John: 0:00

We don't sell hours anymore. We sell the fact that the office will be clean. It's only the result that we sell and no longer the effort of cleaning it. We sell the outcome, you know, in the service. We are not running plants. We don't have inventory. We don't have a production process. The only thing we have are people. The heart of our added value is the quality of the planning of all the resources, and in our case, people. We used to be best friend of Microsoft Excel, like a lot of companies, and actually multiple occasions we encountered the limitation of that. It's very dependent on one person, one way of doing. We started with Odoo, I think 11 or 12 years ago. On a daily basis. We plan the daily activity of close to 1000 people. We do some inspection report, so we have the people that clean, but then we have some inspectors that make sure that the quality of the service is there. This used to be completely paper. Nowadays it's completely paperless. Getting rid of paper has been a huge evolution. By digitalizing the processes, by centralizing the data, we have been able to accommodate a growth that otherwise would have required additional resources. And, you know, Odoo, it's magic. You try it once, immediately you are convinced.

Richard: 1:18

Hello everyone, and welcome to Planet Odoo, where we explore the world of software. I'm your host, Richard, and in this episode, we're going to take a deep dive into a very important industry. Have you ever received support from cleaning services at your home or office? You know, the silent superheroes working in the shadows to improve our daily lives. That's the service industry we're talking about today. Joining us today on this exciting journey is John Kraft, the maestro behind XLG, which is a family owned services business that has harnessed the power of Odoo to improve its daily operations. Hey, John, how's it going?

John: 1:54

Very, very well. Hello, Richard. Nice to see you today.

Richard: 1:57

Nice to see you as well. Thanks for joining us. Why don't you start by telling us more about XLG and what you do?

John: 2:02

XLG is a Belgian based company. It's a family group, family owned business that is actually one of the leader in service, providing to a large base of customers in facility management, in maintenance, industrial maintenance and in building renovation.

Richard: 2:20

And how long have you been around?

John: 2:22

We've been around since mid of the 80s. We are really, really central on entrepreneurship. We've done almost no acquisition and right now we employ the whole group, employ more than 4000 people in Belgium. So it took one generation from the mid 80s until now to be a serious player in the service we provide to our customers.

Richard: 2:44

That's quite amazing. And how has the service industry changed over the last 30 years?

John: 2:50

Oh, many things have happened in facility management. For instance, we do a lot of different services like cleaning, gardening, building maintenance, things like that. It used to be that, for instance, cleaning was just agreeing with the customer the type of service and the frequency. In the meantime, it has evolved to a full facility, which we don't sell hours anymore. We sell the fact that the office will be clean. What does that mean? It means that we took into consideration the usage of the office. If for any reason the office is not being occupied or a meeting room is not being occupied, we won't clean it. What we said to our customer is the fact that it's only the result that we sell, and no longer the effort of cleaning it, we sell the outcome.

Richard: 3:38

Okay, so is there anything that you won't do?

John: 3:40

Well, actually, we develop a lot of intimacy with our customers and we really And there are many instances where our entrepreneurship helps us to address new needs as they develop. For instance, during the Covid, we have people that are cleaning. Well, you know what we launched? We launched a disinfection service right from scratch, which was close to the cleaning but has specific products, specific processes that we developed in no time so that we could offer new and additional services linked to a special need of the customers.

Richard: 4:13

Okay, so as the services evolve over time, how has the technological innovations

John: 4:20

There are many new developments that took place over the years. Everything used to be on paper and nowadays we're going to more and more paperless. So let's take for instance again in the cleaning we do some inspection report. So we have the people that clean, but then we have some inspectors that make sure that the quality of the service is there. This used to be completely paper. Nowadays it's completely paperless. We take pictures and we have the customer signing also for reception and for approval of the the inspection is done being made. Really, really getting rid of paper has been a huge evolution. Another example of. That is, as we sell our services, we actually sell the performance of our people. We send our people to our customer premises. And what happens there? The key is the planning. How many people where, when, how? This used to be also completely paper based. The heart of our added value is the quality of the planning of all the resources and in our case, people.

Richard: 5:22

Okay. And we'll get into more how you do that now. But I would like to learn more about how did you do things before Odoo came into the picture?

John: 5:29

We used to be best friend of Microsoft Excel. Like a lot of companies.

Richard: 5:34

I think I've heard of them.

John: 5:35

Many of them, many of them were really, I would say, very dependent on that. And actually we in multiple occasions we encountered the limitation of that. It's very dependent on one people, one person, one way of doing. And as we grew, we ended up having a large variety of processes of way of doing that, all depending on peoples and the way they had developed their own little solutions remotely and not be able to talk to each other, speak the speak the same language.

Richard: 6:09

Okay, so Excel was essentially you were outgrowing it very quickly and it wasn't

John: 6:18

Yes. And also to communicate. That's that's another dimension of that. We believe in one version of the truth. That's really a line that we try to have everywhere. One version of the truth, it being in planning, being in accounting, being in selling, invoicing, you name it. We really want to stick to that. And before having Odoo into our company, we were not that good at having that one version of the truth everywhere. For all the processes.

Richard: 6:50

I imagine many businesses have struggle with communication these days.

John: 6:53

Some of the services we sell have not a huge margin, so every little bit of to be able to identify, but also manage every step of the process so that every bit of profitability can be captured.

Richard: 7:12

So essentially, a strong ability to plan, organize and communicate with your Is that correct?

John: 7:21

Absolutely. You know, in the service we are not running plants. We don't have inventory. We don't have a production process. The only thing we have are our people. We rely completely on the people. We make sure they are trained. We make sure they are... They work in a safe environment. Safety is a key element as we employ all those people, and then we make sure that they know what they have to do, they know how to do it. And we have the reporting of the performance and the action that has been taken, so that we can monitor the quality and eventually invoice the customer for the for the service we've provided.

Richard: 7:56

Okay. Well, we have to learn more about that. So first, how did Odoo enter the picture exactly?

John: 8:01

Well, it's a very long story. We started with Odoo, I think 11 or 12 years ago. It was still named open ERP at that time. And one of a leader at that time ran into Fabien Pinckaers. So we are one of the oldest user of the solution that has been used over the years. What happened is that because of how the group used to be structured, we ended up having multiple instances, multiple databases of Odoo implementations at different moment for different type of business we are running, but also different releases. So it ended up being with without a global monitoring. It ended up being a little bit chaotic, a wonderful source of experimentation, of experience even, but not one global solution. And so a little more than two years ago, what we decided is to go tabula rasa. So we went and we, we, we ran into our Odoo and we found a very nice implementation company here in Belgium called Nalios. Very nice people that where we express them first, what the issue was, the issue was actually a very large variety of Odoo implementations, different versions, different solutions, different choices made, large development that have not been maintained and all that. So then we took the decision to go tabula rasa to start in version 15 and to deploy a unique single solution for all business unit throughout all locations that the group have here in Belgium.

Richard: 9:54

And how many different business units are we talking about here?

John: 9:57

We're talking about 15 business units because I talk a lot about facility So we do building renovation, which which from which is a complete different business unit. And one of the key point was that we brought people together and basically told them that Odoo had already a lot of solutions out of the box, and we could adapt and align our processes to, let's say, best in class, which were provided by the Odoo solution.

Richard: 10:35

So taking 15 different business units and combining them into one database, that Not many businesses have the opportunity to do so. Can you explain how you were able to kind of align everybody on the same versions and same databases, I imagine, with slightly different processes into one coherent system.

John: 10:55

We look at common denominators and there are many of them. We challenge every time a manager tells us my way of doing business is different, my customers are different. We challenge that. We challenged that seriously. And I would say the key success factor in the project itself has been management support, up to a level where the executive committee basically said, we need to align and we will align. So it helped to challenge some ideas that business have to be different by by nature. No, we looked for commonalities. And there are many, many, much more than originally one could think. But in reality there are still business specificities. And the challenge is actually to look for commonalities, to stress on commonalities, but not be blind or deaf and still be able to listen to specificities. And there are few of them. Let me give you an example. We do what we call damage control, which is basically when when there is a fire, we do the cleaning afterwards. Well, this has a very specific way of doing that. We we clean for the person that has the damage, however we build to the insurance company. Well, that's a specificity of that business. We need to organize into Odoo, and we do some development so that we can actually have a customer, but we build someone else. Odoo has provided those solutions with a little bit of configuration and development. But again, the key is look for commonalities, but still listen to business specificities and have the cursor right in the middle. That's the key.

Richard: 12:41

That definitely sounds like a challenge. What applications are you actively using?

John: 12:45

Well, we use the CRM. We use the accounting, we use field services, we use sales, we use project timesheet, payroll, recruitment, inventory. And we even have a small usage of the fleet application.

Richard: 13:02

It's an easy one to use.

John: 13:03

It is it is very, very, very easy.

Richard: 13:05

And so then has there been a specific operational challenge that Odoo helped you

John: 13:12

Many of them. Many.

Richard: 13:16

You had to pick one.

John: 13:17

Yeah, I'll pick one. I'll pick one. Um, the recording of the actual, uh, time, time performed by our teams, at our customers, how to record when people are starting and finishing and make sure that when we record that, you record it only once, and then you deploy the, the, the information, the data so that it's being used to build the customer, but also to pay and to interact with the payroll solution, which is still an outside solution because of all the Belgian specificities of the payroll. It's an outside solution, but the recording of the time performed by the people is single and is used in multiple solutions. Okay.

Richard: 14:01

That's great. And then earlier you had mentioned the fact that planning and And how has that evolved since this implementation has taken place?

John: 14:14

Well, we we rolled out the solution. We rolled it out step by step, business unit by business unit, and some specificities of the business unit later on in the process. It's been a two year process business unit by business unit. Some of them did became available later. And let's say for instance in the fourth or the fifth implementation. But as we elected to have one database, it's been a great asset for even within our group, the early adopters could benefit from some further development or some further implementations of modules, applications or developments to help them further.

Richard: 14:57

So then that means Odoo has met all your planning needs?

John: 15:00

Yes. And we really, um, we would like hunters because. What did we hunt? We hunt any off system initiative? Yeah. You know, one version of the truth there used to be in some locations. Yes, yes, it's fine, but my Excel does it better. Well, no, it doesn't. And we demonstrated that it didn't to convince and to embark everybody on the project and on the solution. And, you know, Odoo it's magic. You try it once, immediately you are convinced.

Richard: 15:33

That's good to hear. So now you have everyone organized and know where to go,

John: 15:40

Uh, absolutely. On a daily basis, I think we because people are coming and going, but we plan the daily activity of close to 1000 people on the system. So it's that 500,000 lines of planning. So when we hear that Odoo is there for smaller company, I think we are not a small company. But still the solution is robust enough that the planning, even for larger teams over the longer period, makes sense and works perfect.

Richard: 16:10

That is good to hear. Yes, we are small, tailored towards small businesses, but it's good to hear from bigger businesses that you implement Odoo for these reasons. Are there any processes that are not in Odoo at the moment?

John: 16:22

Yes, and this is a room for the future. We are looking into various applications. The larger one, we use a very, very small part today of the accounting module we are finishing up. Actually, we're going live this weekend. The upgrade to the version 16 and next step after the implementation and the upgrade to the version 16, the next step will be the accounting module. Right now we still have an external accounting software that is linked to Odoo, obviously for, you know, all the big ledgers and but but we still keep the books outside of Odoo. The next big plan is to have Odoo accounting. Let me add one more. We are completely impressed by the capabilities that we have seen from the dashboarding solution. This is also the next step for us. Why Odoo can be like any ERP, by the way, can be experienced as a big machine that you need to feed. The key for us at this point is to get out a lot of information, relevant information. And you know, it's not data that matters, it's information. Let me tell you a good one. You know the difference between information and data. The answer is the difference between a phone book and a phone number. I don't need a phone book. I need a phone number. And we think that the dashboarding solution will be the one that will help us drive by having the right output and the right measure to help us drive the business for our future growth.

Richard: 17:53

That's amazing. I'm glad to hear that. I didn't hear know about the difference, so thank you for teaching you.

John: 17:58

Remember that one? The phone book and the phone number.

Richard: 18:00

I'm never going to forget.

John: 18:01

No, but you know, nowadays there are no phone books anyway, so it's it's an old

Richard: 18:05

I remember watching TV shows where they tried to rip them, but I never was able So now that you've been live for some time, what do you do to ensure the quality and that things are going in the right direction?

John: 18:15

You know, with Odoo, it's never finished. You think you have a project and you go live. But no, it's a living solution that keeps on. If you don't move forward, you're going to move backwards. So and what we've done, which has been extremely important, is to make sure that we build internally a Odoo team. We actually manage to right now we have a team full time of three people. We did capture the knowledge inside the company. We believe that we don't want to depend upon external we unless for more advanced or more let's say knowledge of the solution itself, but on a daily basis to manage the user community, to manage the first line support, to manage the continuous training of of our people. We believe the best way to do that is internally. And in order to do that, we have to have in-house knowledge and experience and competencies. And we have a team of three people. Lawrence is the leader of that team, and on a daily basis, they are they have a hotline. They are completely at the disposal of the user community. Right now, we just reached the 150 user mark within the group and it's still moving. So to us it's extremely important that we we are completely independent in the first line support and also in the project management of the further rollout.

Richard: 19:41

Fantastic. And so how did you go about realizing you needed this team, and

John: 19:50

It's been from the start, actually, the team of that is today. A team of support is also a project team that turned into a support. And further projects, because there are always new projects and additional developments to be, to be, uh, to be addressed. So from the start, we said we need to be careful about that. And in the in the beginning, we said we need to find the right competencies that into the group that we can develop further, that can acquire all this knowledge and experience with the system so that they can become or Odoo expert internally.

Richard: 20:27

That's great. That's exactly the kind of stuff we tell our clients all the time, us anymore. Yeah.

John: 20:36

And that and we like you, but we can do without you.

Richard: 20:40

We appreciate that. Um, are there any integrations that you have in place at the

John: 20:48

Yeah. Um, I already talked about accounting system. I talked about the payroll system. Those are the major ones. But there are also very specific solutions. We are not the one that will say that Odoo should be in every single process of the company. That's not the case. Let me give you an example. When we clean a meeting room, we have a QR code at the entrance that shows that our people have been there. We have an external solution to do that. It's linked to Odoo, but it doesn't have to be Odoo. We do not believe that we have to have Odoo doing everything we believe everything that we do needs to be linked to Odoo. That's an important difference, I believe.

Richard: 21:24

And how are you able to kind of develop that mindset? Because one of the challenges many businesses face implementing Odoo is change management, an all in one solution. So how are you able to approach and tackle that challenge?

John: 21:36

Two things. First, management support crucial in the key success factor. Crucial if there is not an alignment at the highest level of the company, if there is not an alignment on what will be done and how it will be done, it won't work. Second, the second key is stick to standard. Challenge your own processes. Stick to standard sooner or later. What you believe is a difference is actually not a difference. Stick to standard. You will be better off on the long run. Definitely. So. And as I was saying earlier, the challenge is stick to standard, but still still listen to the business requirement and try to combine those two potential difficult to combine situations.

Richard: 22:22

So what have been the benefits or cost savings that you've incurred through

John: 22:29

Um, we have not cut costs, but we have managed to grow without increasing cost. And we are very fast growing company. And by digitalizing the processes, by centralizing the data, we have been able to accommodate a growth that otherwise would have required additional resources. That is the key.

Richard: 22:52

Okay, that makes sense. And so in light of that fast growth, how have you been able to manage your customer relationship and how is Odoo enhanced your ability to provide excellent service to them?

John: 23:04

In our business, there are two stakeholders that are always in everything we do customer. Or let me repeat that first, our customers, second, our people. Because that even even important, this is really, really what is in the back of our mind every, every moment. And so in the customer relationship, there are many examples where a customer can access to their data that they can make sure that we can provide them feedback reports, that they can purchase some additional services, things like that, throughout the Odoo interaction that we have with them.

Richard: 23:44

Great. Now, are there any last minute advice you have to other service industry

John: 23:53

A few, a few feedbacks. We are always excited when we get the chance to interact and exchange with other the other people from the Odoo community that are using the same solution in the same type of business, and even in other type of business. We've been consulted multiple times by by existing or by existing customers or by prospects that that want to to have some feedbacks. We play that we believe it makes sense, it makes sense for them, but it also makes sense for us to, to be available for this type of, of, of request. And the last piece of advice is again, what I've already said. Two things. Stick to standard and manage to get full, full management support.

Richard: 24:44

Fantastic. Thank you again for your wonderful sage advice. I appreciate you joining us here today, John. Appreciate it.

John: 24:50

Thank you Richard, it's been a pleasure.

Richard: 24:51

And that wraps up another captivating episode of Planet Odoo. We hope you found this sneak peek into the service industry and XLGs innovative use of technology, both enlightening and inspiring. Join us next time as we continue to delve into the world of business and technology. I'm your host, Richard, and until our paths cross again, stay curious, stay passionate, and as always, stay awesome.