August 28, 2020 • 20 mins
Pete talks with John Gadeken, then CEO of ServiceCore about their software for portable restroom operators.
The discussion highlights the journey of ServiceCore, a company that emerged from a history of software development in the waste industry. John recounts how he transitioned from real estate software to focusing on waste management solutions, ultimately leading to the creation of ServiceCore.
The software is designed to be cloud-based and mobile-friendly, addressing the needs of both small and large clients in the sanitation field. As the conversation unfolds, listeners learn about the innovative features of ServiceCore, including integration with existing financial tools like QuickBooks, which enhances operational efficiency for sanitation providers. This integration is crucial for operators who often juggle multiple responsibilities, as it allows them to streamline processes and focus on service delivery rather than administrative burdens.
A significant theme of the episode revolves around customer feedback and involvement in software development. John emphasizes the importance of keeping communication lines open with clients, particularly larger operators like Royal Flush. Regular meetings ensure that the software evolves according to user needs, making it a customer-driven product. This aspect of the conversation highlights the necessity of adaptability in the tech industry, especially in niche markets like sanitation.
Joy Weber joins the conversation by discussing the importance of making the software user-friendly, especially for field workers who may not be tech-savvy.
The episode concludes with a promotional code for listeners, providing a tangible incentive for sanitation operators to explore ServiceCore further, showcasing the hosts' commitment to supporting their audience's business needs.
Takeaways:
- ServiceCore aims to improve efficiency in the sanitation industry through innovative software solutions.
- John and Joy emphasize the importance of customer feedback in developing their software products.
- The integration with QuickBooks allows for easier financial management for sanitation companies.
- Service Core's mobile app is designed to be user-friendly for drivers in the field.
- The company is focused on expanding its services internationally, starting with Spanish language support.
- An ROI calculator demonstrates how Service Core can save companies money through optimized routes.
Visit www.servicecore.com to learn more.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
Hello and welcome to GetFlushed, the Sanitation podcast.
My name's Pete. This week Iwas able to catch up with John Gadekin
and Joy Weber fromServiceCore, and I'll let them explain
the rest. John, how are you?
How are you?
Hey, Joy.
Hey.
Hey. I really appreciate youtaking time today. I'll send you
(00:37):
both a coffee mug for comingon the show. That's what I do. Have
you managed to listen to lastweek's episode?
I did. I did. Your holy grailof ten points if.
You want to tell me theservice call story. I don't know
very much about you other thanI've been in touch with Joy for the
last couple of three months.
Okay, so service core wasstarted by myself and another gentleman
(00:58):
by the name of Orie Staub. Weactually had a company called Civ
websites. Previously, weactually did real estate software,
and then we also did softwarefor the waste industry as well. We
grew that to a fairly largecompany, about $10 million in annual
revenue. And then I think,like a lot of businesses, Ori and
(01:19):
I, we had other partners, andwe didn't necessarily always see
eye to eye with things. Wedivested out of that. Our partners
took the real estate software,and then we created another company
called one BG. And we took thewaste software, and we had clients
like waste management, CasellaRepublic, those type of things. Anyway,
we had a pretty good run withthat. We were able to sell it to
(01:41):
one of our larger, largestclients and we found ourselves with
a little bit of a revenue. Andso we found a company called Clear
Computing, which actually hasa product called TaC. We were very
interested in their customerbase because they'd been in the portable
septic software business forquite some time, had a good customer
(02:01):
base, and we were building aproduct called Service Corp. We wanted
to get into, instead of doingcompletely enterprise clients, into
having a very large breadth ofclients, from small all the way to
enterprise as well. Anyway, aswe were building service core out,
we found an opportunity to buythis clear computing product company.
Tac was an old premise basedsoftware where you had to RDP, that
(02:26):
was their version of goingonline. Whereas service core is completely
cloud based, it's based inAmazon, completely mobile, any device
anywhere. And so as we keptgoing, we were able to find some
really nice funding. And I'vebeen working with a company called
full in for about a year. Andso our goal is to be the number one
(02:47):
software in this space. We arevery well funded, and we've got a
bunch of great developers, you.
Know, hearing you say thatreaffirms for me that I was nearly
right with my search for theholy Grail, that there's not anything
at the minute that's doingwhat we all want. But there are people
who are actually on thatmission trying to achieve that. That's
really good.
Yeah, absolutely. You know,when I listen to your last podcast,
(03:07):
I mean, we check a lot of theboxes. We do not do the payroll,
we don't do vehiclemaintenance in the health and safety.
But our solution is we dointegrate with Quickbooks. Quickbooks
does do payroll. And so, youknow, we have a two way sync in a
lot of ways. So a lot of, alot of companies already have those
products, so it still allowsus to integrate with them. So they're
(03:29):
able to do it. And got someother partners that already do vehicle
maintenance. They do afantastic job with it. So we just
kind of created a partnershipwith them. But as you know, far as
the other ones, I those boxespretty well.
Looking through your website,I was quite surprised to see how
many you did take. And youraise a good point about the finance
software. There are a lot ofcompanies out there who do finance
packages really well. And theobvious answer would be to integrate
(03:52):
with those rather than tryinventing the wheel again.
In this world, integration issuper important in APIs and working
and collaborating. It's reallyabout giving the customer what they
want. If they already have aproduct that's ingrained in their
workflow, it's just easier towork with them, especially Quickbooks.
Quickbooks is you're not goingto place.
(04:12):
Into it anytime soon. So areyou working closely with some toilet
operators at different scalesto make sure you get direct feedback
then?
Yeah, absolutely. Ourcompany's kind of broken into. We
have, obviously, operations,we have customer success, which is
customer service and theonboarding process, training, those
type of things. And then wehave sales and marketing that bring
(04:33):
the customers on. One of ourlargest customers is aroyal flush.
They operate in three statesin the northern part of the United
States. Once we onboard for amuch larger customer like that, they're
always kind of pushing theenvelope on what they need. So they
have weekly meetings with ourteam to make sure that they kind
of influence or have a voiceon what the product can do and should
(04:57):
in their future endeavors.With our company, if something goes
wrong with the software, youhave the ability to call us. You
can just do a chat, set up aticket, and all of those kind of
get categorized. And we startlooking at, hey, where are the different
needs? And so the customersreally do have a voice because then
we look at where the patternsare, where do we need to build something
(05:19):
out at? And quite frankly, weinteracted with them all every day,
so we really feel like it'skind of customer driven.
And this might sound a strangequestion, I think you've partially
explained it, but had you doneany work in toilets before?
When we looked at it, we did alot of research. We looked at different
products out there. And thenwe were very fortunate because clear
(05:40):
computing at that point wasprobably the leader already. But
we made a specific effort tokeep the lead place and to help us
and consult with us as we werekind of building things out. Working
with those customers wasdefinitely something that we did
right away just to make surethat we were getting things correct.
Do you ever get out in thesanitation truck and have a ride
(06:01):
along to see the product in action?
You know what? We have. Wehave actually done that. We've gone
out and did it. We have afunny thing called Hug a pumper,
and it's a Facebook, and youcan actually see Abby, who is the
former marketing person. She'sout hugging the guy. But, yeah, we
send our team out so theyactually know what's going on and
(06:22):
do it.
That's really cool. Some ofthe drivers I've worked with would
struggle to turn their phoneon, and I'm not being rude there,
they really do struggle withmodern technology. How easy is service
core for a guy in the fieldwho's busy driving from point to
point?
Sure. Good question. That wassomething. We really tried to make
(06:42):
it very easy. First of all, wehave an iOS app, also Android, so
it will work on any device. Soyour iPhone as well as an iPad, whatever.
That way, if one of the techsis just used to using their own device,
it doesn't matter. So we'llhelp them get that app on their phone.
So we take that first barrieraway. They don't have to learn some
(07:05):
new product. Also, it's verysimple. So when you click on the
app, it will show theirschedule, and it's very, very simple.
So when you click on the firstjob, first of all can give them turn
by turn direction off of themap of their choice. They hit start
job and it actually then justgives them all the notes that they
(07:27):
need right there. They cantake a picture if there's something
wrong with the device. Theycan scan with a barcode and geolocate
where actual unit is or tomark that it's been done. And then
all of this, once theycomplete the job, there's different
notes that they can do,whether it's a completed service,
a partial service, unable toservice, and all of this then goes
(07:49):
back to the dispatcher, andthey then get records of it. So if
there's a photo or any type ofthings, notes that were involved
with it, the dispatcher canget it right there and then actually
go ahead and build a job, ifthat's what their workflow is and
whatnot, and then they're offto the next one. So it's just very,
very simple instructions andkind of an easy workflow to follow.
(08:11):
And all of that's in realtime, I presume it is.
And one of the things, too.I've never been to New Zealand, but
I imagine with the mountainsand stuff you have there. We're in
Colorado, and a lot of ourplaces are rural, and there's not
cell signal or wifi. So oursalso works offline. So you still
get all that information.You're able to preserve that information,
(08:31):
and then when you come backinto cell service, you can actually
then sync it back up and it'llgo back to the dispatch.
That's really. You're quiteright. We do suffer from that.
You can print your servicetickets. You can print all of that
out and give it to a driver.If they're not gonna adapt, we can
certainly work with them thatway as well. You know, it's our hopes
(08:51):
that eventually they can, youknow, teach their drivers how to
do it. I would love to sayeverybody is going to adapt to the
technology, but some just don't.
Now, the next question willcome off. That is, I've got listeners
in Finland. I've got listenersin Tunisia. I've got some real far
flung corners of the world. Isservice four a global product?
(09:13):
So right now, we work in theUnited States and Canada. We do have
some people in Panama. Andthose things, the limitations that
you would see working with usin some places, if you were measuring
things in liters, we dogallons at this point, or if we do
miles versus meters, thosethings, that would be a limiting
(09:35):
factor if you did work in themetric system. We are in the process
of having conversions. One ofthe things that we found, too, is
to have a spanish speakingapp. That's probably where we will
go first and then translate itover at some point.
Do you think we'll see servicecore available in those other countries?
(09:56):
I don't see it happening in2021. I think it's probably like
a 2022 ish type thing.Fortunately for us, we have a lot
of companies here in theUnited States and Canada we would
definitely like to service.And so that's kind of where our focus
is at this point. But yes, Ithink. Well, and part of it with
the spanish app, there's justa lot of people in the United States
(10:16):
that obviously are spanishspeaking, and a lot of businesses,
I think, that have employeesthat would really benefit from that.
So that's one of the big things.
That we would like to be able.
To do just to help them out.
And then you mentionedbarcodes, so you can scan the barcode
and recognize the toilet. I'vedone a little bit of work with NFC
tags, and I know the guys inAuckland were using NFC tags. Had
(10:40):
you gone down that route?
Right now it's a barcode. Youcan choose the numbering or the sequence
of. We don't produce those. Wehave a vendor that we kind of let
people work with matter andthen also like a QR code that we
have done. And that's kind ofwhere we left it. That seems to be
our market. We have had a fewpeople that want to actually have
the RFD where they can trackthe containers. It kind of depends
(11:02):
on the amount of the unit. Youknow, a Porta potty isn't probably
expensive enough to pay thatthree $4 a month that you have to
pay for it. Maybe on a rolloff container, that might be something.
But certainly I call one ofthose fancier restrooms, like the
luxury restroom. We'vedefinitely had a few requests for
that. We don't have thatintegrated, but that's something
(11:22):
we're looking.
Two good issues you raisethere. One is that there aren't very
many handsets that willrecognize RFID tags. Apple handsets
will. And there's a Samsungmodel that will. And then the second
is the cost. And a lot of theoperators I'm talking to are in a
race to the bottom that it'sabout the cheapest possible price
they can manage because thatgives them a biggest margin. And
certainly the QR codes and bartags compared to an RFID tag would
(11:46):
be a much more economicaloption. Without a doubt.
Yeah, absolutely. Portabletoilets. I think the operators obviously
know better than me. I thinktheir margins are just a little tighter,
especially now with the COVIDthat we have. They've lost some of
their events and those typesof things. They make it up with more
services in some areas. Ithink there's larger margins in septic
and all that, but there's nota lot of used for a barcode in the
(12:09):
septic world.
And, you know, portablesanitation toilets are high maintenance.
You have to go once a week,twice a week, maybe every day. At
the moment, I know a lot ofoperators have moved to daily servicing,
and small costs really quicklyadd up. And that's one of the problems
with it, that when you go,you're using miles, you're using
staff hours, you pay to dumpthe waste, you're using consumables.
(12:30):
So extra cost does affect theoperator. The next question that
will come from that is, what'sthe average price? And is service
core accessible for someonelike Ryan Grainger at Acadian Sanitation,
who's got 50 units, is serviceCore a viable economic option for
him?
Our pricing kind of depends onhow many scheduled assets that we
have. That means a driver or atruck. And so we have several one
(12:55):
truck operators that we workwith. We have different price points
depending on if you are comingover from a different software, if
we had to move data over, orif we have to integrate with Quickbooks
or those type of things. Butour prices kind of range between
$150 up to $250 per driver.There's some variables that kind
(13:17):
of go through there that kindof gives a little bit of a range
of what we charge.
Is that a monthly price, Jon,that's a monthly license.
The larger, the more you have,the better price point you can get.
Yeah, that's good, becausethat's come out quite a lot in conversations
where people say, I can't use,where it's too expensive. And I suppose
they just have to do the sumsof how much would you save? And I
(13:38):
know I said in the show lastweek, one team I spoke to just listed
their jobs in suburb order. Soeverything beginning with a came
before everything beginningwith b. And they saved 20% just on
drive time alone. They weren'tdoing anything other than listing
them from a to z in Excel.
We actually have an ROIcalculator, and we put our mark fairly,
(13:59):
15% to 20%, because we don'tever like to overshoot. What we'll
do is kind of work with you onhow many trucks or what you have
out there, how many miles youbelieve that you drive a day. Then
we'll look at the cost pergallon of diesel, or whatever it
is in your miles per gallon,and we're able to calculate it out.
And typically, everybody we'veworked with seems very, very comfortable
(14:21):
with the 20%. Why we do thatis we have a routing and an optimization
engine. And so when you firstwork with the product, we manage
the customer. You tell us whatyou need done and then if it's like
to pump a toilet or to delivera toilet or whatever it is, you schedule
that job and then it will goon to the schedule. You can even
(14:44):
assign it to a driver at thatpoint, or a route. There's route
suggestion tools. There's allthese little things to help you do
it. But at that point, onceyou built your day, you can actually
then optimize the route. It'llactually do calculations to figure
out what the best route is tosave you miles. That is one of the
things that we're constantlylooking at improving. We've got a
(15:06):
whole bunch of newoptimization tools that are even
coming out here in the nextfew months because that's super important
to people to be able to dothings the most efficient way. You've
got 50 stocks, but if I cangive you a better calculation and
you can actually do 60 in thesame amount of time, that's a lot
of savings. You made moremoney, you're able to build more.
So there's many, many ways tokind of look at it. Also, just internally,
(15:30):
the software is very, verysimple. And because we integrate
with QuickBooks, those typesof things, there's a lot of double
data entry that you can getrid of as well, because you don't
have to do this system andthen build out of this system and
whatever, you know, you can doit all. Service core.
That sounds good. If somebodywanted to have a look at service
core and come on board as acustomer, how would they go about
that?
Good question. The easiest waywould be to go to servicecore.com.
(15:54):
first of all, they can watch agreat little video on the product,
but there's several placesaround the site where you just say,
book a demo that goes to a lotof people use a product called calendly,
but what it does is it justlets them pick the time that's best
for them. And then we kind ofhave our sales group kind of broken
into an enterprise rep whoknows more about those mid market
(16:18):
and small market. So then wewant to associate that customer with
the one that's going to knowthe most about the product. We typically
say it'll take about 30minutes to 40 minutes to go through
a demo, and we try and answerany questions, but we'll spend as
much time as they want. And ifwe need to do another demo, we'll
be happy to do that as well.And then we always send them product
(16:39):
information and stuff after.It's always available to answer questions.
That's good to hear. And a lotof the listeners are the smaller
operators or just solodrivers. We do have some big company
listeners, but I'm getting alot of good feedback from people
who are typically mom and popoperators who've said to me that
they've found lots ofinformation through the podcast and
(17:00):
come up with lots of ideasthat have challenged their thinking.
Let's keep our fingers crossedand hope you get hundreds and hundreds
of referrals.
Hopefully.
My whole idea was to shareinformation and let people know what
was going on and help themimprove their businesses. And it's
really good to hear youtalking about your product and telling
people what's available.Really do appreciate that.
Yeah, we appreciate just theopportunity. It's kind of funny.
(17:21):
We're very passionate aboutour software. We want our customers
to do well. Software is onlygood if it helps people and makes
their life easier. So, I mean,that's our goal. That's what we want
to try and do.
Okay, is there anything elsethat you want to say or put across?
One thing that we were talkingabout? If you would like to offer
a promo code, like Get Flushedwhen they contact us, we were thinking
(17:44):
we could give them a 20% offthe setup.
So if they just enter thecode, Get Flushed at some point when
they register for a demo orget in touch, you'll often. That's
brilliant. Thank you, John.
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Well,we appreciate it. It's an interesting
field. It's a niche, but Imean, people need the services that
your audience and ourcustomers are servicing. I mean,
you don't want them not to bedoing it.
(18:06):
We've been talking for half anhour. You've got the same passion
that I've got about theindustry and the guys at Prestige
have got, and Dave Andres atSanitrax has got. And it's really
cool that I'm hooking up withall of these people like yourself,
who share that same buzz andvibe. They just enjoy the industry
and they see just the value ofthe industry, and we're all trying
to make it better. So welldone to you.
(18:27):
Well, thanks, Pete. It wasreally nice to meet you.
And you. And thank you to joy,because she was one of the first
people to get in touch when Ilaunched it. And I've said a couple
of times, I've phonedcompanies and said, hey, my name's
Pete. I run this podcast. It'sall about portable toilets. And you
can just see at the other end,they're like, huh? But Joy was one
of the first people to reachout. So thank you, Joy. It was really
(18:48):
cool, and thank you fororganizing it.
Yeah, of course. I've beenlistening to your podcast since episode
one, and it's just veryinteresting, so keep on keeping on.
Thank you. So that was JohnGadekin and Joy Webber from Service
Core. I really enjoyed talkingto them both, and as usual, a pair
(19:10):
of Get Flushed mugs arealready on their way. If you didn't
quite catch it, John offered a20% discount on the setup fees to
anyone listening to the showwho wants to try the service core
app. Just visitservicecore.com and quot Get Flushed
when you book your demo.That's all we have time for this
week, and I'll end by sayingthat listeners can really help the
(19:32):
show by telling all theirfamily, friends, colleagues, and
customers to listen in. Evenbetter, leave a five star review
on any of the podcastplatforms for a small monthly donation.
You can also get early accessto every episode and unlock bonus
material that's not availableanywhere else. Visit our Patreon
page@patreon.com. getflushedthat's p dash dash dash n.com getflushed
(19:58):
to find out more. Once again,thank you for your time. I've been
Pete and you've been listeningto Get Flushed.
Hello and welcome to GetFlushed, the Sanitation podcast.
My name's Pete. This week Iwas able to catch up with John Gadekin
and Joy Weber fromServiceCore, and I'll let them explain
the rest. John, how are you?
How are you?
Hey, Joy.
Hey.
Hey. I really appreciate youtaking time today. I'll send you
(00:37):
both a coffee mug for comingon the show. That's what I do. Have
you managed to listen to lastweek's episode?
I did. I did. Your holy grailof ten points if.
You want to tell me theservice call story. I don't know
very much about you other thanI've been in touch with Joy for the
last couple of three months.
Okay, so service core wasstarted by myself and another gentleman
(00:58):
by the name of Orie Staub. Weactually had a company called Civ
websites. Previously, weactually did real estate software,
and then we also did softwarefor the waste industry as well. We
grew that to a fairly largecompany, about $10 million in annual
revenue. And then I think,like a lot of businesses, Ori and
(01:19):
I, we had other partners, andwe didn't necessarily always see
eye to eye with things. Wedivested out of that. Our partners
took the real estate software,and then we created another company
called one BG. And we took thewaste software, and we had clients
like waste management, CasellaRepublic, those type of things. Anyway,
we had a pretty good run withthat. We were able to sell it to
(01:41):
one of our larger, largestclients and we found ourselves with
a little bit of a revenue. Andso we found a company called Clear
Computing, which actually hasa product called TaC. We were very
interested in their customerbase because they'd been in the portable
septic software business forquite some time, had a good customer
(02:01):
base, and we were building aproduct called Service Corp. We wanted
to get into, instead of doingcompletely enterprise clients, into
having a very large breadth ofclients, from small all the way to
enterprise as well. Anyway, aswe were building service core out,
we found an opportunity to buythis clear computing product company.
Tac was an old premise basedsoftware where you had to RDP, that
(02:26):
was their version of goingonline. Whereas service core is completely
cloud based, it's based inAmazon, completely mobile, any device
anywhere. And so as we keptgoing, we were able to find some
really nice funding. And I'vebeen working with a company called
full in for about a year. Andso our goal is to be the number one
(02:47):
software in this space. We arevery well funded, and we've got a
bunch of great developers, you.
Know, hearing you say thatreaffirms for me that I was nearly
right with my search for theholy Grail, that there's not anything
at the minute that's doingwhat we all want. But there are people
who are actually on thatmission trying to achieve that. That's
really good.
Yeah, absolutely. You know,when I listen to your last podcast,
(03:07):
I mean, we check a lot of theboxes. We do not do the payroll,
we don't do vehiclemaintenance in the health and safety.
But our solution is we dointegrate with Quickbooks. Quickbooks
does do payroll. And so, youknow, we have a two way sync in a
lot of ways. So a lot of, alot of companies already have those
products, so it still allowsus to integrate with them. So they're
(03:29):
able to do it. And got someother partners that already do vehicle
maintenance. They do afantastic job with it. So we just
kind of created a partnershipwith them. But as you know, far as
the other ones, I those boxespretty well.
Looking through your website,I was quite surprised to see how
many you did take. And youraise a good point about the finance
software. There are a lot ofcompanies out there who do finance
packages really well. And theobvious answer would be to integrate
(03:52):
with those rather than tryinventing the wheel again.
In this world, integration issuper important in APIs and working
and collaborating. It's reallyabout giving the customer what they
want. If they already have aproduct that's ingrained in their
workflow, it's just easier towork with them, especially Quickbooks.
Quickbooks is you're not goingto place.
(04:12):
Into it anytime soon. So areyou working closely with some toilet
operators at different scalesto make sure you get direct feedback
then?
Yeah, absolutely. Ourcompany's kind of broken into. We
have, obviously, operations,we have customer success, which is
customer service and theonboarding process, training, those
type of things. And then wehave sales and marketing that bring
(04:33):
the customers on. One of ourlargest customers is aroyal flush.
They operate in three statesin the northern part of the United
States. Once we onboard for amuch larger customer like that, they're
always kind of pushing theenvelope on what they need. So they
have weekly meetings with ourteam to make sure that they kind
of influence or have a voiceon what the product can do and should
(04:57):
in their future endeavors.With our company, if something goes
wrong with the software, youhave the ability to call us. You
can just do a chat, set up aticket, and all of those kind of
get categorized. And we startlooking at, hey, where are the different
needs? And so the customersreally do have a voice because then
we look at where the patternsare, where do we need to build something
(05:19):
out at? And quite frankly, weinteracted with them all every day,
so we really feel like it'skind of customer driven.
And this might sound a strangequestion, I think you've partially
explained it, but had you doneany work in toilets before?
When we looked at it, we did alot of research. We looked at different
products out there. And thenwe were very fortunate because clear
(05:40):
computing at that point wasprobably the leader already. But
we made a specific effort tokeep the lead place and to help us
and consult with us as we werekind of building things out. Working
with those customers wasdefinitely something that we did
right away just to make surethat we were getting things correct.
Do you ever get out in thesanitation truck and have a ride
(06:01):
along to see the product in action?
You know what? We have. Wehave actually done that. We've gone
out and did it. We have afunny thing called Hug a pumper,
and it's a Facebook, and youcan actually see Abby, who is the
former marketing person. She'sout hugging the guy. But, yeah, we
send our team out so theyactually know what's going on and
(06:22):
do it.
That's really cool. Some ofthe drivers I've worked with would
struggle to turn their phoneon, and I'm not being rude there,
they really do struggle withmodern technology. How easy is service
core for a guy in the fieldwho's busy driving from point to
point?
Sure. Good question. That wassomething. We really tried to make
(06:42):
it very easy. First of all, wehave an iOS app, also Android, so
it will work on any device. Soyour iPhone as well as an iPad, whatever.
That way, if one of the techsis just used to using their own device,
it doesn't matter. So we'llhelp them get that app on their phone.
So we take that first barrieraway. They don't have to learn some
(07:05):
new product. Also, it's verysimple. So when you click on the
app, it will show theirschedule, and it's very, very simple.
So when you click on the firstjob, first of all can give them turn
by turn direction off of themap of their choice. They hit start
job and it actually then justgives them all the notes that they
(07:27):
need right there. They cantake a picture if there's something
wrong with the device. Theycan scan with a barcode and geolocate
where actual unit is or tomark that it's been done. And then
all of this, once theycomplete the job, there's different
notes that they can do,whether it's a completed service,
a partial service, unable toservice, and all of this then goes
(07:49):
back to the dispatcher, andthey then get records of it. So if
there's a photo or any type ofthings, notes that were involved
with it, the dispatcher canget it right there and then actually
go ahead and build a job, ifthat's what their workflow is and
whatnot, and then they're offto the next one. So it's just very,
very simple instructions andkind of an easy workflow to follow.
(08:11):
And all of that's in realtime, I presume it is.
And one of the things, too.I've never been to New Zealand, but
I imagine with the mountainsand stuff you have there. We're in
Colorado, and a lot of ourplaces are rural, and there's not
cell signal or wifi. So oursalso works offline. So you still
get all that information.You're able to preserve that information,
(08:31):
and then when you come backinto cell service, you can actually
then sync it back up and it'llgo back to the dispatch.
That's really. You're quiteright. We do suffer from that.
You can print your servicetickets. You can print all of that
out and give it to a driver.If they're not gonna adapt, we can
certainly work with them thatway as well. You know, it's our hopes
(08:51):
that eventually they can, youknow, teach their drivers how to
do it. I would love to sayeverybody is going to adapt to the
technology, but some just don't.
Now, the next question willcome off. That is, I've got listeners
in Finland. I've got listenersin Tunisia. I've got some real far
flung corners of the world. Isservice four a global product?
(09:13):
So right now, we work in theUnited States and Canada. We do have
some people in Panama. Andthose things, the limitations that
you would see working with usin some places, if you were measuring
things in liters, we dogallons at this point, or if we do
miles versus meters, thosethings, that would be a limiting
(09:35):
factor if you did work in themetric system. We are in the process
of having conversions. One ofthe things that we found, too, is
to have a spanish speakingapp. That's probably where we will
go first and then translate itover at some point.
Do you think we'll see servicecore available in those other countries?
(09:56):
I don't see it happening in2021. I think it's probably like
a 2022 ish type thing.Fortunately for us, we have a lot
of companies here in theUnited States and Canada we would
definitely like to service.And so that's kind of where our focus
is at this point. But yes, Ithink. Well, and part of it with
the spanish app, there's justa lot of people in the United States
(10:16):
that obviously are spanishspeaking, and a lot of businesses,
I think, that have employeesthat would really benefit from that.
So that's one of the big things.
That we would like to be able.
To do just to help them out.
And then you mentionedbarcodes, so you can scan the barcode
and recognize the toilet. I'vedone a little bit of work with NFC
tags, and I know the guys inAuckland were using NFC tags. Had
(10:40):
you gone down that route?
Right now it's a barcode. Youcan choose the numbering or the sequence
of. We don't produce those. Wehave a vendor that we kind of let
people work with matter andthen also like a QR code that we
have done. And that's kind ofwhere we left it. That seems to be
our market. We have had a fewpeople that want to actually have
the RFD where they can trackthe containers. It kind of depends
(11:02):
on the amount of the unit. Youknow, a Porta potty isn't probably
expensive enough to pay thatthree $4 a month that you have to
pay for it. Maybe on a rolloff container, that might be something.
But certainly I call one ofthose fancier restrooms, like the
luxury restroom. We'vedefinitely had a few requests for
that. We don't have thatintegrated, but that's something
(11:22):
we're looking.
Two good issues you raisethere. One is that there aren't very
many handsets that willrecognize RFID tags. Apple handsets
will. And there's a Samsungmodel that will. And then the second
is the cost. And a lot of theoperators I'm talking to are in a
race to the bottom that it'sabout the cheapest possible price
they can manage because thatgives them a biggest margin. And
certainly the QR codes and bartags compared to an RFID tag would
(11:46):
be a much more economicaloption. Without a doubt.
Yeah, absolutely. Portabletoilets. I think the operators obviously
know better than me. I thinktheir margins are just a little tighter,
especially now with the COVIDthat we have. They've lost some of
their events and those typesof things. They make it up with more
services in some areas. Ithink there's larger margins in septic
and all that, but there's nota lot of used for a barcode in the
(12:09):
septic world.
And, you know, portablesanitation toilets are high maintenance.
You have to go once a week,twice a week, maybe every day. At
the moment, I know a lot ofoperators have moved to daily servicing,
and small costs really quicklyadd up. And that's one of the problems
with it, that when you go,you're using miles, you're using
staff hours, you pay to dumpthe waste, you're using consumables.
(12:30):
So extra cost does affect theoperator. The next question that
will come from that is, what'sthe average price? And is service
core accessible for someonelike Ryan Grainger at Acadian Sanitation,
who's got 50 units, is serviceCore a viable economic option for
him?
Our pricing kind of depends onhow many scheduled assets that we
have. That means a driver or atruck. And so we have several one
(12:55):
truck operators that we workwith. We have different price points
depending on if you are comingover from a different software, if
we had to move data over, orif we have to integrate with Quickbooks
or those type of things. Butour prices kind of range between
$150 up to $250 per driver.There's some variables that kind
(13:17):
of go through there that kindof gives a little bit of a range
of what we charge.
Is that a monthly price, Jon,that's a monthly license.
The larger, the more you have,the better price point you can get.
Yeah, that's good, becausethat's come out quite a lot in conversations
where people say, I can't use,where it's too expensive. And I suppose
they just have to do the sumsof how much would you save? And I
(13:38):
know I said in the show lastweek, one team I spoke to just listed
their jobs in suburb order. Soeverything beginning with a came
before everything beginningwith b. And they saved 20% just on
drive time alone. They weren'tdoing anything other than listing
them from a to z in Excel.
We actually have an ROIcalculator, and we put our mark fairly,
(13:59):
15% to 20%, because we don'tever like to overshoot. What we'll
do is kind of work with you onhow many trucks or what you have
out there, how many miles youbelieve that you drive a day. Then
we'll look at the cost pergallon of diesel, or whatever it
is in your miles per gallon,and we're able to calculate it out.
And typically, everybody we'veworked with seems very, very comfortable
(14:21):
with the 20%. Why we do thatis we have a routing and an optimization
engine. And so when you firstwork with the product, we manage
the customer. You tell us whatyou need done and then if it's like
to pump a toilet or to delivera toilet or whatever it is, you schedule
that job and then it will goon to the schedule. You can even
(14:44):
assign it to a driver at thatpoint, or a route. There's route
suggestion tools. There's allthese little things to help you do
it. But at that point, onceyou built your day, you can actually
then optimize the route. It'llactually do calculations to figure
out what the best route is tosave you miles. That is one of the
things that we're constantlylooking at improving. We've got a
(15:06):
whole bunch of newoptimization tools that are even
coming out here in the nextfew months because that's super important
to people to be able to dothings the most efficient way. You've
got 50 stocks, but if I cangive you a better calculation and
you can actually do 60 in thesame amount of time, that's a lot
of savings. You made moremoney, you're able to build more.
So there's many, many ways tokind of look at it. Also, just internally,
(15:30):
the software is very, verysimple. And because we integrate
with QuickBooks, those typesof things, there's a lot of double
data entry that you can getrid of as well, because you don't
have to do this system andthen build out of this system and
whatever, you know, you can doit all. Service core.
That sounds good. If somebodywanted to have a look at service
core and come on board as acustomer, how would they go about
that?
Good question. The easiest waywould be to go to servicecore.com.
(15:54):
first of all, they can watch agreat little video on the product,
but there's several placesaround the site where you just say,
book a demo that goes to a lotof people use a product called calendly,
but what it does is it justlets them pick the time that's best
for them. And then we kind ofhave our sales group kind of broken
into an enterprise rep whoknows more about those mid market
(16:18):
and small market. So then wewant to associate that customer with
the one that's going to knowthe most about the product. We typically
say it'll take about 30minutes to 40 minutes to go through
a demo, and we try and answerany questions, but we'll spend as
much time as they want. And ifwe need to do another demo, we'll
be happy to do that as well.And then we always send them product
(16:39):
information and stuff after.It's always available to answer questions.
That's good to hear. And a lotof the listeners are the smaller
operators or just solodrivers. We do have some big company
listeners, but I'm getting alot of good feedback from people
who are typically mom and popoperators who've said to me that
they've found lots ofinformation through the podcast and
(17:00):
come up with lots of ideasthat have challenged their thinking.
Let's keep our fingers crossedand hope you get hundreds and hundreds
of referrals.
Hopefully.
My whole idea was to shareinformation and let people know what
was going on and help themimprove their businesses. And it's
really good to hear youtalking about your product and telling
people what's available.Really do appreciate that.
Yeah, we appreciate just theopportunity. It's kind of funny.
(17:21):
We're very passionate aboutour software. We want our customers
to do well. Software is onlygood if it helps people and makes
their life easier. So, I mean,that's our goal. That's what we want
to try and do.
Okay, is there anything elsethat you want to say or put across?
One thing that we were talkingabout? If you would like to offer
a promo code, like Get Flushedwhen they contact us, we were thinking
(17:44):
we could give them a 20% offthe setup.
So if they just enter thecode, Get Flushed at some point when
they register for a demo orget in touch, you'll often. That's
brilliant. Thank you, John.
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Well,we appreciate it. It's an interesting
field. It's a niche, but Imean, people need the services that
your audience and ourcustomers are servicing. I mean,
you don't want them not to bedoing it.
(18:06):
We've been talking for half anhour. You've got the same passion
that I've got about theindustry and the guys at Prestige
have got, and Dave Andres atSanitrax has got. And it's really
cool that I'm hooking up withall of these people like yourself,
who share that same buzz andvibe. They just enjoy the industry
and they see just the value ofthe industry, and we're all trying
to make it better. So welldone to you.
(18:27):
Well, thanks, Pete. It wasreally nice to meet you.
And you. And thank you to joy,because she was one of the first
people to get in touch when Ilaunched it. And I've said a couple
of times, I've phonedcompanies and said, hey, my name's
Pete. I run this podcast. It'sall about portable toilets. And you
can just see at the other end,they're like, huh? But Joy was one
of the first people to reachout. So thank you, Joy. It was really
(18:48):
cool, and thank you fororganizing it.
Yeah, of course. I've beenlistening to your podcast since episode
one, and it's just veryinteresting, so keep on keeping on.
Thank you. So that was JohnGadekin and Joy Webber from Service
Core. I really enjoyed talkingto them both, and as usual, a pair
(19:10):
of Get Flushed mugs arealready on their way. If you didn't
quite catch it, John offered a20% discount on the setup fees to
anyone listening to the showwho wants to try the service core
app. Just visitservicecore.com and quot Get Flushed
when you book your demo.That's all we have time for this
week, and I'll end by sayingthat listeners can really help the
(19:32):
show by telling all theirfamily, friends, colleagues, and
customers to listen in. Evenbetter, leave a five star review
on any of the podcastplatforms for a small monthly donation.
You can also get early accessto every episode and unlock bonus
material that's not availableanywhere else. Visit our Patreon
page@patreon.com. getflushedthat's p dash dash dash n.com getflushed
(19:58):
to find out more. Once again,thank you for your time. I've been
Pete and you've been listeningto Get Flushed.
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