Landscape Management, September 2013

done some work with national commercial landscape maintenance providers As we build a plan for 2014 the opportunity appears to be worth scaling he says LAWN CARE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES Still with all the talk about expansion and adding services Kura sees SLSs core service lawn care and core customer base homeowners to be a major opportunity in itself For starters he points to its largest competitor TruGreen as heading in the other direction than we are We measure ourselves against the local guy and there are 4000 of them running around Kura says This is a big fragmented category And I think its an opportunity for us with just one big competitor thats struggling and a big market to go after With opportunity comes obstacles and SLSs are just like any lawn care companys albeit on a larger scale For example the ever changing regulatory environment is a perennial difficulty Kura says You make sure you stay compliant and hope it doesnt get worse he says In some cases the company has worked proactively in partnership with officials and environmental groups For example Scotts announced in 2011 it would remove phosphorus from all its lawn maintenance fertilizers by LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET SEPTEMBER 2013 18 PHOTOS SCOTTS LAWNSERVICE ISTOCK INTERNATIONAL INC continued on page 20 TECHNOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY go hand in hand W hen lawn care professionals think and talk about sustainability they often refer to their products says Chris Wible director of technical services for Scotts LawnService SLS Thats a key piece but another is the consumer and another is the fleet he says And he should know Before taking this role in mid 2012 Wible was the director of environmental stewardship for The Scotts Miracle Gro Co Just think What does the homeowner do when youre not there Wible asks Sharing proper mowing height information with consumers is a very easy way to reduce weed pressure thus reducing inputs extra trips for callbacks and other inefficient unnecessary actions SLS primarily conveys this information to clients in leave behinds and service notes Wible says techs meet at the branch level on Mondays to share what theyre seeing in the field and discuss appropriate customer communications for that week The SLS technical service team helps develop tech notes appropriate for given weather and agronomic conditions Wible says The fleet has been a high impact area for SLS the past two years In fact between 2011 and 2012 SLS reduced its total number of miles driven by 18 million Wible says That translates into fewer emissions and less fuel consumed not to mention the efficiencies it creates for the business he says attributing the savings to more effective routing software programs and regional routing teams When SLS President Brian Kura talks about the fleet he says the company runs lean due to a maniacal focus on cutting costs out of the business One cost cutting example is the use of notebook computers that report driver data do batch information uploads when techs return to the shop and generate professional print outs of regulatory information plus tech notes The company uses software from Real Green Systems and has been for about a decade Real Green founder Joe Kucik also operates a Scotts Lawn Service franchise in Michigan SCOTTS LAWNSERVICE IN A SERVICE BUSINESS YOURE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR PEOPLE WHO INTERACT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS 2013 and it accomplished that goal earlier this year Because phosphorus is essential to initial turf root development the nutrient will remain in its starter fertilizers for new lawns and also in its organic lawn food as it occurs naturally in the organic material The 2011 phosphorusfree announcement marked the expansion of a commitment made by the company in 2006 to stakeholders in the Chesapeake Bay area to reduce phosphorus content in lawn fertilizer by 50 percent Now SLS is voluntarily P free as is much of the lawn care industry Another top challenge for SLS is finding and keeping good people Kura says In a service business youre only as good as your people who interact with your customers he says noting the technicians role is the hardest to fill and retain Thats a lot of long hours dragging a hose in the heat of summer It can be a tough demanding job Kura says For the past five years the company has brought