From Software to Service: Service Core Software with John Gadekin

Pete: 00:00:16

Hello and welcome to Get Flushed, the Sanitation podcast. My name's Pete. This week I was able to catch up with John Gadekin and Joy Weber from ServiceCore, and I'll let them explain the rest.

John, how are you?

John: 00:00:32

How are you?

Pete: 00:00:33

Hey, Joy.

Joy: 00:00:33

Hey.

Pete: 00:00:34

Hey. I really appreciate you taking time today. I'll send you both a coffee mug for coming on the show. That's what I do.

Have you managed to listen to last week's episode?

John: 00:00:44

I did. I did. Your holy grail of ten points if.

Pete: 00:00:48

You want to tell me the service call story. I don't know very much about you other than I've been in touch with Joy for the last couple of three months.

John: 00:00:55

Okay, so service core was started by myself and another gentleman by the name of Orie Staub. We actually had a company called Civ websites.

Previously, we actually did real estate software, and then we also did software for the waste industry as well. We grew that to a fairly large company, about $10 million in annual revenue.

And then I think, like a lot of businesses, Ori and I, we had other partners, and we didn't necessarily always see eye to eye with things. We divested out of that. Our partners took the real estate software, and then we created another company called one BG.

And we took the waste software, and we had clients like waste management, Casella Republic, those type of things. Anyway, we had a pretty good run with that.

We were able to sell it to one of our larger, largest clients and we found ourselves with a little bit of a revenue. And so we found a company called Clear Computing, which actually has a product called TaC.

We were very interested in their customer base because they'd been in the portable septic software business for quite some time, had a good customer base, and we were building a product called Service Corp.

We wanted to get into, instead of doing completely enterprise clients, into having a very large breadth of clients, from small all the way to enterprise as well. Anyway, as we were building service core out, we found an opportunity to buy this clear computing product company.

Tac was an old premise based software where you had to RDP, that was their version of going online. Whereas service core is completely cloud based, it's based in Amazon, completely mobile, any device anywhere.

And so as we kept going, we were able to find some really nice funding. And I've been working with a company called full in for about a year. And so our goal is to be the number one software in this space.

We are very well funded, and we've got a bunch of great developers, you.

Pete: 00:02:52

Know, hearing you say that reaffirms for me that I was nearly right with my search for the holy Grail, that there's not anything at the minute that's doing what we all want. But there are people who are actually on that mission trying to achieve that. That's really good.

John: 00:03:04

Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I listen to your last podcast, I mean, we check a lot of the boxes.

We do not do the payroll, we don't do vehicle maintenance in the health and safety. But our solution is we do integrate with Quickbooks. Quickbooks does do payroll. And so, you know, we have a two way sync in a lot of ways.

So a lot of, a lot of companies already have those products, so it still allows us to integrate with them. So they're able to do it. And got some other partners that already do vehicle maintenance. They do a fantastic job with it.

So we just kind of created a partnership with them. But as you know, far as the other ones, I those boxes pretty well.

Pete: 00:03:40

Looking through your website, I was quite surprised to see how many you did take. And you raise a good point about the finance software. There are a lot of companies out there who do finance packages really well.

And the obvious answer would be to integrate with those rather than try inventing the wheel again.

John: 00:03:54

In this world, integration is super important in APIs and working and collaborating. It's really about giving the customer what they want.

If they already have a product that's ingrained in their workflow, it's just easier to work with them, especially Quickbooks. Quickbooks is you're not going to place.

Pete: 00:04:12

Into it anytime soon. So are you working closely with some toilet operators at different scales to make sure you get direct feedback then?

John: 00:04:20

Yeah, absolutely. Our company's kind of broken into.

We have, obviously, operations, we have customer success, which is customer service and the onboarding process, training, those type of things. And then we have sales and marketing that bring the customers on. One of our largest customers is aroyal flush.

They operate in three states in the northern part of the United States. Once we onboard for a much larger customer like that, they're always kind of pushing the envelope on what they need.

So they have weekly meetings with our team to make sure that they kind of influence or have a voice on what the product can do and should in their future endeavors. With our company, if something goes wrong with the software, you have the ability to call us.

You can just do a chat, set up a ticket, and all of those kind of get categorized. And we start looking at, hey, where are the different needs?

And so the customers really do have a voice because then we look at where the patterns are, where do we need to build something out at? And quite frankly, we interacted with them all every day, so we really feel like it's kind of customer driven.

Pete: 00:05:26

And this might sound a strange question, I think you've partially explained it, but had you done any work in toilets before?

John: 00:05:32

When we looked at it, we did a lot of research. We looked at different products out there. And then we were very fortunate because clear computing at that point was probably the leader already.

But we made a specific effort to keep the lead place and to help us and consult with us as we were kind of building things out. Working with those customers was definitely something that we did right away just to make sure that we were getting things correct.

Pete: 00:05:59

Do you ever get out in the sanitation truck and have a ride along to see the product in action?

John: 00:06:03

You know what? We have. We have actually done that. We've gone out and did it.

We have a funny thing called Hug a pumper, and it's a Facebook, and you can actually see Abby, who is the former marketing person. She's out hugging the guy. But, yeah, we send our team out so they actually know what's going on and do it.

Pete: 00:06:22

That's really cool.

Some of the drivers I've worked with would struggle to turn their phone on, and I'm not being rude there, they really do struggle with modern technology. How easy is service core for a guy in the field who's busy driving from point to point?

John: 00:06:36

Sure. Good question. That was something. We really tried to make it very easy. First of all, we have an iOS app, also Android, so it will work on any device.

So your iPhone as well as an iPad, whatever. That way, if one of the techs is just used to using their own device, it doesn't matter. So we'll help them get that app on their phone.

So we take that first barrier away. They don't have to learn some new product. Also, it's very simple.

So when you click on the app, it will show their schedule, and it's very, very simple. So when you click on the first job, first of all can give them turn by turn direction off of the map of their choice.

They hit start job and it actually then just gives them all the notes that they need right there. They can take a picture if there's something wrong with the device.

They can scan with a barcode and geolocate where actual unit is or to mark that it's been done.

And then all of this, once they complete the job, there's different notes that they can do, whether it's a completed service, a partial service, unable to service, and all of this then goes back to the dispatcher, and they then get records of it.

So if there's a photo or any type of things, notes that were involved with it, the dispatcher can get it right there and then actually go ahead and build a job, if that's what their workflow is and whatnot, and then they're off to the next one. So it's just very, very simple instructions and kind of an easy workflow to follow.

Pete: 00:08:11

And all of that's in real time, I presume it is.

John: 00:08:14

And one of the things, too. I've never been to New Zealand, but I imagine with the mountains and stuff you have there.

We're in Colorado, and a lot of our places are rural, and there's not cell signal or wifi. So ours also works offline. So you still get all that information.

You're able to preserve that information, and then when you come back into cell service, you can actually then sync it back up and it'll go back to the dispatch.

Pete: 00:08:38

That's really. You're quite right. We do suffer from that.

John: 00:08:41

You can print your service tickets. You can print all of that out and give it to a driver. If they're not gonna adapt, we can certainly work with them that way as well.

You know, it's our hopes that eventually they can, you know, teach their drivers how to do it. I would love to say everybody is going to adapt to the technology, but some just don't.

Pete: 00:09:01

Now, the next question will come off. That is, I've got listeners in Finland. I've got listeners in Tunisia. I've got some real far flung corners of the world.

Is service four a global product?

John: 00:09:13

So right now, we work in the United States and Canada. We do have some people in Panama.

And those things, the limitations that you would see working with us in some places, if you were measuring things in liters, we do gallons at this point, or if we do miles versus meters, those things, that would be a limiting factor if you did work in the metric system. We are in the process of having conversions. One of the things that we found, too, is to have a spanish speaking app.

That's probably where we will go first and then translate it over at some point.

Pete: 00:09:52

Do you think we'll see service core available in those other countries?

Joy: 00:09:56

I don't see it happening in: 2021

Fortunately for us, we have a lot of companies here in the United States and Canada we would definitely like to service. And so that's kind of where our focus is at this point. But yes, I think.

Well, and part of it with the spanish app, there's just a lot of people in the United States that obviously are spanish speaking, and a lot of businesses, I think, that have employees that would really benefit from that. So that's one of the big things.

John: 00:10:25

That we would like to be able.

Joy: 00:10:27

To do just to help them out.

Pete: 00:10:28

And then you mentioned barcodes, so you can scan the barcode and recognize the toilet. I've done a little bit of work with NFC tags, and I know the guys in Auckland were using NFC tags. Had you gone down that route?

Joy: 00:10:41

Right now it's a barcode. You can choose the numbering or the sequence of. We don't produce those.

We have a vendor that we kind of let people work with matter and then also like a QR code that we have done. And that's kind of where we left it. That seems to be our market.

We have had a few people that want to actually have the RFD where they can track the containers. It kind of depends on the amount of the unit.

You know, a Porta potty isn't probably expensive enough to pay that three $4 a month that you have to pay for it. Maybe on a roll off container, that might be something. But certainly I call one of those fancier restrooms, like the luxury restroom.

We've definitely had a few requests for that. We don't have that integrated, but that's something we're looking.

Pete: 00:11:23

Two good issues you raise there. One is that there aren't very many handsets that will recognize RFID tags. Apple handsets will. And there's a Samsung model that will.

And then the second is the cost.

And a lot of the operators I'm talking to are in a race to the bottom that it's about the cheapest possible price they can manage because that gives them a biggest margin. And certainly the QR codes and bar tags compared to an RFID tag would be a much more economical option. Without a doubt.

Joy: 00:11:48

Yeah, absolutely. Portable toilets. I think the operators obviously know better than me.

I think their margins are just a little tighter, especially now with the COVID that we have. They've lost some of their events and those types of things. They make it up with more services in some areas.

I think there's larger margins in septic and all that, but there's not a lot of used for a barcode in the septic world.

Pete: 00:12:10

And, you know, portable sanitation toilets are high maintenance. You have to go once a week, twice a week, maybe every day.

At the moment, I know a lot of operators have moved to daily servicing, and small costs really quickly add up.

And that's one of the problems with it, that when you go, you're using miles, you're using staff hours, you pay to dump the waste, you're using consumables. So extra cost does affect the operator. The next question that will come from that is, what's the average price?

And is service core accessible for someone like Ryan Grainger at Acadian Sanitation, who's got 50 units, is service Core a viable economic option for him?

Joy: 00:12:45

Our pricing kind of depends on how many scheduled assets that we have. That means a driver or a truck. And so we have several one truck operators that we work with.

We have different price points depending on if you are coming over from a different software, if we had to move data over, or if we have to integrate with Quickbooks or those type of things. But our prices kind of range between $150 up to $250 per driver.

There's some variables that kind of go through there that kind of gives a little bit of a range of what we charge.

Pete: 00:13:21

Is that a monthly price, Jon, that's a monthly license.

Joy: 00:13:23

The larger, the more you have, the better price point you can get.

Pete: 00:13:28

Yeah, that's good, because that's come out quite a lot in conversations where people say, I can't use, where it's too expensive. And I suppose they just have to do the sums of how much would you save?

And I know I said in the show last week, one team I spoke to just listed their jobs in suburb order. So everything beginning with a came before everything beginning with b. And they saved 20% just on drive time alone.

They weren't doing anything other than listing them from a to z in Excel.

Joy: 00:13:54

We actually have an ROI calculator, and we put our mark fairly, 15% to 20%, because we don't ever like to overshoot. What we'll do is kind of work with you on how many trucks or what you have out there, how many miles you believe that you drive a day.

Then we'll look at the cost per gallon of diesel, or whatever it is in your miles per gallon, and we're able to calculate it out. And typically, everybody we've worked with seems very, very comfortable with the 20%. Why we do that is we have a routing and an optimization engine.

And so when you first work with the product, we manage the customer.

You tell us what you need done and then if it's like to pump a toilet or to deliver a toilet or whatever it is, you schedule that job and then it will go on to the schedule. You can even assign it to a driver at that point, or a route. There's route suggestion tools. There's all these little things to help you do it.

But at that point, once you built your day, you can actually then optimize the route. It'll actually do calculations to figure out what the best route is to save you miles.

That is one of the things that we're constantly looking at improving.

We've got a whole bunch of new optimization tools that are even coming out here in the next few months because that's super important to people to be able to do things the most efficient way. You've got 50 stocks, but if I can give you a better calculation and you can actually do 60 in the same amount of time, that's a lot of savings.

You made more money, you're able to build more. So there's many, many ways to kind of look at it. Also, just internally, the software is very, very simple.

And because we integrate with QuickBooks, those types of things, there's a lot of double data entry that you can get rid of as well, because you don't have to do this system and then build out of this system and whatever, you know, you can do it all. Service core.

Pete: 00:15:44

That sounds good. If somebody wanted to have a look at service core and come on board as a customer, how would they go about that?

Joy: 00:15:50

Good question. The easiest way would be to go to servicecore.com.

first of all, they can watch a great little video on the product, but there's several places around the site where you just say, book a demo that goes to a lot of people use a product called calendly, but what it does is it just lets them pick the time that's best for them. And then we kind of have our sales group kind of broken into an enterprise rep who knows more about those mid market and small market.

So then we want to associate that customer with the one that's going to know the most about the product.

We typically say it'll take about 30 minutes to 40 minutes to go through a demo, and we try and answer any questions, but we'll spend as much time as they want. And if we need to do another demo, we'll be happy to do that as well. And then we always send them product information and stuff after.

It's always available to answer questions.

Pete: 00:16:43

That's good to hear. And a lot of the listeners are the smaller operators or just solo drivers.

We do have some big company listeners, but I'm getting a lot of good feedback from people who are typically mom and pop operators who've said to me that they've found lots of information through the podcast and come up with lots of ideas that have challenged their thinking. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope you get hundreds and hundreds of referrals.

Joy: 00:17:06

Hopefully.

Pete: 00:17:07

My whole idea was to share information and let people know what was going on and help them improve their businesses. And it's really good to hear you talking about your product and telling people what's available. Really do appreciate that.

Joy: 00:17:18

Yeah, we appreciate just the opportunity. It's kind of funny. We're very passionate about our software. We want our customers to do well.

Software is only good if it helps people and makes their life easier. So, I mean, that's our goal. That's what we want to try and do.

Pete: 00:17:33

Okay, is there anything else that you want to say or put across?

Joy: 00:17:36

One thing that we were talking about? If you would like to offer a promo code, like Get Flushed when they contact us, we were thinking we could give them a 20% off the setup.

Pete: 00:17:47

So if they just enter the code, Get Flushed at some point when they register for a demo or get in touch, you'll often. That's brilliant. Thank you, John.

Joy: 00:17:54

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Well, we appreciate it. It's an interesting field.

It's a niche, but I mean, people need the services that your audience and our customers are servicing. I mean, you don't want them not to be doing it.

Pete: 00:18:06

We've been talking for half an hour. You've got the same passion that I've got about the industry and the guys at Prestige have got, and Dave Andres at Sanitrax has got.

And it's really cool that I'm hooking up with all of these people like yourself, who share that same buzz and vibe. They just enjoy the industry and they see just the value of the industry, and we're all trying to make it better. So well done to you.

Joy: 00:18:27

Well, thanks, Pete. It was really nice to meet you.

Pete: 00:18:29

And you. And thank you to joy, because she was one of the first people to get in touch when I launched it.

And I've said a couple of times, I've phoned companies and said, hey, my name's Pete. I run this podcast. It's all about portable toilets. And you can just see at the other end, they're like, huh?

But Joy was one of the first people to reach out. So thank you, Joy. It was really cool, and thank you for organizing it.

Joy: 00:18:50

Yeah, of course. I've been listening to your podcast since episode one, and it's just very interesting, so keep on keeping on.

Pete: 00:18:59

Thank you. So that was John Gadekin and Joy Webber from Service Core.

I really enjoyed talking to them both, and as usual, a pair of Get Flushed mugs are already on their way. If you didn't quite catch it, John offered a 20% discount on the setup fees to anyone listening to the show who wants to try the service core app.

Just visit servicecore.com and quot Get Flushed when you book your demo.

That's all we have time for this week, and I'll end by saying that listeners can really help the show by telling all their family, friends, colleagues, and customers to listen in. Even better, leave a five star review on any of the podcast platforms for a small monthly donation.

You can also get early access to every episode and unlock bonus material that's not available anywhere else. Visit our Patreon [email protected]. getflushed that's p dash dash dash n.com getflushed to find out more. Once again, thank you for your time.

I've been Pete and you've been listening to Get Flushed.