How does Foremost make switching suppliers easy?

Many companies we work with find they don't have the time to switch suppliers.

Your current communication from your supplier could be anything from inconsistently irrelevant to almost non-existent. They might get little to no support for industry trends and innovations. But, what can be about it?

Consistently, there is a lot of day-to-day, time-consuming processes that keep coming around. You begin to wonder if you'll finish that task, and then you have to start it again for the next time round.

The common problem is that while you do that, there is not enough time to focus on growing your business.

At Foremost, we strive to make those processes quicker and easier for you.

Here's how we do it...

Making Health & Safety and Training Accessible

A huge time-consuming task that comes with switching suppliers is the sheer volume of Health and Safety paperwork that comes with it. After all, even if only the label changes, but the chemical inside is the same, the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) packs will need to be updated at each site to conform to Health and Safety Regulations. That is a mammoth paperwork task! For most area managers, there is insufficient time for it. We offer to do it for you to save stress, hassle and time. [form in here to apply for site packs if they don't already have them]

Many janitorial and cleaning suppliers have MSDS for each product available online. That makes it easier to find them. But only that. Going through an unfamiliar website, finding each product online, downloading the MSDS and putting them into a pack for all your sites is still very time-consuming. That’s why we do it for you. Once you’ve discussed and decided on your core range of cleaning and chemical products, we can source the MSDS and collate them into a site pack with any necessary dilution rates for your chemicals and cleaning instructions for your operatives. Then, with your first, or next, delivery to any of your sites, the Site Packs can be delivered as you request them. Alternatively, we can mail them out to your sites.

Along with the site packs, where a new product needs to introducing to your operatives, we offer you a range of training support and guides. Ranging from detailed instruction booklets for your machinery to swap sheets and visits with you to your sites, we'll help you and your operatives understand what the safest and most efficient way of using our products is. Soon to be added to the list are downloadable product training guides and online training courses for our cleaning chemicals, equipment and machinery. These will tell you everything you need to know about the product to be able to use it safely - where to use it, where not to, how to use it, PPE requirements, potential hazards and more.

Giving your budgeting the support it needs

Is that ever-present tight budget getting trickier to track? It’s a common issue. You get pressure from your financing team to stick to your budget, your clients want their spotless clean but aren’t willing to pay much more than the minimum for it. How can you make cuts on your cleaning materials and still exceed your client's expectations?

The answer is online budget control. It's simple. As a site is being set up, you can select monthly or quarterly budgeting – whichever works best for your company – then you can enter the budget for that site according to what is right for them. There are two tick boxes you can choose to tick. One is for the set budget to repeat at the same value each budgeting period, and the other is for budget carry over – where less is spent in one month, or quarter, they can have more in the next and vice versa.

But, before you get to the stage of tracking your site-by-site spending, the task of converting new prices from your suppliers for rechargeable products (washroom consumables, sacks, etc.) to your clients is a must. It's usually a mammoth task, but it can get much easier. Our Pricing Tool takes your markup percentage, adds it to your cost prices and creates two lists. One is all of your products in one list (for company-wide pricing changes), and the other is all your products split per site (for client/site-specific pricing changes). But what if you have different markups or margins per customer? How could a typical one-for-all system help? Our Pricing Tool, personal to your business, has a markup box you can fill in yourself so you can change it at any time, putting your markup on our prices.

Keeping you up-to-date with the Current Cleaning Industry Trends

The fear that your customers won't accept the way you do business with them is real. The problem is they don't understand the cleaning industry because they don't work in it every day. With new articles coming out most weeks, we aim to address any threat and opportunity in the cleaning industry. For the consumables price hike, you can get a brochure explaining the situation with real facts and figures in your branding - ready to give out to your clients. It will not be the last, so stay tuned.

A bit about how Foremost works

Part of what keeps us in business is identifying where you might be struggling, coming up with a solution and making your job easier. So, if there is any other way we can help with budgeting, tracking, explaining, health & safety, or any other problem please don’t hesitate to ask. We may have overlooked a system that could be the answer you’re looking for.
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