aspect of flooring... but hasn't really started it yet. He feels that replacement, and maintenance of the floors we sell will generate a TON of repeat business...as well as let the customer know the best way to treat and care for their flooring... so here's my long winded question:

I want to create a nice, neat, pretty folder that is handed to the customer after installation and completion of the flooring projects (Tile, stone, Carpet Tile, Wood, Bamboo, Terrazzo, Rubber... you name it, we do it!!!) The folder would include information on the product's they had installed, normal wear and tear of the product, life cycle and a scheduled maintenance program for replacement (etc etc) Does anybody have experience in something like this? The goal would be to extend the life of their flooring by replacing high traffic area's, and over a period of say, 10 years, their entire carpet would be replaced and new... It would also be to bring them back for repeat business.

I know my boss will let me create anything I want to, he really wants me to run with ideas... so any thoughts on this for me? Websites that could help structure it?

I don't want it to be a plain WORD document, ya know? But something they will keep on file, look at and say, WOW... and also compel them to maintain their flooring... Our company is called "Image Flooring" and we do a TON of custom fancy work... as well as run of the mill stuff. As you can tell, I'm extremely excited to be working here, and want this Asset Management program to be a HUGE hit!

So... any ideas or experience with this kinda stuff?

Thanks

AALEE

I would imagine if your boss read this thread you would be last weeks trash. How dare you solicite a concept from a pool of ideas you are not associated with nor willing to reap the benefit. Grow up and do your own homwork.

Polkitup2

Geez, take a chill pill AALEE We like to help fellow members out around here if we can.

engtaz

Young Padawon talking trash early as a Polkie. No a good way to start. What makes this one of the best forums out there is the help provided to all on many subjects.

Early B.

What you're trying to accomplish is very good, but the other side of it is that it'll likely be a huge administrative burden to do this, unless the process can be automated as much as possible. In other words, you gotta have a way to tie in the customer with some sort of tracking system that reminds you when to contact your customer in the future and what the message should entail. I would imagine the messages would be customized based on what the customer had installed. The analogy is how MS Outlook is used as a contact management tool to track customers. What you're trying to do sounds a bit more sophisticated. In any case, it's gonna take a lot of work to maintain consistently.

How do you guys currently track customers and their scheduled maintenance? What information do you maintain on customers electronically and by what mechanism, i.e., POS software?

jdhdiggs

I read aalee's comments as sarcasm, perhaps some clarity on his part.


M-Night: I would set it up either as a mail merge word doc just to save you from having to create a plan for every single project/flooring. You can make these quite nice if you take the time.

The other option would be a small mail merge document with the specifics of their project and then a "generic" folder outlining all of your services.

edbert

My grandfather was in the flooring business for the majority of his career(T&L Distributing) and I know that they actually did something like this, especially as they started growing. They didn't really do the custom floor stuff as much while he was there, but they did use some of the asset management to see which of their customers were in the new markets they were expanded to so that they could provide flooring to all of their locations. Another thing that they did was teamed up with a local floor cleaning company that they trusted and used for last minute or emergency cleaning if there was something that needed to be taken care of after finishing a job. That way you knew the carpets were well taken care of. As far as tracking, I think the guys above have mentioned some great things considering the programs that are out there today. You can even setup reminders for your sales staff that will send them a note a few days before you need to contact the customer that would let them know what the customer originally had installed so that you could compare it to the products that you currently carry and setup a custom brochure or folder to present to them like you were suggesting. Hope that helps.

bikezappa

AALEE wrote: »

I would imagine if your boss read this thread you would be last weeks trash. How dare you solicite a concept from a pool of ideas you are not associated with nor willing to reap the benefit. Grow up and do your own homwork.

This guy should go into the corner and pound some sand.

Lots of good photos of floors with customers with smiling faces.

Fireman32

AALEE wrote: »

I would imagine if your boss read this thread you would be last weeks trash. How dare you solicite a concept from a pool of ideas you are not associated with nor willing to reap the benefit. Grow up and do your own homwork.

mabye he is trying to get to 25 posts to sell somthing.

Don't have any ideas for you unfortunatly but i wish you the best of luck with it.

PolkThug

MrNightly wrote: »

But something they will keep on file, look at and say, WOW...

I wouldn't look at it as a single document, more of a series of documents you would send the customer over time.

-Day one
-Two year
-Five year
-Ten year

m00npie

ACT! by sage. No affiliation but this is the software I recommend for any service related business that can't afford the big $ CRM (Customer Relations Mngt) programs such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle. In fact, some larger companies like ACT better than Big $ CRM packages.

Act will allow you to define your project life-cycle using a Custom Sales cycles and Opportunity lists. In addition, it performs all customer Mngt activities that you define such as reminders follow-ups, etc... From there, you can merge customer information into Act documents or Word documents. I think you had mentioned plain old word documents. Word is a powerful tool and presentation materials are as good as the user can make them.

If you have several documents (Cover sheets created in Adobe or Publisher, Word merge documents, Graphics) that need created, you could use Adobe Acrobat Pro to merge everything together into 1 .pdf document that can be printed by yourself or sent to any printing company.

For what you mentioned, it really comes down to you and your own creativity. These tools mentioned above are only as good as you make them.

Hope this helps and good luck!

wallstreet

Look to car business. You want to integrate into web services to send emails on maintenance schedule due now. Make it easy for the customer.

And where the heck did AALEE come from?? Another disgruntled corporate grunt?

jflail2

Haha, "how dare you" huh? Ok.....

HBombToo

I think there are a lot of pretty neat ideas here but IMHO the cart is before the horse.

My first step would be an effort in figuring out a half decent business plan. Look at building a basis of recurring businees and its value based on an estimate on a recurring load. This effort should have a minimum, maximum and median set of expectation. Also and just doing a little thought experiment would be how the incremental amount of materials purchased can reduce cost on greater volume during the acquisition process.

Finally when a decent and agreed upon level of expectation exists we can then buy tools and justify them based on increases in efficiency. This is where I believe the cart has came first since a business plan should not be derived from available tools....

HBomb

steveinaz

I've written many SOP's thru the years, and in fact I'm still working on the internal SOP at my job (internals are for more complicated as they get into the details of what you do, step-by-step.)

Sounds like you'll need an "owners manual" type thing---care and feeding if you will. Just research the different flooring materials, and put it together. Shouldn't be that difficult.

W WALDECKER

AALEE wrote: »

I would imagine if your boss read this thread you would be last weeks trash. How dare you solicite a concept from a pool of ideas you are not associated with nor willing to reap the benefit. Grow up and do your own homwork.

Hit the road Slick!

George Grand

How dare you come to these forums and misspell the word solicit. Go home and do YOUR homework, another word you managed to flub.

Welcome to our close knit little group there Chooch.

janmike

And when was the last time that he had an original thought?

MrNightly

Guys, thanks so much for the replies... I am very excited with the possibilities in this... but I may be jumping the gun a little soon. Probably should learn the business a little more first, then make the business plan, and THEN get the program in place to figure it out.

Regardless, I appreciate the thoughts. Some good ones. We currently aren't even using a software that would let us track anything aging wise with customers... I know they are wanting to get a new software down the road, so we'll see what happens. But, as mentioned above, this is a wide open area with unlimited potential in the near future.

Thanks HBomb for the words as well... helped clarify somethings for me!

Cheers!

brettw22

If you're looking for a 'care guide' I'd say either a single page double sided brochure would work, or a triple column double sided brochure would work too.

I wouldn't get too involved as far as it being a multi-page folder of information due to costs. Break it down to time frames and in each section indicate the floor type in one column and the care suggestion in the other column......

Doesn't have to be overly done.........but maybe have some 'cared for' vs. 'not' pics of floors and the type of wear you're wanting to help avoid.

BaggedLancer

If you do end up doing a "cared for" vs "not cared for" pictures don't tell them how you went about caring for them....you wouldn't want the customer doing it themselves cheaper!