Client Education
One of the root causes identified by the industry during the debate was lack of awareness among clients, both in relation to cleaning equipment/ chemicals pr oviders and service providers. Often, this could even result in wrong sized machines getting sold to clients or unrealistic demands made by them.
“It’s a catch-22 situation for us,” said Anil Sethi, MD, Manmachine India Pvt. Ltd. “An equipment vendor could always sell a 20-litre scrubber-drier to a client requiring equipment for a factory of 100,000 sq. mt! Even if another vendor approaches the same client explaining the impractical option of running a 20-lt machine on 100,000sq. mt, the client would not be able to comprehend or accept. The client does not know what is best for cleaning his factory. Or for that matter, what exactly is cleaning?
“Yes, if the standards are set as to the nature of our business and once that is stipulated, then the prices will commensurate with the kind of e xpectations one has,” adds Bikram S. Chada, MD, Impressions Services Pvt. Ltd.
Agreeing to Anil, Vivek Mata, MD, Charnock Equipments Pvt. Ltd, said that often a client’s requirement could be that of a ride-on scrubber-drier and he would end up with a small walk-behind scrubber-drier. “There are two issues to this – either his budget is low and he opts for a walk-behind or the salesman does not have a ride-on and hence convinces the customer that a walk-behind is perfect for his needs.”
Sanjeev Mantri, Country Head, Arch Chemicals Products Pvt. Ltd, felt that competition should improve the quality and performance for the end user. In case of L1, the customer has to be educated about what is essential for him, educated about safe chemicals and safer handling of equipment. Then the question of L1 will not exist.
Added Prashant Sule, CEO, PCI Environmental Services Pvt. Ltd, “In this time of recession, we should not let the clients take advantage of the situation. The client goes for a change of vendor and at times the outgoing vendor is not paid a quarter of the year’s money. Like in the case of Chartered Accountants where a certificate of No Objection or No Dues is issued by the outgoing CA, a system can be brought in here too.”
Spare Parts
A direct inference to the act of selling wrong machine to clients could be drawn to expensive spare parts. “Buying equipment is probably a one time capital investment but it is the recurring cost that is bothering the service provider, because the standards diminish thereafter,” commented Bikram Chada.
“Every service provider genuinely strives to provide exemplary services but somewhere in the middle of the contract he loses his way because the pricing tends to move up and the costing goes haywire. Somewhere there has to be rationalisation of prices of spares and as service providers we should not feel that we have been taken for a ride,” he added.
Finance Facilities
र 100,000 or र 200,000 but to the tune of र 50 lakhs or र 1 crore,” Arun Thapar pointed out. Disagreeing to Arun’s point, Bikram Chada said, “there is no dearth of finance. There are funds that can be obtained from the market.”
“But the service providers,” countered M.K. Vijayasankar, MD, Roots Multiclean Ltd, “have expressed problems of obtaining finance and requested equipment manufacturers to start leasing on hire purchase facilities. But that is not our business. I have personally spoken to many banks but they are reluctant.”
While, many present at the Meet expressed difficulty in obtaining loan from financial institutions, Sam Cherian affirmed that there were banks like the State Bank of India that were ready to give funds for cleaning equipment.
“If fact, if one has the balance sheet in place, no bank would hesitate to give loan,” added Sumeet Khurana, MD, Dulevo India.
“Whether you set 8% or 40%, every individual company is going to decide on their own rules. What I feel we need at present is one voice. The standards will be set automatically. What we need first is a common Forum with a corporate structure. The leading peers from the industry sitting here must take the lead.”-Vinay Ruparel
“We need to collectively spread more awareness among financial institutions,” suggested Arun Thapar.
Or as Vijayasankar recommended, “FM should be taken as a service industry and get the same privileges as small and medium scale enterprises in getting priority lending. The cleaning industry could take up this point with the Government.”
Standards and Parameters
All issues before the cleaning industry, felt Anil Sethi, were squarely related to lack of standards. “Cleaning needs to be defined and should be made known to the customer. If you look at the cleaning industry there are no standards of maintenance or cleaning, there are no parameters defined and today it is still a customer driven market. There is basically a lack of initiative on both parts of the people associated with the cleaning business – the equipment provider and the service provider – in order to take a stand. There is always a first time and I think time has come for some reputed service providing and equipment manufacturing companies to start from somewhere. Probably put hands together, go to some key customers and talk about some quality service. That is going to define the standards in this industry.
“While defining standards, we have to talk about preventive maintenance standard for the customer. It is for us to demonstrate to the customers whether a carpet should be cleaned with a broom or with a vacuum. This has to be related to certain parameters. For e.g., hotels, whether carpets or no carpets, they vacuum their rooms daily and it is a standard accepted by the industry. But we are yet to see a hospital where all rooms are vacuumed. Hospital is a place which requires vacuuming all the more. It is more about creating awareness and creating parameters for customers for standards to be obtained.”
“Further, while laying standards,” Sameer Jagmag, Director-Sales & Marketing, Nilfisk Advance India Ltd, pointed out that “one has to take into consideration the needs of various industries, because the standards required for a hospital will not be the same as that for the industry. We need to first identify industry specific requirements.”
On an optimistic note, Sumeet Khurana added that the industry was still very young and was evolving like any other industry. “I see a great change in the last 10 years. The prices of equipment & spares have come down and quality of services has become better. This is because there is competition and our customer (service provider) insists that we, the equipment providers, become better. The process is on. Even in the case of service provider, the standards have improved, though there are no set norms. I agree with Anil that we need to have a voice but we need to appreciate at the same time that we are evolving, we have all become better and competition between equipment providers and between service providers will ensure that we upgrade ourselves.”
“25 years back, the question was whether to buy the equipment or not and today the question is what to buy and whom to buy it from. But still cleaning is not considered a necessity. Some legislation should come by.”-Hemanth Ogale
Two issues that need to be looked at while setting standards, according to Archana Bhatnagar, Proprietor, Haylide Chemicals, are lack of training for chemical usage and awareness of green cleaning products. “I would link the former with the attrition rate. Each company has to perform to sustain business. It’s not that companies are not providing training but with high attrition, there is always a new worker not knowing the correct usage and mixing of chemicals.
“Besides, what are these green cleaning products? We need to document these standards of green products/chemicals get them approved and circulated among FM/service providers and corporates as Green Cleaning Guidelines. India has no standards/certification system where green cleaning products/chemicals are concerned. Besides, the Green Seal Certification system available in the US does not certify products from India, so then where do we get the certification? Hence, it is essential we draw out our document towards this.”
“We should set standards for equipment and chemicals whereby we can force the client to chose the vendors certified by a common body,” suggested Sameer Nair, Manager-Corporate Material, ISS Integrated Facility Services Pvt. Ltd.
“In fact it is not a bad idea to have our own certification system. An independent body could be created to certify the standards of the chemicals, added Sam Cherian.
Talking about standards, Vinay Deshmukh, CEO, Forbes Facility Services Pvt. Ltd, said, the industry and the customers do not speak the same language. There is no uniformity, the levels and understandings are different. There is a need to educate the customer and the cleaning industry can work towards bringing in clarity. This will stop unethical practices and reduce the burden of delivering the customer’s unrealistic demands beyond the prescribed scope. It is necessary to define this scope to the customer.
“The size of this industry is so vast. If we decide to convert it from the unorganised to the organised, the size is going to be still bigger that each of our companies would grow 10-fold and yet we would not have captured even 50% of the market. If we, as a powerhouse decide to change the face of FM companies and change the way the client interacts with us, there would be a lot of change.
“Further, we should insist upon being paid for the services; avoid giving a break up of the services offered. This will come about only when the clients agree to the scope of the services offered. For this to happen, we have to interact with the top officials of the customer organisation, because at this level there will be better understanding of expectations, costs, deliverables and quality.”
Even with the chemicals, generally used for cleaning, Bikram Chada suggested that standardisation and colour coding would help. “We must accept that the people we employ come from the lower strata of the society – semi-literate or illiterate.”
Attrition/Minimum Wages
“Attrition is a major problem and the way out is to approach the government to increase minimum wages! Till such time these workers are given a decent standard of living, we cannot expect loyalty,” added Bikram Chada.
“I would say forget the minimum wages, even if service providers pay the existing wages, it would be a great honour,” said Naushad Panjwani, Executive Director, Knight Frank India Pvt. Ltd.
“It is unrealistic to approach the government where minimum wages is concerned. Minimum wages is governed by various factors. It is for us to decide whether we want skilled labour minimum wages or unskilled labour minimum wages,” clarified Archana.
“But, again, the government has already laid down minimum wages, which itself is not being honoured,” added Vivek Mata.
But the counter point to this was that things were changing with auditing and clients have been forced to pay the minimum wages. Systems of checks and balances are here to stay.
“As a service provider, I would be very happy to have high-end mechanisation that comes into play in the cleaning industry. Our company is willing to make investment. But somebody needs to come to us and explain how mechanisation can bring down the cost. I am sure, there would be many benefits by using the same equipment in multiple sites for multiple applications.”-Naushad Panjwani
“As employers why not we follow minimum standards, why wait for the government. Unless educated people come into this industry, the growth will be stunted, equipment will not get used properly and proper chemicals will not be used either. Even if standards are set, unless they are trained and educated they will not understand these standards,” said Vijayasankar.
“Without qualified staff, no amount of training to the day-to-day workers will be effective. With trained manpower, the payment will be good, equipment will be utilised well and attrition levels will come down. Attrition could also be attributed to the fact that this industry lacks respectability. People come here as a last resort and find it rather demeaning to be in this field. We need to bring some respectability to this industry,” added Vijayasankar.
“I feel attrition could be brought down, if the worker feels that he is doing a blue-collared job. In fact, we have to ensure that the workers make a career out of this profession,” says Samit Sanyal, Head-Marketing, JohnsonDiversey.
Mechanisation and Specialisation
“The present time is not conducive for negotiations, yet in the last six months, many contracts were renegotiated at reduced costs. I am surprised that there have been contractors who have agreed and are providing manpower below minimum wages. That is where organised sector comes into play, which does not succumb to pressure of non-compliance to statutory norms,” stated Naushad Panjwani.
“Today, specialisation is something we are shying away from. There is a lot to be done in terms of process improvement. But, the three components of the cleaning industry (equipment, chemical and FM services) are not focussing on specialisation and instead equipment supplier are getting into FM business; security companies are into the cleaning business; pest control companies into housekeeping, caterers getting into cleaning industry… you have a lot of people from other industries coming into this business. This industry is perceived as easy to manage which is not the truth. There are very few entry barriers and we need more, so that we can bring in specialisation, with the intention of client benefit and property being maintained properly. And being in the organised sector, the labour is being taken care of. The equipment sector has a bigger role to play. The amount of mechanisation is very low. The bulk of the unorganised sectors are coming in without any mechanisation and purely on headcount. At best they have is a vacuum cleaner,” continued Naushad.
Lack of recognition/representation
While Naushad and Bikram both agreed that in the evolution process, there will be a shake out and the small or the unorganised companies will shut shops in the long run. “But in the interim period, there will be clients who will receive sub-standard services, the property is going to suffer and the manpower will be the biggest sufferers,” cautioned Naushad.
Key to the success, said Vivek Mata, would be the vendors and the FM companies joining hands. “The big service providers face stiff competition because very small service providers are coming into fray and get business at very low margins. This is the very reason why even big service providers seek cheap equipment and cheap chemicals to ensure that they also stay in the market. If we could join hands and lay down certain parameters, everything would evolve in a definite pattern. Let the customer decide which product, what price and buy it. These parameters thereby would ensure that we don’t cut on margins (service providers) and give quality service to the clients. How do we start setting up these parameters? We need some brainstorming on this.”
Pradeep Mehra, MD, G4S Facility Services Pvt. Ltd, summarised saying, “first of all the basic objective of our sitting here is to recognise this industry. Only then we can talk about what we want to talk. Second, attrition rate is about 26% globally but in our country it is 31%. So it doesn’t have much of a value when it comes at the global level. Third, if you have to be successful, it has to be a more mechanised driven than a manpower driven approach. Fourth, we have to build standards, not individual oriented but association oriented where a benchmark is kept on the lower margins.”
Talking about working on low margins, Mehra added that when the facility manager changed, the fear of losing the contract crept in. “The new facility manager has his different concepts, likes & dislikes and in the process of convincing the new FM, the service provider either retains or loses the contract or introduces new reduced prices. This is happening because of lack of awareness on the part of the client or the FM manager, because the basic concept of housekeeping that everyone knows is jadoo pocha.”
In the case of service provider, when it comes to maintaining a large office, a large call centre or industry or open areas, the concentration is more on the manpower and clients bargaining on margins. “Hence a large initiative is required from both the equipment and service providers to list some good customers from all target groups and educate them about the right standards. May be it is worthwhile making a demonstration,” commented Anil Sethi.
It is necessary that the industry meets contractors designing building to tell that they also need to maintain this building. Time has come to show the budget value for cleaning.
“In other countries, these activities are governed by an association. Today, the biggest lacunae before us is that we do not have a body that puts an advertisement saying that this particular job could be done like this. This awareness has to be brought among customers as everything revolves round the customer. It is time to take the initiative and change the situation.”
Need for a strong platform
Virendra Bhatt, CEO, All Services Under One Roof, felt that If we had to come together, we should take a few common agenda and then proceed from there. “The detailed engineering can be done subsequently. We have to create a platform and bring together people of two different categories. We need to make efforts in the right direction.”
“The other industries go out and out to invest in equipment which would aid production. While with cleaning, unless there is a united body advocating the benefits of cleaning, it isn’t going to make much of a difference,” concluded Anil.
In short, the majority agreed that there was not much point in debating the problems and challenges in front of the cleaning industry without having a formal forum which can prioritise issues and help chart a direction to the benefit of everyone.
Sure, CIJ extends its support to the cleaning industry.