To ensure you run the most efficient and profitable business for your laundry, and partner well with your customers, you need a clear understanding of their needs, and how your laundry can meet them.

Take the opportunity to survey your customers and get really clear and specific about their requirements, to help them manage their businesses better, and make yours more profitable. Having comprehensive information at your disposal will make your inventory management smoother, and allow you to establish yourself as an integral part of your customer’s business. When there is a predictable volume of rented textiles moving through your laundry and their business, you have a perfect platform for maximising textile item use or turnover.

Areas of information to cover with clients include:

• What is the room/table/wearer configuration?
• What is the service frequency?
• What is the occupancy/nature of the occupancy?
• What is the concurrent or in-use stock at the time of service?
• What is the minimum usage quantity expected on the total stock issued?
• What is the maximum order quantity by item?

One cycle that must be broken is the over-ordering of stock by customers. It can be a challenge to take a customer from over-ordering on an irregular basis, to a set service frequency with normal variation in order quantities.

Textiles are a scarce and valuable resource and should only be dispatched based on actual demand. The issues associated with over-ordering include:

• Stock shortages for other customers
• Inefficient processing to meet ‘urgent’ orders
• Product and service quality deterioration
• Increased opportunity for pilferage and mistreatment of textiles
• Lost revenue from idle textiles
• Blowout on textile costs

It is important to understand the reasons that customers over-order and address them in the first instance. These reasons may include:

• They may have higher expectations for consumption than is the reality
• They may not trust the launderer to deliver the full order
• They may be building up a stock holding ahead of peak periods
• They may be concerned about consistency of supply
• The run their business in an ad hoc manner, and order sporadically
• There is no maximum/minimum order quantity
• They have had a set pack or standing order which has not been reviewed

One thing is for certain, allowing a customer an ‘open order book’ all but guarantees that without diligent checks and parameters, you will lose control of your textiles at their property. Identifying your customer needs can help you significantly increase your commercial laundry productivity learn how it can be done here