Landscape Solutions offers greenfield for vWork

Setting the foundations of high volume job scheduling

Established in Australia in 1993, Landscape Solutions expanded into Auckland in 2017 to commence work on a newly won contract. This was Landscape Solutions’ first contract outside Australia.

Today the company has around 190 Auckland-based field staff responsible for a wide variety of jobs including gardeners, mowing operators, groundsmen, playground inspectors and landscapers.

With only a limited number of office and management staff, Landscape Solutions was aware from the outset that whatever business processes they adopted, they had to scale easily and deliver exactly on their needs in terms of job scheduling and management.

In the early days, job scheduling was a hectic task fraught with errors. It became obvious that their existing systems weren’t working for them. A manager comments “When we started out, we used job scheduling software from a company headquartered overseas. But within months, it was apparent that it didn’t fit our requirements. Coupled with the fact we had inadequate post-go-live support from the provider, we realized that using the software was holding us back from being able to demonstrate our fulfilment of jobs and optimize our workforce.”

Within months, Landscape Solutions began a market search for alternative software. The key attributes that any new software had to have was workforce and job optimization, seamless proof of delivery and the provider had to ensure the system was implemented effectively with adequate
transitional and ongoing support.

Optimizing hundreds of jobs and sites

Landscape Solutions’ contract covers a vast geographical area and includes thousands of different work sites. Whatever solution they selected it had to make managing the work volumes and spread of a large mobile workforce as easy to manage as possible.

Having every team scheduled for a full day of work makes it easy for Landscape Solutions to see where their teams are compared to their schedules and allows management to reallocate resources if needed.

For example, if a team is behind on their mowing schedule due to a breakdown, management can reallocate jobs to a team who is on track or ahead of schedule. This allows Landscape Solutions to deliver a consistent level of service across their contract.

The increased visibility of job progress – specifically being able to track completion and have a record of it through geocoded and timestamped step completions coupled with real time photographic evidence is great for the Landscape Solutions’ team. It allows management to review job information, download reports for analysis and submit proof of service to the client where evidence is required to support any queries. 

Creating an environment for future growth

Looking beyond the day-to-day, Landscape Solutions has ambitious plans for growth in New Zealand. With effective systems and processes now in place, including vWork, the business is in a good place to scale up quickly and effectively. vWork’s flexibility and ability to be customized will allow Landscape Solutions to hit the ground running on any future contracts.

As a manager comments: “Now we have the dayto-day processes sorted, our attention is focused on building a sustainable business for the future. With
vWork software, we know that we can easily scale when we take on another large open spaces contract. We’re really pleased with how this software works for us and our customers.”