How to Be an Innovator

Hello friends and colleagues, and welcome to the latest webinar of CleanTelligence Software's 2017 webinar series. Today is Thursday, July 13th and I'm speaking to you from CleanTelligence main offices in Provo, Utah, which is located in the Rocky Mountains or what is becoming better known as the Silicon Slopes. I would like to thank all of you who are listening today, particularly those who have registered for this webinar and are listening live. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded and will be available on our website in about two weeks. If you are attending this webinar live, you will have an opportunity to interact with me via chat and an online survey at the end. And of course, all registrants of this webinar will receive a free ebook based off of my presentation. Expect to see that in your email inbox in about two weeks as well. All of our previous webinars are available to view@cleantelligent.com webinars over the last several years we've done topics ranging from customer service to marketing to business development and more. I encourage you to check them out as you will find valuable content and helpful tips for your cleaning business. The topic of today's webinar is how to be an Innovator. We'll be talking a lot about innovation today and over the next couple of months as we prepare for the biggest industry trade show in North America, Issa Interclean. More on that later. I believe innovation is an important topic for any business, including the cleaning businesses many of you own and operate. My name is Bradley York and I am Director of Marketing here at cleantelligent. A little background on me. I've been at this company for almost three years. Before that I worked in web design and development. I have college degrees in linguistics and in Foreign Language education, and I also have experience in corporate IT support. So I'm actually a relative newcomer to marketing and certainly a newcomer to the janitorial sanitation industry. Here's a list of my previous webinars. By the way, you'll notice the last one I gave in March was about how to make your cleaning company more competitive. I encourage you to watch that one if you haven't already. It has a lot of great content that will complement what I say today. Now, since I've dabbled in other careers, you may wonder how I wound up in this position as Clean Intelligence Director of Marketing. You may wonder how I am qualified to present this webinar considering that many of you have far more experience in this industry the simple answer is that my life has taken many twists and turns over the years and I've had to be innovative to reach my career goals. I'll talk about that today as well. To begin this webinar, I would like to get a sense of who I am talking to. What is your position at your cleaning company? I'm conducting a simple informal poll that you may respond to by simply typing your answer in the question box in your viewer window, like so so are you the president or CEO, or are you a manager, a cleaner, or office assistant? Type in the relevant position if you would like in your viewer window and I'll give you a minute to respond if you would like to. Well, thank you. Those of you that have contributed. I could see from this and also based on surveys that we've done before of listeners to the webinars, that many of you are in leadership positions at your companies. Some of you are, of course, presidents, probably owners as well. Regardless of what you do at your company, you should feel that you are in a position to innovate or encourage innovation at your company. So I hope what I say today can apply to all of you. In this webinar, I'll cover these basic the need for innovation, a brief history of innovation, and I'll give some suggestions for how you can innovate at your company, depending on your position and your responsibilities. I'll also discuss briefly what Cleantelligent has been doing and continues to do to innovate in the cleaning industry. I'd like to discuss this image of a whiteboard that has been shared, widely shared on the Internet lately. Some of you may have seen it on your social media feeds. I honestly don't know what is the origin of this image and I don't believe entirely in the accuracy of these statements, but I do believe they are worth discussing. So I'm going to read each of the items on this list. Amazon didn't kill the retail industry. They, being the retail industry, did it to themselves by bad customer service. Netflix did not kill Blockbuster. They did it to themselves with ridiculous late fees. Uber did not kill the taxi industry. They did it to themselves by limiting the number of taxis and with fare control. Apple did not kill the music industry. They did it to themselves by forcing people to buy full length albums. Airbnb did not kill the hotel industry. They did it to themselves by limited availability and pricing options. It goes on to say that technology itself is not the real disruptor. Being non customer centric is the biggest threat to any business. What do you Think of all of this. Do you agree with these statements? These are just a few examples of industries that within the last generation or even within the last few years have been radically changed or disrupted. New players have emerged with new innovations, such as Amazon with online shopping, which has led to the so called retail store apocalypse that is currently happening. Now, as I mentioned, I don't entirely agree with these statements because I feel there were other factors involved, although I do agree that Amazon, Apple and others have flourished in their respective industries because they have learned to use new technologies effectively and these are the real innovations, or disruptors as the writer calls them. In order for you to innovate your cleaning business in such a way that you impact the entire industry, you'll need to learn how to use new technologies and techniques effectively. And of course you'll have to be customer centric, as they say, always considering how your innovations will affect your customers. Now, if these examples don't provide enough of a cautionary tale for you, let me explain further why you must continually innovate your business or risk losing it. Lately I've been reading a book written for small business owners. It's called Conquer the Chaos and it was written by Clayton Mask and Scott Martineau. Clayton Scott say your business is being subjected to factors beyond your control. You might be completely satisfied with your current situation, but it won't last. If you choose to stand still, those outside forces will rush past you, leaving only chaos in their wake. So what are these factors beyond your control? Your competitors in technology for the most part, but even your own employees can drag you down if you're not doing things to grow your business. Clayton Scott say the following will Competitors will steal your customers, your employees will stop innovating, your products and services will become outdated, your technology and processes will fall behind those of your competitors, and your income will drop. You'll see that this is exactly what has happened to the companies I mentioned earlier. Companies that failed. So how does this problem apply to the cleaning industry and what can you do about it? Before I answer these questions, let's clearly define what innovation is in a business sense, of course. Is it the same thing as a new invention or new technology? No. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, basically a think tank that operates in many countries, innovation means the implementation of a new or significantly improved product, goods or service or process a new marketing method or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization, or external relations. If this sounds too academic for you, they're basically saying that innovation is the implementation of the new or improved product, not the product itself. Amazon did not invent online shopping, nor were they the only ones to use it. The way they used online shopping is what helped them succeed and steal business from retail. These two researchers, whose names I will not try to pronounce, gave a very similar definition of innovation in a business sense. Emphasize here that they call innovation both a process and an outcome. Think about what that means. Just for fun, let's look at some recent innovations that have revolutionized not just the cleaning industry but most of our lives as well. Many of you probably use backpack vacuums, which are now something of a staple in commercial cleaning. But who would have thought that a device that is over 100 years old could suddenly be made easier to use and more mobile than ever? Microfiber cloth was already widespread and popular in Europe before being adopted in the United States. This is not an entirely good innovation, however, because the extra toughness and durability of microfiber makes it less biodegradable. Which brings us to green cleaning. Green cleaning has long been a buzzword, but recently there have been more cleaning supplies and techniques than ever before that are just as effective as they are environmentally friendly. When was the last time you used a public restroom or cleaned one with sink handles and a shared bar of soap? Thankfully, more and more restrooms are using motion sensors to dispense water, soap and flush toile toilets automatically, making life easier for everyone. Perhaps my favorite innovation of the last generation has been the use of software in the cleaning industry. Software solutions like cleantelligent have improved client communication, strengthened quality control, and even made the job bidding process faster and more accurate. And our software continues to innovate, as I'll explain later. Now that I've described the need for innovation and given numerous examples of companies that have innovated successfully and not successfully, let's discuss what you can do to innovate your cleaning business. Luckily, there is no shortage of literature on this topic. Today I'll share a few observations from an article I found in the Harvard Business Review. The article suggests that you create an innovation strategy for your own business. But what is an innovation strategy, and how does it differ from a marketing strategy or a business growth strategy? I will explain this an innovation strategy begins with you recognizing your company's competitive advantage. I spoke about this in my last webinar in March. A competitive advantage is what you use to distinguish yourself from your competitors. Whether it's your newer technology, your better proprietary processes, or your unique expertise, your competitive advantage isn't necessarily what makes you innovative but it should be integral to your company's identity. Always remember to be customer centric or customer focused. Once you've decided what your innovation will be, whether it's your competitive advantage or something else, find out exactly how it creates value for their customers. For instance, does it save them money? Does it clean their facility faster? And of course, you have to remember how can you communicate this value to your customers? Just like your competitive advantage, your innovation must be unique to your company. Don't let your competition copy it. Continue to refine and enhance your innovation and invest in developing new innovations in the future. When I defined innovation, I mentioned that it wasn't just about new technology, but new business processes as well. For many companies, their innovations don't involve new technology, but rather new ways of leveraging existing technology. Uber, the transportation service is an example of this, using GPS systems that have been around for decades. Of course, you will need to distinguish between these two types of innovations, business and technology, to create your own innovation strategy. Here is a matrix that the author of this article and several others created which factors Innovations in technology and business we see that there are four types of disruptive, architectural, routine, and radical. I won't go into the details or the examples given here. Suffice it to say that the easiest types of innovations are routine, which use existing technologies and business models, and the hardest types are architectural, which require new technologies and business models. It's frankly hard to say where your business should fit in this matrix. Again, go back to your competitive advantages and what your innovations are. Do they involve new technologies or new processes, or both? One thing I should point out in creating an innovation strategy is that it can be useful to examine what other companies are doing, but you shouldn't copy their strategies, just as you wouldn't copy their competitive advantages. Your company should be unique in this regard. I should say that I've only scratched the surface of the content in this Harvard Business Review article. If you would like to learn more about innovation strategies for your business, I highly suggest you read the rest. So far I've been talking about how your cleaning company can be innovative. But what about you? As the president, owner, or another employee of your company, how can you be creative and innovative on your own? There's also no shortage of literature on this topic, including many popular books on self help, leadership and success. These are just a few examples. As you probably know, there is also a large industry devoted to business coaching and what is sometimes called life coaching. I'm not familiar with life coaching, so I can't say much about how successful it is, but I do know from experience that business coaching can be productive, provided that the expertise of the coach aligns with what you're trying to do. If you're looking for business coaching for your business, I know of several consultants who work exclusively with the cleaning industry. If you would like to know who they are, and if you would like to reach out to them, reach out to me and I will send you their contact information. Some of you watching this webinar may already be users of CleanTelligence software. If you're not yet a user, or even if you are, let me fill you in on the history of our company, specifically how innovation has inspired our products. About 20 years ago, the founder of this company, Michael Jenkins, worked as a building service contractor in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mike's cleaning company was successful, although the growth of the company caused a need for quicker, more effective employee communication and quality control. As I'm sure you'll remember, the World Wide Web and email were rising innovations at this time. Mike decided to take advantage of these new technologies and he created web based software to better communicate with his employees and clients. As he used the software, customer complaints went down and retention skyrocketed. Obviously, Mike's software was revolutionary and there wasn't much else like it at any other cleaning company at the time. So to facilitate technological and business innovation across the industry, he decided to create another company to further develop and sell the software to other cleaning companies. So in 2003, clean intelligence software was born. And the innovations didn't stop there. The software was originally web based, but with the increased popularity of mobile devices and smartphones, mobile apps were created. The functionality of the software has also expanded, making it more useful than ever. Cleantelligence innovations of the last few years have been so monumental and so well received that we have won four ISSA Innovation Awards. In 2012, we won our first Innovation Award for our mobile inspections app. In 2013 we won for our Work orders app and mobile surveys, in 2014 for our bidding and estimating features, and in 2015 for our enhanced branding options. In 2016 we chose not to compete for the Innovation Award, but this year we're excited to announce that we're trying to win an unprecedented fifth award and our entry is based off our new Business Intelligence Dashboards. If you're not familiar with what our BI dashboards are and what they do, here's an information page that Issa has set up for us, so go tovote or issa.com vote categories services and Technology and Here is our page. Business intelligence is a new trend, a new innovation that allows you to see an instant summary of your most recent data. Business Intelligence Dashboards will help you and your team make better decisions about where and how to allocate your resources. It'll show you and your clients what you're doing well and what you're doing wrong, just like we well I encourage you to watch this commercial, which unfortunately I can't play during this webinar. The sound won't work. But you'll see that the benefits of BI include eliminating stress, helping simplify your job, and giving you more time to do the things you want to do. So I encourage you to take a look at this page, screenshots and the video. And if you're impressed by our latest innovation and think that we deserve this year's Innovation Award, I strongly encourage you to vote for us. Here again, the link is issa.comvote and we are under Services and Technology. To be able to vote, you will need to create a user account on issa.com but you can do that for free. Also, as you may be aware, cleantelligent will be exhibiting at Issa Inter Clean in September. Our booth number is here in the bottom left, number 4479. If you're coming to the show, please come and see us. We'd love to talk to you. If you're not yet a CleanTeen customer and would like to learn more about BI can help your business, go to www.cleantelligent.com demo to request a free consultation. Our software consultants will help you find the right solution for your needs. If you're already a cleantelligent customer would like to learn more about BI or how to use the software better, don't hesitate to contact the customer support team@supportleantelligent.com as I conclude my presentation, let me review some of the points I made earlier. Innovation refers to technology and business processes. Your business well, okay. Remember that in today's fast paced, hyper competitive business climate, your business must be innovative and you must show that innovativeness to your customers or you may lose them. It's not the innovation itself, but rather the way it's implemented that can make or break your business. Create an innovation strategy based on the kind of innovation you offer, whether it's technological or business process. Remember that your innovation strategy is not the same thing as your marketing or business strategy. Finally, learn how to be creative and how to be a better leader. Use resources to do that, including coaching. I used and referred to quite a few resources in this webinar. Here's a list of them if you're interested in learning more about this topic. As I mentioned earlier, cleantelligent also provides regular blog posts and webinars that address many topics that you may find useful. I encourage you to check these out. As a reminder to those who registered for this webinar, you will receive a free ebook by email. You will certainly want to spend time reading it because it will expound on what I've covered today. Expect that in your inbox in about two weeks. If you're interested in reaching out to me directly about any question, here is my contact information. Feel free to email me or connect with me on LinkedIn. I've also included contact information for clean intelligence, sales and support teams. Again, thank you for listening to this month's webinar. It's been my pleasure to talk to you today. Visit www.cleantelligent.comwebinars to view this and our other webinars. And please follow us on our social media, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn where we share the latest industry best practices, management tips and other special offers. Good luck in your business and in all of your endeavors.