Revolutionizing How Landscape Companies Track their Equipment

Every Landscape company big or small needs to be efficient especially today where the minimum wage in the United States is looking to double and also keep a watchful eye on their equipment.  All types of organizations (especially service related organizations) should be looking at how to best utilize their most expensive assets—People, and Tools. In order to do this properly specifically for Landscape companies, you need Technology and Process.  By implementing the right technology such as RFID, and the right Processes, big or small Landscape organizations can significantly improve their visibility to Tools/Assets, Inventory, and Personnel.

There’s a couple where RFID and implementing some specific processes, that a Landscape company can significantly improve their overall operation, here are some examples:

Annual Inventory:

Pre RFID most companies would gather up a group of workers on a weekend or couple of days, and spend countless hours either trying to read barcodes that are dirty or gone, or scribble on a notepad what they’ve counted, then someone else has to try and read the information and type into the computer.  All of this only to find out that they can’t find or account for 10 to 20% or more of their inventory.  So, hey spent countless hours doing an antiquated process only to find out that their losing equipment, and inventory.

                                                                                How can RFID help?

First and foremost an RFID Tag is practically indestructible.  Secondly, you can read it right through dirt, and lastly—you can read hundreds of Tags in seconds vs having to find each and every barcode.  So in essence what would normally take an hour to count all the tools in a Truck, would probably take you a couple of seconds!  This is not an exaggeration, this is a reality.  To take it a step further, companies such as SPT has a Landscaping Business Software called IntelliVan whereby the equipment is constantly being counted and updating the driver and everyone back at corporate.

By doing the above, what you’ve just done is provided management real time visibility of assets—so in essence that annual inventory is now gone!  You’re essentially only seconds away from knowing “exactly” what you have in all of your warehouses, and vehicles.  Now if something goes missing for whatever reason, it is dealt with immediately.

These solutions typically also have a service component, so end result is that you know everything about the Equipment from the time you purchased it, last time you serviced it, next time it needs Preventative Maintenance, and much more.  

However, just tracking and accounting of the assets is only half the battle, counting and/or managing your inventory is also something that can significantly affect the bottom line—if you have good inventory processes, you can eventually cut your carrying cost by a minimum of 10% and potentially as high as 50%.

In this day and age of high competition, companies absolutely need the right tools to help them manage their business, and be profitable; the SPT solution does exactly that.