Cleaning Business Plan

A business plan guides you through each stage of starting and managing your business. A business plan is used as a roadmap for how to structure, operate, and grow your business. It is the an essential element in the early planning stage of starting or expanding your own, or acquiring an existing business. Dream Team Capital can assist in the development of your cleaning business plan.

Cleaning is a necessity in every home and office. The importance of having a clean living and working environment is not only important for practical reasons, but studies show that this does have an impact on mental health too. Spaces that are cluttered and messy can cause you to feel distracted – affecting your ability to be productive.

Within the cleaning industry, there are businesses and opportunities aplenty across diverse markets. Whether these are speciality cleaning services for windows and floors, or residential and commercial cleaning.

There is huge opportunity in the cleaning industry as cleanliness will always be a necessity. Additionally, many businesses are looking to expand to more regions because of this demand.

Increased hygiene and health awareness has led to more demand for cleaning by contractors. Companies are increasingly moving towards sustainability, using environmentally-friendly products that reduce their impact on air quality and the general environment. Cleaning companies are expanding their services and investing in new technologies to improve quality and efficiency. There have been several incidents of corruption including government tenders for cleaning of educational institutions and the South African Social Security Agency.

The contract cleaning industry, which forms part of the temporary employment services (TES) sub-sector, plays an important role in job creation in South Africa. Almost 100, 000 people are employed by approximately 1, 500 contract cleaning companies, 620 companies, including 49 suppliers of goods and equipment, were members of the National Contract Cleaners Association (NCCA). Although companies were not compelled by law to join the NCCA, membership is mandatory if a company wants to tender for contracts. Another important group is the Black Economic Empowerment Cleaning Association (BEECA) which has 50 members.

The temporary nature of employment under fixed-term contracts and the associated lack of benefits are major sources of conflict between employees and large companies that provide contract cleaning services to clients such as universities, government departments, and large corporates. In the university sector, the #FeesMustFall campaign extended to include demands of in-sourcing of services provided by contracted companies and in order to avoid further disruptions to tuition and damage to property, universities decided to implement in-sourcing measures. Employees in the sector expressed optimism that workplace deficits in the sector will be addressed by The Contract Cleaning Sector: Decent Work Programme.

The new national standards will consider various aspects of best practice in relation to cleaning operations and chemicals, water, emissions, and land use. It will complement government’s medium-term strategy to provide more inclusive economic growth to establish a national best practice agenda and provide sustainable livelihoods, improved security and land reform, besides other benefits. Given that legislation dealing with the construction of buildings is changing, legislation dealing with the maintenance of buildings also requires changes.

Profit is no longer the main factor determining the success of the South African cleaning industry, as more attention is given to other factors; social and environmental responsibility. The concept of green building and green cleaning is growing in Africa, particularly South Africa. There is still however the perception that environment-friendly policies are too costly but this is contradictory as environment-friendly policies can save cleaning companies money in the long term.

The most relevant for the South African landscape is that sustainable cleaning results in lowered chemical usage, minimised water use, and higher levels of recycling that reduce waste costs. It is the responsibility of facility managers to educate their staff and create an environment of awareness that encourages sustainable cleaning practices.

An effective method of adopting sustainable solutions in the cleaning industry is by using green-certified and environmentally-friendly chemicals when possible to reduce direct pollution. Companies offering cleaning services need to examine the markets they operate in and identify what environmental needs are required.

Many companies overlook the critical fact that cleaning products can negatively impact on the health of employees, cleaning staff, and customers. Chemicals that are not environmentally friendly can cause asthma, cancer, and increased birth defects.

The potential for technology to automate mundane, but critical cleaning functions is wide ranging and includes a mix of autonomous and human-aided applications. Not everyone and every company is ready yet to adopt this vision of adopting this vision of automating processes and functions.

The first steps toward this high-tech future are being taken by companies using the technology to monitor machines and processes remotely. The increased visibility into how and whether cleaning is happening as it should is a big advantage, but still only a small step toward an integrated future.

This initial wave of embedding technology will lead to increased integration of functionality and systems. Remote monitoring of equipment can identify faults or failures and can immediately set processes in places to fix or repair machinery. By the same token, predictive maintenance that relies on data from the field can further promote uptime and best use of equipment.

Core elements of a comprehensive Cleaning Business Plan include:

•Executive summary: This is an overview of the business and its plans. It briefly includes the company offices to explain why the business will be successful. It comes first in the plan and is ideally one to two pages.

•Body: This section covers the marketing and sales plan, operations, milestones, and metrics for success.

•Company and management summary: This section describes the current team of the business and future additions to it. A quick overview of the business legal structure, premises, and history if you are already operating should also be provided. This may include an organisational diagram.

•Market analysis: Is understanding your industry outlook, trends, and target market.

•Financial plan: The business plan requires a financial forecast. Dream Team Capital assists with the contents of the financial plan.

•Financial projections: Eight documents comprising of the management account, income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, cash forecast, break even analysis, loan amortisation schedule and fixed asset schedule with all necessary ratios, graphs and calculations. Graphs and charts are used to tell the financial story of the business.

•Annexures: Statutory information needed by funders in an application (contact us for the complete list). This includes supporting documents or other materials specially requested. Common items include; credit histories, resumes, product pictures, letters of reference, licenses, permits, patents, legal documents, and other contracts.

At DTC, we understand the complexities of the various criteria and requirements for an accurate and custom business plan. If using the business plan to raise funding and/or non-repayable business grants, we guide you through the process and provide access to our expansive network of funders across South Africa.