We sat down with one of our customers to ask them about the changes they’ve made to some of their cleaning and hygiene processes and how this has benefited them.
Darryll is a Property Manager at Churchill Park School in Auckland; his main focus is taking care of the buildings and grounds. The school has contractors who come in and do certain aspects of that, but if something needs to be done when they aren’t here, that’s Darryll’s responsibility.
What was it that led you to look at doing things differently?
Prior to this role, I had never been in a school environment, so when I started, I just went with the flow of how things were done. Once I had been in the role for a bit and was aware of what we were buying and using, I started to ask myself if we were getting the best value for money.
What was your approach to exploring how you could get better value for money?
I was basically just hunting around, exploring a few options, some of which were more premium, which also meant very expensive, so those stayed off my radar. I ended up crossing paths with the OfficeMax Account Manager while they were on site and that’s when we got talking about cleaning and hygiene options.
What solutions have you brought into your school? And what impact has this had?
Switched to an enzyme-based cleaner
We went from having 4 or 5 different products for different things, to now only needing to use one product for everything. It’s a safer product and much better for the environment also which we care about.
I buy it in a concentrated form and make the mixture myself, this has produced significant savings for us. To break it down for you, previously we were spending roughly $20 a bottle for the cleaning products, I’m now spending about $1.70 per bottle.
Switched to larger-sized rolls of hand towels and toilet paper
The larger (300m) toilet paper and hand towel sizes were not only cheaper from an actual dollar perspective, but I now don’t have to spend as much time changing the rolls.
I probably used to spend 5 hours a week doing this, and now I’m down to about an hour and half. That’s huge for me because that means I have another 3 1/2 hours I can spend focusing on something else within the school grounds.
How did OfficeMax fit in when it came to all of this?
To be honest, I didn’t know OfficeMax was even an option for cleaning and hygiene products before this. The Account Manager was on site, speaking to some staff in the office, and she actually just came over and saw me, which was great.
We got talking and she recommended sending one of their Cleaning and Hygiene Specialists in to have a chat with me. The specialist was brilliant, she knew exactly what she was talking about, we went through a process of working out what we needed and where we could make improvements. The specialist did a survey of all the toilets and cleaning equipment and gave us some recommendations and pricing. They’ve been good to deal with, it’s just easy.
Any final thoughts you think are important to share?
As people, we can get stuck in our ways, but when it comes to looking at the cost structure of your school, you have to think about how you can save money. There’s no two ways about that. This was one area where I was able to save quite a bit of money for the school, which means we can look at putting that money elsewhere.
Everything I’ve done, I do a cost analysis on (in a spreadsheet), so I can clearly communicate with the principal the bottom dollar figure and where the potential cost savings are.