From Classical Piano to Sanitation Software: Vernon Hogan, Pro Solutions Software

Pete: 00:00:16

Hello and welcome to Get Flushed, the Sanitation podcast. My name's Pete.

Over the past month, I've been on a mission to find the Holy Grail of portable sanitation software, and I define that as a one stop shop or all inclusive platform that could perform the ten key business functions I identified as being essential in a portable restroom operation. I won't go over those now, but if you flick back to my previous episode, the Holy Grail, I went over all ten in quite some detail.

Over the past few episodes, we've heard how Anthony and Stefan Covic at Prestige Loos have been working with their developer to improve and refine their platform. I shared my own method to record delivery services and pickups using iAuditor, and last week, John Giddykin told us all about service call.

Although I began my search looking for an all in one platform, I've realized that some existing software performs some of those specialist functions really, really well. I'm thinking in particular about Google Maps and Apple Maps or accounting software like QuickBooks, mind your own business, or Xero.

Now, it makes a lot of sense to find a way to integrate those platforms rather than reinvent the wheel. And I understand that that integration can be done relatively easily using an API or application programming interface.

After I'd recorded the service core episode, I got a message from Vernon Hogan at Greensboro Web services in North Carolina and Brett Rock at pit stop sanitation in Georgia. And they told me that they'd developed a platform from the ground up that would fulfill all ten of my essential functions. So I gave them a call.

Vernon: 00:02:01

Vernon Hogan speaking.

Pete: 00:02:03

Hey, Vernon, how are you?

Vernon: 00:02:04

Good. How are you?

Pete: 00:02:06

I'm good. Good to see you.

Vernon: 00:02:08

Nice to meet you. Thank you.

Pete: 00:02:10

Are you outdoors or is that just a flashback drop?

Vernon: 00:02:12

Just a flashback drop.

Pete: 00:02:14

I like that. What I normally do is just get people just to say hi and explain who they are, name and company, so the listeners will get an idea.

So obviously, I'm Pete from Get Flushed, and then I'll hand over to I'm.

Vernon: 00:02:26

Vernon with Greensboro Web services Pro software.

Pete: 00:02:29

Hey, Vernon.

Brett: 00:02:30

And I am Bret Rott with Greensboro Pro software.

Pete: 00:02:35

Have you got another role as well, though, Brett?

Brett: 00:02:37

Yes, I'm the owner operator of Pitstop Sanitation, Atlanta, Georgia.

Pete: 00:02:42

Give me a feel for your business, though, Brett, how many potties are you running?

Brett: 00:02:46

It's close to: 3000

Pete: 00:02:49

You sent me a message to say, hey, you're talking about software. We've got a package that we'd like to share with you. Over to you.

Vernon: 00:02:55

Okay.

got started with this company: 2014

And in: 2015

Pete: 00:03:28

It's a big swing. Vernon.

Vernon: 00:03:30

Yeah, a little bit on the. But I've always been heavily studying that and working in it.

So I started developing the system, and developed kind of the website meant the CRM, the billing side first. That was actually when Brett and I first really started talking.

He was a customer of mine for other products, and he was just complaining about his website, some of the experiences he had in the industry with the software. And so I started talking to him about what I was doing, and that's kind of how we developed our relationship.

And I built this website from him, and they kind of started helping the CRM and some of the online marketing. Brent just, he had a lot of great suggestions for features. That was kind of like a light bulb in my brain. Right?

arted doing that, and then on: 2017

Originally started as master route optimization, which is like, multi route optimization.

Basically can take all your services for a whole week and your number of drivers and their work hours, and then it gives you back a completed schedule for your trucks. That was the first piece we had tested it out on pitstop. In theory, it worked great.

The routes were definitely optimized, but the problem was getting it back into Brett's current software system. Right. Like, integrated in with his software system that he had.

Brett was basically like, you know, we've got to develop the other pieces as well to kind of finish it out.

And so that's when we developed the route management and route scheduling piece, as well as finished out the accounting side of it, and also, like, timesheet, basic payroll, and truck tracking. Right. So that we finished that, and then I guess the final piece was the QR code system.

So the system can print out QR codes at your local company, and you can put them on your units, and then you can use the phone to scan.

Pete: 00:05:42

So when you sent me a list of the top ten things that I'd put in my original episode that I was looking for, these ten functions, and you pretty much tick all of those. From what you've told me, the only.

Vernon: 00:05:53

Thing that I wasn't sure of was what you meant by health and safety.

Pete: 00:05:56

The benefit of having health and safety integrated is that you can keep a record that if there is an incident, you can show that you've actually been diligent about doing your checks.

I mentioned in the Holy Grail episode that I was using an app called iAuditor, and that has a range of templates that allow you to carry out inspections so you could stop and check that all of your work conditions are fine. Are there any trip hazards, slip hazards? It's a really simple sheet. It's just a list, really, with a configurable answer.

Yes, no, maybe, you know, high, low, whatever categories you want to use. And the boys at prestige were using something similar to that to check off their trucks as they left the yard.

The health and safety manager did a walk round on each vehicle, and she checked that. The lights, the tires, the signage, the dangerous goods folder, the driving license, everything was in order.

And when she pressed yes on the iPad, that recorded that information, and she gave the driver a green light to leave the yard.

Vernon: 00:06:52

Oh, okay. Wonderful.

Brett: 00:06:54

Yeah, I kind of felt like that fell more into the vehicle. Maintenance kind of goes two different ways, right.

One is the drivers, every day, whenever they leave the yard and come back to the yard, they have to fill out a pre trip, post trip, and the safety manager on the team has to verify that that truck is safe to leave the yard.

But what the program does is it takes it a step further, is that it makes sure that the things that drivers note are taken care of whenever they go in for service.

Pete: 00:07:22

So you create an action or a note for somebody to actually do something about that broken taillight.

Brett: 00:07:28

Correct. And that's something that goes straight to our mechanic.

We don't have an onsite mechanic, so now we're kind of closing that when we're bringing another vendor, a very important vendor, to exactly what's going on with the health of that truck.

Pete: 00:07:41

So does that vendor just have remote access to that component of the software?

Brett: 00:07:45

It's a sheet that we're able to send. It's more of a report that's generated because things like lights and things, we take care of that right away.

Somebody notices the wheel shakes a little bit.

Vernon: 00:07:57

Right.

Brett: 00:07:58

We want somebody else to take a look at that, too.

Pete: 00:08:00

So, visually, is the platform an easy interface to use?

Brett: 00:08:05

Whenever I was bringing my team on board, it really was. It was one of those things like, I can't believe we haven't been using it just because the buttons say what button does.

If you're trying to complete a task, it's easy on the. And one of my favorite pieces of it is with it being in the cloud, I can do it from anywhere.

Pete: 00:08:27

That sounds good.

Vernon: 00:08:27

Oh, thank you. Yeah, we've worked hard on it. It's a lot of work building something like that. So it's many, many, many hours in late nights.

Pete: 00:08:37

Yeah. So one of the things that came across from a chat with John Gadikin at service Corps was that they've got pots and pots of money.

They managed to find some good investors, and they've poured a lot into the development of service core. I'm going to be rude and ask whether or not that's the case for pro solution.

Vernon: 00:08:54

I would say we're more self funded between Brett and I, like I said, I had a successful distribution business, which allowed me to be able to maybe have some more funds available to develop.

Also, because I do a lot of the development and the actual programming myself, I can save that six figure salary for a professional programmer and project manager. But it's always takes deep pockets, regardless. Time or money or both.

Brett: 00:09:22

I think the other thing about not having to have huge investors, you know, big investors in it is being very precise on exactly what we want. You know, we're not trying to build a program that can be transformed into a bunch of different industries.

We want this software to work specific for portable restaurant companies.

Pete: 00:09:42

That's exactly what I was hoping to find when I started this quest.

I knew there were some packages out there, but the podcast is actually unearthed quite a lot of different products and platforms that I didn't know about, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners won't know about. And they're good stories.

You know, it's interesting, and it's great that people in the industry have put the time and effort and the expertise into developing that, because I'm sure there's not many other companies who would be able to exert that amount of direct knowledge, tacit knowledge, understanding and control, and you'd end up with something that didn't really fit, that had been adapted from another industry. And that's, I think that's the past history, to be honest.

The biggest limitation that I felt with service core was that it was only available North America, and a, they said it was based in imperial measurements, which wouldn't be a major issue, but b, they just hadn't sold it outside the US. Is that the same with pro solutions?

Vernon: 00:10:34

The answer to that is that we do support kilometers versus miles. The tracking does work outside the US, right? So, you know, I have all the maps loaded for Europe Asia.

Recently, just did a demo with a big company in Mexico City. Actually was routing a couple of his trucks around there.

We don't have an international client yet, but we are looking and it does work outside of North America. And we support UK, Australia, Austria and Belgium accounting practices right now. And I'm building modules for more as well.

Pete: 00:11:10

Well, let's see if we can find you some international trialists, then.

Vernon: 00:11:13

That'd be great.

Pete: 00:11:14

We've got a wide span of listeners. I think we're into 42, 43 countries. So maybe somebody listened, will say, hey, I'm going to contact Vernon and Brett and give this program a go.

Vernon: 00:11:23

We would love to give it a shot. We're very proud of it, and I think it would work just as well internationally as it does here in the US and North America.

Pete: 00:11:33

One of the conversations I've had with a lot of smaller operators is that software is typically out of their price range. Can you give us an indication of the price bracket?

Vernon: 00:11:42

Absolutely.

So one thing that we do different, I should say, is we do price per user per month, but we separate the difference between an office user and a driver user. Our program has a lot more office functionality than some of the stuff out there. Full accounting, payroll, human resources, a lot of stuff there.

So actually, the office user is priced a little bit higher than the driver, but we're generally in the range of 80 to about $180 per user per month. We're able to deploy a little bit more customized solutions depending upon what the needs of the client are.

Pete: 00:12:19

If you've got just a one man band who's not particularly worried about payroll, for example, they could drop that module and just run with a smaller package.

Vernon: 00:12:27

Correct. My smallest clients are one route, one driver, husband and wife combination.

And we have up to clients who do 30 routes a day in the system, so it can run the gambit.

We don't have a minimum, so if it's just one user and a driver, and they can be under dollar 200 a month, we don't require a base cost, and then there's also no license fee. You know, implementation is a little bit different kind of cost structure.

I really try to tailor that to the company that we're working with, because the spread of experience with software versus, you know, what platform they're coming from. Are they coming from carbons?

We've had clients that are coming from still using carbon copy routes, and it's a little bit harder sometimes to get them using a cloud based software system.

Pete: 00:13:14

Is the platform available on Android and iOS?

Vernon: 00:13:17

It actually is. So basically the way that it's a traditional web application, so it works on any device, Android, iOS.

But we also have finished applications that are available in the Android store as well as the iOS store.

These are hybrid programs that one track the truck, so it does the truck tracking, gives you driver positioning as well as speed of the truck, and then also it allows for offline scanning for remote areas. Right. So a driver could take just our installed Android app with a route sheet and go and service out of our cell phones reach.

He can scan the units, update whether it's been serviced or not, make notes on it, and then when he gets back into data range, all that information is then uploaded to the cloud application.

Pete: 00:14:13

The other thing that's come out in my conversations is that integrations seem to be the way that a lot of companies have gone. So, for example, the big finance packages would be Quickbooks. Zero. Mind your own business.

Have you built your own accounting package, or are you integrated, and could you integrate if you've built your own?

Vernon: 00:14:33

So we've done both.

We have a full feature accounting package that, like I said, it has supports the chart of accounts for United States, Mexico, all the territories down there, Canada, UK, Australia, and the different currencies. But we also. I have a complete integration with QuickBooks online, so it seamlessly works back and forth with Quickbooks online.

So that's really the only accounting, major accounting integration API that I've built for it so far.

Pete: 00:15:02

And, Brett, what do drivers think when you load them up to use the app?

Brett: 00:15:06

It stopped a lot of the phone conversations that were going on. I can't find this or where's that?

But it also gives them a place that they can put any kind of note that they want immediately while they're on site, my dispatcher comes in, checks everything that happened, you know, maybe the last 3 hours of the day, and that's because he's already looked at the stuff that the drivers had done that morning. So that way, my dispatcher knows exactly what's going on, and the drivers are getting to the right spot.

Pete: 00:15:40

So your dispatcher can follow that in real time then?

Brett: 00:15:43

As long as you have a service plan. Yes. And I think Vernon mentioned that app can't work without cell signal. Also, it stops the phone calls route. Drivers like the routine of it.

They don't really like to call in and try and you know, necessarily figure out problems.

Vernon: 00:16:03

Right.

Brett: 00:16:04

They can log it. We're seeing them in real time, you know, and that makes the customer happier, makes the whole business flow a lot smoother.

Pete: 00:16:14

So, looking ahead, what's the plan for the company and the package? Vernon, where. Where do we go next?

Vernon: 00:16:19

We're just trying to grow steadily and taking on new clients and getting the word out there that this software is available.

I mean, it's been a kind of a limited selection for a really long time in this industry, and just letting everybody know that we're here and we have a solution that was designed on a portable toilet company itself.

I'm thankful that Brett was there to allow me to test a lot of features and things like that that would normally be able to get done in a traditional development process. And that was a huge piece of it. We're going to continue to improve it, especially the accounting side of it, to offer more countries.

Pete: 00:16:55

And then if we've got a pro who's listening in and they're thinking, you know, I'm not using any software that's meeting all my needs at the minute, how do they get in touch and get on board?

Vernon: 00:17:04

Well, we call it the Pro software system, and it's Prosoftware app that'll take you to our website.

I have a ton of YouTube videos out that are linked on the website, kind of going through the program, talking about the advantages of just using a big ERP, or enterprise resource planning, as we call it, in the business, and bring all the different functions of your company together in one place. Affordable toilet companies have so many different little parts. It's so important to have that organization. I heard the podcast for the first time.

I was, wow, this is great. Somebody who's really interested in trying to get the perfect software for a portable toilet company.

Pete: 00:17:41

Yeah.

Pete: 00:17:42

Well, it sounds like you're on the journey. You're making great progress.

Vernon: 00:17:45

Yeah. Thank you.

Like I said, every day we're improving, and we have a lot of very happy clients, and we continue to move forward and, like I said, offer something a little bit different. I always use the analogy that it's kind of like cars. There's a lot of really nice car companies out there, Tesla and Toyota's and all that.

And some people just don't like to use a certain brand. They like different options. Right. I.

I think that we are coming forth with a new brand and a new option out there that can give people something maybe a little different to try.

Pete: 00:18:16

And it's a great backstory. Classically trained concert pianist turns into pro software magnum. That's up there with the Get Flush podcast. Hey.

Vernon: 00:18:29

and like I said, I started in: 2005

I was born and raised in the country of North Carolina here in the USA, and just really love the industry and the.

There's a lot of family owned businesses and, you know, it was a lot better than in the corporate rat race, a lot of family owned companies, and I really enjoy it. So that's why I stayed.

Pete: 00:19:05

And that passion has been a common theme throughout the podcast so far. You know, this is episode 18 and everyone I've spoken to so far has got that same buzz. They just absolutely love it.

Nobody's moaned or criticized or complained about the industry. They've all got a real passion for it. And as previous guests have said, the world would be lost without us.

Vernon: 00:19:24

Food, water, sanitation. I mean, it's absolutely necessary.

Pete: 00:19:28

It really is. I really enjoy talking with Vernon and Brett, and I like their ground up approach to the development of their software.

Sure, they're a small company, but they've put a lot of time, effort and expertise into building their platform. And, you know, I get the feeling it works.

As I've developed the podcast and spoken with more and more people, I've been really impressed by the general willingness to collaborate and share information and ideas. Yes, of course, this is a competitive industry, but that doesn't mean providers have to go to war with each other.

It's a big market and there's plenty of demand.

Especially now with COVID It doesn't make sense for providers to cut each other's throats by offering stupidly low prices or being secretive about good practice. Poorly maintained toilets and inadequate cleaning will have a detrimental impact on the reputation of the industry as a whole.

And a good news story about another portable sanitation provider doing great things is only a threat if you know you're letting your customers down. As providers, we should be above that, and as customers, we shouldn't tolerate poor service. That's all I've got time for this week.

I'll end by saying that listeners can help the show by telling their family, friends, colleagues and customers to listen in, or by leaving a five star review on any of the podcast apps.

Pete: 00:20:50

Why not? Visit our Patreon page?

Pete: 00:20:52

Patreon.com getflushed where for a small monthly donation, you can get early access to every episode and unlock bonus features not available elsewhere. Once again, thank you to Vernon and Brett for taking part, and thank you for listening. I've been Pete and this has been Get Flushed.