Landscape Company Sees $41k Increase in Revenues with Sprint and Xora GPS Solution

“ Measuring job costs and time billed down to the quarter hour is no longer enough. We needed a system that would enable us to track time down to the minute. We also wanted to cut down on time spent traveling between sites, so more customers could be serviced each day. Xora helps us to do both and plenty more. It is the backbone of our strategy to automate critical business processes.” — Nate Sandstedt, CFO at Landscape Design Services

CHALLENGE
Reduce liability issues and improve the processes of routing drivers, assigning new orders and responding to unscheduled orders.

SITUATION
Founded in 1968, Landscape Design Services is the largest full-service landscaping company in Western Michigan. The company employs over 125 professionals delivering landscape architecture, construction, and maintenance services to residential and commercial customers. Landscape services, like other professional service markets, is an industry focused around time and materials. A service provider’s ability to minimize costs and maximize profits depends on how it operates. With its thriving reputation, Landscape Design Services wants to continue to stay ahead of its competition by streamlining their business.

SOLUTION
Landscape Design Services began using GPS TimeTrack™, a mobile location workforce management solution from Xora, Inc. GPS TimeTrack runs on GPS enabled cell phones. Using the phone, field staff can punch in and out and record job statuses.

Data captured by the system is available in real-time over the Internet in the form of maps and reports. Because the phones are equipped with GPS receivers, Landscape Design Services' managers can track what its field staff is doing throughout the day, as well as where they are at any given moment.

As a result, managers know precisely how many hours each employee worked, the travel time between jobs, and how long it took to complete each customer assignment. This helps management accurately calculate payroll and to estimate the cost of existing and future jobs, which assists in the job bidding process.

Also, if an unscheduled order comes through, managers can quickly check the web-based maps and effectively dispatch the appropriate field workers to the job.

RESULTS
-- Landscape Designs is serving approximately 300 customers per week, as opposed to 250 before GPS TimeTrack was implemented; which translates to a $41,000 increase in annual revenues.

-- Field workers are spending 50% less time on overhead-related tasks, such as paperwork.

-- Increased accuracy of job estimates.