Labor and Water at the Crossroads

The #1 Green Industry challenge – LABOR is on a collision course with its customers’ #1 fastest growing utility expense – WATER

The facts around water are indisputable. Costs are rising. Restrictions are rising. But for many the resource itself is becoming scarce!

During peak season, landscape professionals manage 50 – 80% of a property’s water! This is an incredibly important responsibility that is often overlooked. Ac-cording to the EPA, 50% of outdoor water is wasted! Who’s to blame? Well, the lack of focus and training can certainly contribute, but the waste is largely due to old-style, timer technology that runs your irrigation based on a fixed schedule as opposed dynamic scheduling to match plant need. These traditional timers require exhaustive labor to keep up with programming changes, emergency shut off, and inspections. This is where a HUGE industry gap exists – there is a tremendous and growing need for water management, but not enough water management professionals to physically go around adjusting controllers! Unfortunately, increasing labor costs working alongside offline timers is only widening the gap. So, what to do?

At the same time water and labor costs are going through the roof, there’s good news! The cost of technology has been on a multi-decade decline. Just like your laptop today cost a fraction of the first one you owned, but now it’s much more powerful. Same for smart irrigation technology. In fact, the cost to upgrade to an online smart controller is no longer $5,000+ and now can be incorporated for as little as $25/mo. with $0 upfront cost – easily and affordably integrated into a landscape maintenance or irrigation service contract (typically 1-3% of a landscape maintenance contract). It’s the ultimate win-win: the technology now pays for itself in water savings alone (38% average savings), but more importantly solves the labor issue preventing landscape professionals from managing water. Many landscape maintenance businesses who have partnered with Weathermatic save an average of 6 trips per controller annually through online access with each trip valued at $75+ considering man hours, gas, etc. – not to mention the opportunity cost of unbillable time versus profitable work.

This adds up to hundreds or thousands of trips annually across a portfolio, which using mobile technology can be freed up time to be repurposed for profit and growth. Many Weathermatic Premier Partners get a complete return of investment as high as 3 to 1 ($3 dollars back for every $1 invested) on their labor efficiency gain alone. Let’s look at how Weathermatic’s Smart-Link technology changes the game to make water management scalable for landscape professionals in need of labor efficiency:

GLOBAL COMMANDS. Global commands enable you to simply press one button to turn on/off all your controllers in your portfolio. For instance, if you know when a major weather event is on the way, you can set up a system delay with a single command across several or all sites that will prevent the controller from watering! Historically in the industry, that process often involved people literally driving around to sites and shutting them off manually on foot. Now, all those trips are saved and that labor resource can be committed to more profitable activities.

ALERTS. With over 20 different types of alerts, you’ll receive updates when a system is turned off, new programming adjustments, weather changes, or if there is a shorted zone electrically that needs to be addressed. These types of alerts keep you up to date with notifications occurring across your network of sites. This allows you to proactively monitor your entire portfolio of sites — making it more profit-able and efficient with labor. Traditionally, landscapers had fire drills where it ended up being too late to prevent landscape damage or reduce water waste!

INSPECTIONS. How many times have irrigation professionals run out of times and pushed back an inspection? Have all of your sites received one recently? While inspections are critical to a  well- function-ing irrigation system, they are a tedious task when old technology gets in your way. SmartLink, however, is different. What used to require two people on a job can now be done by one person — and in half the time with our mobile app! You can use the SmartLink app with mobile inspections to turn on zones, paperless mark issues, take photos, and upload pricing to generate and email proposals for your customers for digital signature approval of urgent repairs and enhancements! This saves your field and office team labor and paperwork.

ASSET MAPPING. If there’s one consistent pain point for irrigation managers on new  properties, it’s asset mapping. Finding the controller, the backflow, the water meter, and other key components is critical to resolving customer issues quickly. In a few seconds with our SmartLink software, you can drop pins, shade areas, or draw lines on a satellite map of the property! You can even use our valve locator (it sends a loud pinging sound) to find those infamously hidden valves. No more aimlessly wander-ing and wondering.

REPORTING. Lastly, our platform enables our landscape Partners to accurately and quickly help their customers understand the properties’ water usage. In the past, a point of tension between landscapers and customers has been rising water bills. Whether you choose to install a flow sensor for real time readings or input usage estimates for a virtual flow report, SmartLink software accurately displays reports with how much.

The landscaping industry is at cross-roads right now — most landscapers are facing increasing pressure to fill the water management gap because of the rising cost of water, the increasing attention to water waste, and the labor challenges that demand a technological solution. Ask yourself, “What am I doing to tackle these issues? Will I delay, dabble, or dominate with water management services and technology? Our answer: it’s always better to be ahead of the curve than to let negative experiences force your hand. Here at Weathermatic, we’ve uniquely packaged a water management solution through our Premier Partner Program. We provide the hardware, software, technical support, marketing support, and millions of dollars in capital for upgrades. We partner with you to provide proven ways to incorporate water management services into your customer contracts and proposals!

Want the advantage of SmartLink Certification and premium-paying customers? Weathermatic offers a solution. Learn more at http://get.smartlinknetwork.com