Muthu’s story of transformation from ‘owner operator’ to ‘owner executive is inspiring to many young entrepreneurs of the commercial cleaning industry; he started as a sole employee of his first franchise with Jani King, with his commitment and customer relationships he had soon grown into a team of 40+ with a strong book of diverse clients ranging from government buildings, manufacturing facilities, to warehouses and car dealerships.
Muthu has over 20 years of experience in workforce management for commercial cleaning and various other industries, a masters degree holder from the University of Ottawa, he decided to be his own boss and started a commercial cleaning business in 2009, he had a successful franchise run with Jani King where he got to work on big contracts like the Sctolandbank Place that hosts National Hockey League’s Ottawa Senators home games, concerts, and minor league sports.
Muthu had also worked with Tim Hortons where he had learned the managerial skills and managed the deskless-workforce consisting of over 300 people with an overall budget of $20M CAD.
“ The main resource you need is good people you can trust”- Muthu Rajendran
Muthu’s story of transformation from ‘owner operator’ to ‘owner executive is inspiring to many young entrepreneurs of the commercial cleaning industry; he started as a sole employee of his first franchise with Jani King, with his commitment and customer relationships he had soon grown into a team of 40+ with a strong book of diverse clients ranging from government buildings, manufacturing facilities, to warehouses and car dealerships.
“When I started, I was doing all of the cleaning work myself and with the help of my family, but I can only work eight hours through the night at a building that might need twenty hours of labor. So, I started hiring staff at the end of 2009 and gradually built up my team. I now have more than 40 employees.” - Muthu in an interview for the ‘ Canadian Business Franchise’ magazine.
It has been a year since Muthu has joined Stratosfy, as Vice President of Business Development and Customer Success. Stratosfy is a brainchild of Madan Kannala, who had envisioned a new-age workforce management platform that is custom-designed with the commercial cleaning industry’s needs in mind.
Muthu Rajendran was onboarded by Stratosfy to understand the key bottlenecks in workforce management for the commercial cleaning industry, given Muthu’s 20 years of inspiring career in workforce management, he is an obvious choice to lead Startosfy’s business development team and customer satisfaction.
How is your new role at Stratosfy?
Exciting!
We are meeting new prospective clients every week for Stratosfy’s Marker, explaining to them how Marker works and its inherent advantages, etc. I am very happy to see positive responses from many of these commercial cleaning companies. Once they understand what we are trying to solve through Marker, they too are excited.
As someone who has seen it from very close, I strongly believe that Stratosfy Marker has a huge potential, in terms of the value proposition and business growth it offers for commercial cleaning companies. I am looking at ambitious numbers, we are aiming at an overall 30-40% adoption rate of Marker among commercial cleaning companies in Canada by the end of 2025.
So as I said, exciting!
What makes you feel so confident about Stratosfy’s Marker? How is it different from other workforce management solutions currently available?
Stratosfy’s Marker is successful in getting it right, it understands the core theme of workforce management in the commercial cleaning industry and has been customized to address some very specific issues where the other workforce management companies have failed to address.
“ The commercial cleaning industry has become very competitive and challenging over the years, the key to success is the assurance of ‘quality and service delivery. Customers want to get value for every penny they spend, they want to know whether all the service(cleaning areas) points are cleaned, they want reliable proof-of-service, more importantly, they want real-time visibility.”
Proof-of-Service
So far there is no other product in the market that offers proof-of-service as effectively as Marker. Stratosfy’s Marker allows the supervisors and customers to check the proof-of-service in real-time through an automatic log at each task location within the client locations.
When we say locations, we have outdoor locations such as parking areas and garages, and indoor locations like lobbies, elevators, washrooms, meeting rooms, reception, cafeteria tables, etc.
This is where it gets interesting. Unlike other workforce management companies that are limited by the use of GPS, Marker uses its Bluetooth5 based beacon technology to mark each of these indoor micro-locations in the cleaner’s task list. These beacons act as sensors and automatically respond to the cleaners' presence in each micro-location, logging the details like time spent on cleaning the mirror in the washing area or on the cabin next to the refrigerator.
How receptive are Commercial Cleaning Companies to Stratosfy’s Marker?
We have recently onboarded some very recognizable commercial cleaning companies like Jani King, Uniclean, and Proclean Services. We are also in negotiations with some other big names, and actively giving demos everywhere. So far, we are very optimistic. Companies are clearly seeing the value we bring with Marker, most importantly, Marker is a low investment turnkey solution. Companies don’t have to go through major installations or infrastructure upgrades.
Maker is -pluck and stick-, easy to use, a small device that can be installed anywhere. It comes with a remote management platform on Android/IOS and a web dashboard. Commercial cleaning companies are looking at Marker as their easy and cost-effective way to go digital, on top of that they get added advantages like improved customer satisfaction, improved supervisor and cleaner relationship, improved productivity and quality control, etc.
As an expert from the Commercial Cleaning Industry, according to you what should an ‘ideal workforce’ management platform focus on?
For me, an ideal workforce management platform for the commercial cleaning industry should consider all three pillars involved.
What is it bringing to Supervisors, Employees, and Customers?
Supervisors
An ideal workforce platform in the commercial cleaning industry should enable supervisors to tackle issues like No-show, Proof of Service, Missing some cleaning tasks, real-time reports, and customer connect.
Employees
It should allow employees to record the proof of their service, report issues from their worksite, and cater to special cleaning service requests from customers.
Customers
It should give visibility to the customers, allow them to micro-plan and assign cleaning tasks, instantly get in touch for support, report issues in real-time, check the quality of work being done, etc.
How has workforce management in the commercial cleaning industry changed over the years?
I have had the opportunity to be involved with workforce management from the very beginning of my career, while working with Tim Horton’s I got to learn many things about managing staff, operations, and the whole nine yards of the business which helped me later on in starting my own business.
Transition to digital and remote management is the most significant of all changes I have seen in workforce management. As technology progresses, we are now looking at real-time data, edge computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robots in the commercial cleaning industry.
These tools are allowing the commercial cleaning industries to successfully manage their big crews while reducing the cost of operations and providing remarkable services to highly-demanding clients. ‘Quality of cleaning' takes center stage in a world of instant online reviews and social media critics. Businesses are adopting innovative ways to keep their customers engaged and satisfied.
The commercial cleaning industry has become very competitive and challenging over the years. The key to success is the assurance of ‘quality and service delivery. Customers want to get value in every penny they spend. They want to know whether all the service(cleaning areas) points are cleaned, they want reliable proof-of-service, and, more importantly, they want real-time visibility.
