Dan Roberge - CEO of Maintenance Care Interview | Ep. #340

Our interview today at the Hospitality Property School is with Dan Roberge, founder and CEO of Maintenance Care, a platform that can simplify and organize your hospitality properties work orders with ease.

Dan Roberge, the founder and CEO of Maintenance Care. This is a maintenance management platform that streamlines work orders, sets up preventative maintenance scheduling, asset tracking, and capital planning.

Dan has spent the last 20 years working with the hospitality industry, and we are thrilled that he has taken the time to share his expertise with us.

Continue watching listening for the complete interview …

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Our interview today at the Hospitality PropertySchool is with Dan Robertshire, Founder and
CEO of Maintenance Care, a platformthat can simplify and organize your hospitality properties
work orders with ease. Welcome toanother edition of Hospitality Property School. I

(00:26):
am your instructor, Cherry McPherson Danromersher the founder and CEO of Maintenance Care.
This is a maintenance management platform thatstreamlines work orders, sets up,
prevented of maintenance scheduling, asset trackingand capital planning. Dan has spent the
last twenty years working with the hospitalityindustry and we are thrilled that he has

(00:50):
taken the time to share his expertisewith us. All that being said,
our interview today at Hospitality Property Schoolis with Dan Barish, founder and CEO
of Maintenance Care, a maintenance managementplatform that streamlines work order management, preventive
maintenance scheduling, asset tracking, andcapital planning. Dan has spent the last

(01:15):
twenty years working in the hospitality industryand Dan, we are very happy to
have you here today to share yourexpertise. Well, thank you very much
for having me. All right,all that being said, are you ready
to jump into this Dame let's doit super all right. Can you tell
me about maintenance care What is itexactly your company does? Yeah, well,

(01:42):
so we've been around for about twentyyears and we are a facility management
software, so we manage any typeof building and our software does and it
really is to the managing of themaintenance teams themselves and how they keep the
building running. And so, likeyou mentioned, you know, some of
the key features has to do withwork order management, So those are daily

(02:07):
things that come up where light bulbis out, we need to communicate that
to the maintenance team. Our softwarewill help communicate that to the maintenance team
they can go and deal with thatissue quickly. There's also the preventative maintenance
side, which are a lot oftimes have to do with you know,
government compliance. Depending on the typeof building it is, there's some regulations
you have to keep up and sothose preventative maintenance can be put into our

(02:30):
software and remind the team when they'redone. They can track that they've done
it and have the documentation to provethat they've done it if they need to
report on that information. And thenthe last part has to do with asset
management, which is really focused onsaving the you know, the finances of
the building, right, so howdo you keep the equipment to last longer

(02:52):
so that they don't have to replaceit and so that your ROI on the
building and the running of the buildingis you know, is very good.
So our software helps and those threekey areas and um, and we've been
managing um, you know, we'vebeen helping facilities of any kind, but
even in the hospitality industry a lotum because you know, there's a need
for all three of those things inthat industry. And so this is a

(03:15):
it's a really relevant tool that everybodywould use on a daily basis. It's
an interesting piece of software. Where'dthe idea come from? Well that yeah,
that's a funny story. Um.We actually, um, you know,
in a in a previous life,we were working in an office environment
and a friend of mine plugged upa toilet. Well you know he claimed

(03:37):
somebody else did it, but uh, you know, and then we had
to we had to tell you know, the we were trying to figure out
how do we how do we tellthe maintenance person about this, like we
need to get this fixed. Soyou know, the solution had to be
to go and tell the receptionists atthe front desk, you know, but
that there was a problem. Hewas embarrassed to do that, but he
went, he's like somebody a somebodyblocked up the toilet and um. And

(04:00):
you know, the solution for hershe said, well, go put a
post a note on the maintenance aperson's you know office. And we were
like, there's got to be abetter way to deal with this. And
this was back in two thousand andtwo when we you know, this situation
was occurring. So you got toimagine that that there wasn't a lot of
software out there. You know,the communication wasn't the same. You know,
the Internet had just come into theworld like about five years before and

(04:23):
uh and so we uh, youknow, it was a new concept and
so we were like, let's let'sbuild something that does this. And that's
where the idea came from. Andit grew from there. We learned from
our customers. You know, itbecame yes, the core was a work
order, you know, let's tellthe maintenance person what the problem is.
But then it grew to those otheraspects like the preventative maintenance and the asset
management, and that was all feedbackfrom our customers and when our customers told

(04:45):
us what they needed and what wasimportant to them, that's we were able
to build those tools as as timewent on. So ah, right,
that totally makes sense. Okay,I see that you work with some major
hotel chains throughout the world. Now, yes, if I'm right, you're
currently intro but your US based company, are you international? So yes,
we are. We're actually we havetwo offices. We're one office in Toronto,

(05:09):
Canada and one office in Davenport,Florida. And uh but we do
sell yes, everywhere. Um,we have multi language support in our software
and and you know it's really easy. Everything has done remotely, you know,
especially these days that you know,we've we've gone into the world of
zoom and so you know, everybodycan do things remotely. We've always done
stuff that way. We've always trainedremotely. We've always done really good customer

(05:32):
support through through web or through chatand email. So we can support anybody,
um, you know, pretty easilyand on board them even you know,
without being on site. You know, the old days we'd have to
you know, and twenty years agopeople always thought you have to come on
site do a training, and youknow, maybe if you're you're somewhere around
the world that you can't get to. That becomes an obstacle. But because

(05:53):
now we are fully web based operational, UM, we can train people and
that's how we do one hundred percentof our training system for the Okay,
like I said, I've seen thatyou work some major chains. Most of
the people that follow my company aresmall or more independent properties. Is your

(06:15):
software suitable for them? Absolutely?Actually, the core of our business is
the individual business owner. UM.We do have a lot of chains,
obviously, I mean that is definitely. You know, we can we're a
scalable tool. So because we're unlimitedusers, that's how our pricing model is
unlimited users. Um, it actuallyis. You know, it's beneficial for

(06:36):
an individual location to use our softwarebecause they get a fixed price based on
you know, but it doesn't matterhow many people they bring in as far
as helping and using the software.They get a fixed price so they can
budget for it accordingly. And it'svery inexpensive in the first place, but
you know, they can budget forit, and then you know, we

(06:58):
we like to deal our our businessmodel. When we first started, our
target audience was the individual business owner. We thought it was a more stable
market for us. So instead ofgoing after the big you know customers who
yeah, they bring in some somebigger dollars, but then if they leave,
they also cost you quite a bit, right, and so your business
doesn't doesn't become a stable So forfor us on a business strategy, we

(07:18):
thought, let's get a lot ofindividual places and then we become more of
a stable company. And that's whatwe did. And um, and so
we do have a lot of individualbusiness owners moment pop shops and and uh,
you know, and in different industries, but in hospitality as well,
um and um and actually I findthat the marketplace is dominated even though there

(07:40):
are chains, the marketplace is dominatedby an individual business owners from from our
perspective, So yeah, oh absolutely, Okay. I I would love to
say that neither of us have competition, but we do. Yes. And
I was doing a little snooping andI noticed that your competitors and you have

(08:00):
different key factors that people could utilize. What would be the key factors if
I were an independent property owner Ishould look for in your type of software.
Yeah, that's a I love thatquestion because I think that when I
you know, these days everybody cando whatever they want with software. Like

(08:22):
I don't think there's any software outthere that doesn't have a you know,
a button you can press that willmake it do this or that. Right,
So I always like to talk about, well, okay, if it's
not the actual feature itself, becauseeverybody can build those, what is it
that makes the company different from thissoftware to this other. So one of
the aspects definitely is the workflow withinthe software. So it's like, how
does it handle the you know,the day to day operations, So you

(08:46):
know, maybe one software you haveto click on this screen and on the
other software you're on this screen instead, you know, whatever it is,
So that could be a factor.But ultimately, outside of the software and
the features themselves, which I thinkwe're like I said, we're pretty much
you know, for the most part, everybody's competing with the same features.
The bigger differentiary differentiator for us hasto do with support and how the business

(09:07):
is built. So we we prideourselves in support. And I think whenever
somebody's buying software, they should lookat the company they're buying from. They
should look at what's the makeup ofthe company are they are they owned by
you know, all these like VCinvestors and so on. We're seeing all
these these big tech companies right nowsuffering because of these bank collapses and things

(09:28):
like that, and and so youknow, is this is this like a
big invested company that they just goafter the bottom line and they're going to
raise my prices and they don't careabout my support or is this in it
like in our case, is itowned and operated by the same owners who
created the business twenty years ago withoutoutside investment, not being a public company.

(09:48):
So we are focused on our customers. Everything we do has to do
with UM, with helping our customers. It's not about you know, fulfilling
some balance sheet for an investor.And so that has to me that's a
big differentiator because you're going to getthat service, You're going to get that
individual attention, UM and UM,and then that that spreads out to everything

(10:09):
that the company does after that,right like whether new features they build,
the way they support, the waythat they deal with maybe a potential negative
situations that come up where you know, customer might get upset, where we
will deal with that more personally thanyou know than a company that's got a
different type of investment strategy. Sothat's it's been a strength of ours.

(10:30):
I think it's been a struggle toget to that point. Obviously we have
to finance our own growth UM,but we find we've been able to finance
our growth through UM through new businessright through actually growing so UM not not
kind of inflated models just because ofinvestments. So now we're able to get
the benefits of that and transfer thosebenefits to our customers. Oh, very
nice. What are some key problemsyou see hospitality properties have when it comes

(10:58):
to maintenance. Yeah, I thinkone of the things that kind of reoccurs
often in my experience has been thatthe there's a lack of communication between let's
say the guest and the maintenance team. So often you know that that you
know that that communication goes obviously youknow a guest is is there, They're

(11:20):
going to be calling the front desk, there's a problem with my my my
sink or whatever it is, myshower and um there. Then then it
kind of stops from there. There'snothing the guest doesn't have that that ability
to understand what's happening next, Whenare they coming? You know, maybe
you know maybe the maintenance person isdoing something else right now, so they'll
be there at six and we're notgoing to have that communication. So I
think I think the guest experience hasbeen a little bit on the communication level,

(11:46):
maybe suffering UM, and a lotof that can be helped with a
software like ours, for example,because we have that ability to communicate back
to UM to that person, whetherit's through even a text message or an
email. Like once the guest cancall down to the front desk, let's
say, and say I've got atub or whatever issue, we can automate
an email back to that guests sayingwell, that person is going to be

(12:07):
here at this time and and youknow. And so now they're getting it
on their personal advice. They're like, okay, I know what's going on
with this. And then when it'sclosed, they can get like, oh
they maybe you were out somewhere andwhen you come back to your room,
they're like, they were in theroom and they've dealt with that issue,
So that that closing the loop onthe communication. I found. I find
that that's personally when I go toa hotel, is or you know,
any place I like that, andI think that that's been something that's been

(12:31):
lacking. And it's also something that'scost prohibitive typically for a small operator because
you know, you think, oh, I got to get a big system
in place if I'm going to havethat communication with the you know, the
the guests and so whereas maintenance carecan handle that pretty seamlessly and it doesn't
cost you this big amount. You'reyou're you're needing the tool anyways for the
maintenance team. So now utilize theextras to communicate with the with the people

(12:54):
that are on site there. Sothat that's been one of the things I've
seen. Um. And then theother part of it has to do with,
uh, you know, when you'remanaging your building equipment. I think
that that's been a big one.Um. You know, you're dealing with
these large boilers and and you knowwater tanks. I mean you have to
keep your your your guests hot waterwarm and you know, all the time

(13:15):
ready to go, and and sodowntime is a big issue. If you
have downtime on your equipment, Um, you know, then you could you
could go out all night, youknow, like somebody can't use hot water
for the entire night, your entireyou know, the entire suites are not
able to to provide that that service. So you know, having a plan
to prevent those failures and having aregular preventative maintenance on them, having downtimes

(13:41):
that you schedule where you have backups, all of that our software can help
handle. And I think that's beenone of again the smaller, smaller hotels
and resorts and so on, theyoften have that obstacle where they think that
they need a big system to helpthem through that, like a building automation
system and so, but you don't. You can use something like maintenance scare
to help you plan those things andthey'll give you all the information you need.

(14:05):
So that's again I'm providing the solutionI think to something that is is
usually seen as a big obstacle.So your software is actually cost effective or
it can be cost effective. Ohabsolutely, Like I mean, the return
on investment isn't no brainer, youknow, like for us, like we
could we could say, you know, okay, maybe you might not think

(14:26):
we're the best solution for you.That's a possibility, and you know that's
up to you to determine what worksbest for you. But to have a
software in place like this, Ithink you kind of need it, and
I think if you look at thefinances of it, it really is something
that you should evaluate kind of byits merits, which is for us,
there's three key areas of return oninvestment. The first one being you're dealing

(14:48):
with issues faster, so therefore you'regoing to have less potential. Like let's
say there's water on the ground andsomebody notices it. They can send a
you know, a notification to themaintenance team of and deal with it faster
instead of somebody coming along and slippingon it and falling. So you have
less liability, you have quicker,less damages. Maybe the waters is leaking

(15:09):
through the ceiling and to the nextlevel, so you're going to get to
those issues faster, turn off thewater, you know, things like that,
so you'll have less repair because ofthe damages that could be limited.
And so you know, you've gotliability, you've got speed of what you're
going to be doing things, andjust like the safety of people. And
then obviously the last one, whicheverybody knows is preventative maintenance. You know,

(15:31):
preventative maintenance. You don't do anoil change on the car, it
will break down. And so ifyou you know, if you don't do
that with your equipment in your building, the same thing will happen and so
that that's just a that's an easyone obviously. That just proves itself time
and time again. So does yoursoftware integrate with a hotel platforms? So

(15:54):
we yes, we actually have.We have over five thousand integrations. Plus
we have an open apium, soyou can do things like you can integrate
with any tools. Really, Imean you can if you want to tweet
about a maintenance task that you justcompleted, you could automate that process.
So I mean it's that it's thatflexible. But you know, ultimately some

(16:15):
of the more useful ones are thingslike integrations with finance platforms. So if
you want to track expenses and feedthat into a finance tool, you can
do that from maintenance scare to afinance tool. Another way is the front
desk. You know, team canbe notified and have an interface that deals
with their room availabilities. Like Isaid, if a guest has an issue

(16:37):
and you need to close down aroom, you can keep up on those
on those service requests to make sure, okay, well now that rooms available
because we fix those issues. Ifmaybe the room is not occupied at the
time, so so you could soany of those integrations, whether financing finance
tools or scheduling tools, or hasto do with repaired to it, you
know, repair of the rooms,you can absolutely integrate. We also have

(16:59):
some integrations. We have integrations withthings like Amazon Alexa, so if you
want to ask for a maintenance request, you can talk to Alexa. We
have three D VR integration, soyou can actually do a three D walkthrough
of your entire building and map allthe assets in your building, so you
can That's like a little bit ofa fun add on, but it gives
you that flexibility if you if you'dlike to do that, you can actually

(17:22):
visualize your your building in three Dwith our software. That's amazing. Okay,
So I'm somebody who follows my interviewsvideos and I own a small hotel
maybe twenty rooms, and now Ithink maybe I do need maintenance care,

(17:45):
So I contact your company, walkme through the procedure. How would it
work. Yeah, So that's theother thing that we like, I think
our customers like about us is thatwe are very easy to do business with.
So we don't we're not hard sellersand you know, we're not going
to get you into a situation thatyou're going to be stuck in and you
know we're gonna be like pushing oursoftware on you because we have no long

(18:08):
term contracts, which means you cancancel any time. Okay, so within
thirty day notice, you can cancel. So it's no use for us to
force you into a software that's notgoing to work. We're going to both
waste our time and then you're goingto cancel anyway. So what we focus
on is on first is evaluating yoursituation and whether it's a good fit.
And so we do a fifteen minuteconsultation that we just talk through, you

(18:30):
know, and we'll just say whatdo you use your current situation, what
you're looking to do. Here's whatwe do. Are you interested in seeing
the software and do a demo ofthe software and then if you think it's
a fit, then we booked thatdemo. We do a forty five minute
presentation of the software itself, andthen and then you make a decision if
you want to move forward. That'sthat's basically it. And it's so we

(18:52):
don't do anything that you know,we're not calling you every day and you
know you make a decision. Canwe you know all this stuff like,
we're very easy to do business withthat way. And now the other side
of things too is the implementation isquite extensive, so we'll spend time to
make sure that we onboard your teamproperly, that we train them, so
you'll do multiple training sessions with ourtrainers, and we'll make sure that obviously,

(19:17):
customer support is included ongoing, soyou can call our team, but
the trainer that is dedicated to youraccount will make sure you're using the software
well because it's to our benefit thatyou are. Because there's no long term
contracts, you always have all thepower, right, and so we want
to make sure it's useful for you. Wow, so what is your pricing?
Like, Yeah, we have threeplans and so we have a free

(19:41):
version. So if you're if you'renot sure and you just want to try
the free version, go ahead.It's free forever. It's not just a
trial. And now it is verylimited in the features, so just know
that it's not everything that the softwaredoes. But what you get is you
get the ability to create work orders, you get the ability use our app
in a very limited way, butyou get to manage work Orders, and

(20:03):
it's for a single user and justkind of managing daily work orders, and
that's it, and not all thefeatures around the work orders, but at
least you get the idea of howthe software works. So that's the free
version. We do have a workOrder Edition, which is just for work
orders, but all the features relatedto work orders, so you get to
prioritize tasks, you get to assignthem to other team members and things like
that. And then there is theEnterprise Edition, which is the one that

(20:26):
you know, ninety five percent ofour customers are on. It's the main
all inclusive package. We don't haveother modules. It's everything is included.
And our regular price is on ourwebsite. We don't we don't hide our
prices, so it's unlimited users.Our regular price as of you know right
now is two hundred and fifty dollarsa month. If you pay yearly,
it's two hundred dollars a month.That's it. So it's like the equivalency

(20:48):
of two hundred dollars a month,so you're getting a huge, huge value.
We think that we return on investmentfor that is about fifty to fifty
five thousand dollars a year for atwo thousand dollars pack, right, Like,
that's that's huge, huge return onthat investment. Right, So okay,
yeah, I went. I wentthen look to your website and I've
noticed that you have a new softwarecoming out. Uh yeah, are Clean

(21:15):
that's correct. Yes, we uhso that that was a kind of a
born out of our own customers requests. What was happening there is that a
lot of our customers in the hospitalityindustry, we're asking us, can we
use maintenance care for the housekeeping team, And we were we were kind of
trying to accommodate it and say,yeah, let's try this, let's let's
make this little change in maintenance care. But it got to a point where

(21:38):
we were going to have to changemaintenance care to be something different, and
so we decided let's just, youknow, kind of copy the software over,
but really change a lot of stuffthat is specific to housekeeping. And
we did that about two years ago, and we launched it a year and
a half ago, I guess maybetwo years yeah, and um, and
so we are now scheduling housekeeping staffso you can put your full schedule of

(22:03):
your housekeeping staff inside of care Clean. You can you can do audits.
So if if once a room isclean, you can send a notification to
a person whogles and audits the roomand checks all the boxes. You can
notify the front desk staff that theroom is available now for you know,
for after it's been cleaned. Soyou can integrate that with your with your
POS system or what you're using,so you can actually utilize care clean.

(22:27):
Like you're using Maintenance Care for yourmaintenance team, you're now using care clean
for the housekeeping team. The housekeeperswhen they show up on site, they
can scan a QR code in theroom that starts the cleaning clock. They
then clean the room. When theyleave, it stops the clock, and
it tells you how long they've spentin each room. If you want to
get to that level of detail,you can track that in care clean.
So it's really it's really easy toolto use, and it's bundled. You

(22:49):
can buy it as a bundled withMaintenance Care and you get a discounted price
for buying both, and so it'sit's really pertinent to this industry. That's
excellent. Oh, I can seea lot of value in that. I
checked out your YouTube channel at MaintenanceCare. If anybody has any questions,

(23:11):
check it out. It is reallywell done. There was a lot of
information in there. And I've beenin this industry a long time and there
was a lot of stuff in thereI didn't know, so I highly recommended
he I highly recommend people check itout. All Right, we've covered quite
a bit. Is there anything thatour followers might be interested that we didn't

(23:32):
talk about? Well, I thinkjust you know, we're very excited about
talking to as many people as possible, and I think that that that shows
through to every of our employees whodeal with our customers. And I think,
you know, give us a chance, you know, come come visit
us and talk to us, andI think you're gonna find exactly what I'm
saying here is translated to your experienceof what you're gonna you're gonna find with

(23:56):
maintenance Care. So I think thatI would just lead with that. I
think it's just we want to talkto as many people as possible about our
software. That's excellent. But I'vereally enjoyed this. It's been great and
it's and you've given us a tonto think about. So Dan, I
really appreciate you taking the time tochat with us and share your expertise.
Thank you very much, it's beengreat talking to you. Okay, where

(24:18):
can people find out to vote maintenanceCare? Where can they go and maybe
follow you? Absolutely? Yeah,I mean the best thing to follow is
the maintenance Care website www dot maintenancecaredot com, um and um, and
like you said, our YouTube channel. You can search Maintenancecare on YouTube it's
forward slash maintenance care and but everywhere. I mean, I'm on LinkedIn under

(24:41):
Dan Roberts and you can find usthrough the maintenance Care page there. We're
on Facebook everywhere, always the samename, Maintenancecare, Maintenancecare everywhere. Thanks
a lot, Dan, This hasbeen excellent, awesome, I have a
great one. Yeah. That wasand Webrosure, founder and CEO of Maintenance

(25:02):
Care, and I really appreciate themtaking the time to chat. I would
encourage you to check out the maintenanceCare website at www dot maintenancecare dot com.
You can also check them out onYouTube at YouTube dot com slash at
maintenance care and on Facebook at Facebookdot com slash maintenance Care. Are you

(25:26):
going to be taking advantage of themaintenance Care Free edition. Let me know
in the comments. We cover moreabout your facility in the Guide to Owning
and Operating a Hospitality Property Successfully course. You can find more information at Keystone
HPD dot com slash course. Okay, you're going to have access to this

(25:47):
episode for as long as you wouldlike, but if you'd like to see
all the bonuses you would have accessto as a member of the Hospitality Property
School group, check out the shortvideo in this episode post show notes.
If you have not done so yet, make sure you sign up for Insider
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(26:07):
sure you get your free copy ofthe How to Improve your Hospitality Property Success.
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(26:32):
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